LaMatadita

I'm genuinely impressed that they went from something that was on the verge of being canceled because the story sucked, to something that is frequently and lavishly praised for its storytelling. Also really glad they changed Vi's design, and I hope they explicitly touch on the character design process in a future episode because I'm curious!

I think that's because he's a recreational user, not an addict. I don't think Rue is attracted to Elliott like that. Jules is the one who is attracted to him--he reminds her of a less fucked up Rue, and he's more emotionally available than Rue. Jules wanted some sort of open threesome so she could have them both and not have to hurt anyone, but if it had actually gone that way, I think Rue only would have done it to make Jules happy and wouldn't have been happy about it herself. I definitely think it's supposed to trouble you! I got the feeling that Maddy put some things together about Nate and Cassie in the hot tub, and part of her fucking with Nate like that was just revenge. She also said some things that made it obvious that she knows he's manipulative and emotionally abusive, and she said them in front of everyone. I almost think the show will go with her being surprisingly not awful to Cassie about hooking up with Nate, but we'll have to see...

I thought the same thing in S1 and thought it was highlighted somewhat in Jules's special episode as well. I'm glad it came up again in a more focused way. I've read some discussions about whether stone butch lesbians are asexual, and it seems to just depend on the person and how they want to define themselves? (This is definitely not an area that I am any kind of expert about, but when I get curious, I read!) Rue is also so emotionally underdeveloped and often numb (physically and emotionally) from various kinds of drugs that it's hard to even know whether she would be more into receiving pleasure if she got fully clean. I was kind of hoping they'd go for her being a nonbinary pansexual top, just because Sam Levinson seems so open to blowing things wide open, but eh, I don't think Rue's into Elliott like that.

I do see why people thought that, but guilt can look a lot like romantic longing. I've always read it as Lexi feeling guilty that she wasn't there for Rue and she almost died, combined with sadness at seeing herself replaced by Jules, and then a mix of being happy for Rue but sad for herself because she still didn't have anyone. Once she realized Rue and Jules were romantic, she seemed pretty happy that she wasn't being a replaced as a friend and that there was still a place for her in Rue's life. This season has actually made me feel pretty validated in that interpretation, but that's not to say it can't change, I suppose.

I was literally just thinking this when reading the comments on an Arcane YT video not 5 minutes ago. I just think there's a bit of a disconnect between the age of the writers and showrunners and the sophistication of their themes and their storytelling, and the average age of the viewers. I know plenty of adults who would love this show, but I can't get them to even watch it because it's animated. The show skews young, and many of those viewers just don't yet have the life experience or emotional intelligence to parse a lot of what the show is exploring. That's not to say all young viewers are lacking emotional intelligence, but there is a lot of immaturity to go around with shows that skew young. I see the same thing with Euphoria. There's a lot of good discussion to be found, but you have to wade through a lot of infantile crap to find it. I'm an older viewer myself, and I will watch anything that's good regardless of how old the characters are or what age group the show is aimed at, but it can be frustrating trying to find rational adults to discuss some of these shows with. I do think the Jinx and Silco's relationship is supposed to be one of those messy things that's sort of beautifully ugly. They're like two broken creatures who found each other and helped each other survive... but surviving isn't living, and he never tried to help her heal, IMO. There's beauty there, and there's love there, but it's not really expressed in a healthy way. I think it was really well done, but some viewers don't seem to understand that unconditional love =/= unconditional acceptance of everything you do. People can love you unconditionally and still be horrified by your choices!

I honestly couldn't tell you who the most popular character in the game is because I've never played it! But the most popular character in the show is Jinx. She has won every single favorite character poll I've seen anywhere. Depending on where the poll is, i.e. who is doing the voting, second place is usually Viktor or Vi. I've seen Vi lose by less than a percentage point, though. and usually by less than Viktor, so I'd say she's the second most popular. I'm actually working my way through this show now! It took me a while to get into it, but I'm almost through S3, and it's grown on me a lot. I still prefer the more detailed animation style of Arcane, but She-Ra is diving into some pretty unexpected themes for a kid's show, like trauma and emotional abuse, and not doing a terrible job of it. I think the golden armor that Mel wears is they key to how some of the characters will survive. Maybe not all, but some. The camera focuses on her armor and there's a weird sound as the missile hits, so it sounds like some kind of defense from her armor is being activated. I'm actually really pleased with their relationship so far. I think it's a beautiful love story, and I'm honestly a little obsessed with it, but it seems like many fans have fast-tracked the relationship's progression quite a bit, IMO, and they also tend to overlook most of the nuances because they're so busy drooling, lol. Not that I didn't do the same thing the first couple of times I watched, but viewers seem to have no trouble noticing and understanding the complexity and nuances in other character relationships, but with Vi and Caitlyn, their scenes just seem to get oversimplified and kind of fetishized. "This is the scene where Vi hits on Caitlyn." "This is the scene where we want them to kiss and they don't." As far as no kissing, I had no problem with it. To be blunt, a lot of fans are acting like they're a couple of lesbians from Portland who met at a party, recognized each other as potential romantic partners, and started hanging out for that reason. The reality is that they are partnered up for reasons that have nothing to do with romance, with Caitlyn pursuing an investigation and Vi looking for her sister. They have a lot of heavy things on their minds, and neither of them is actually looking at the other as a potential romantic partner or romantically pursuing the other at any point in the story so far. They're too busy trying not to die to realize they're falling in love (though I definitely think Vi knows she's falling for Cait by the end of the season), and they had only known each other for 3 days when they shared that nice moment on Caitlyn's bed, and 5 days by the end of the S1 finale. I do have some issues with one of the writers answering a question about whether or not anything "happened" with Vi and Caitlyn between when we left them on the bed and the Council meeting with "We intentionally didn't show the whole story on the screen. Up to you to decide." I don't really like having whether or not they made their feelings known offscreen be up to me. There's actually more evidence that nothing happened than that they kissed or had sex, not least the way they were positioned on the bed itself, but giving Caitlyn the "What about us?" line definitely made people wonder. For me, based on how the story was handled in episodes 5-7, I trusted that if something significant happened between them beyond what we were shown, then we would have been shown that, so it didn't even occur to me that anything further might have happened until I saw people talking about it. As a queer woman myself, and a hopeless romantic, the idea that they intentionally made it ambiguous and may try to imply next season that their first kiss happened offscreen or just never address it really bothers me a lot. I'm fine with the idea that nothing happened and would in fact prefer it, but I'd take it happening "too soon" over it being banished to some nebulous imaginative space. ☹️

I don't think "murder" is quite the right word to use for those particular people, though. Killing her family was an accident, and killing Silco was an instinctive split-second decision to save Vi, who would probably otherwise be dead. I'm not saying she hasn't committed murder in other instances, but she's not deliberately taking out the people close to her. This is definitely the dilemma that Vi and Caitlyn will be faced with next season, but if the showrunners are setting us up to think the outcome will be inevitably tragic (which the S2 teaser seems to be doing), then are they really going to just give us what we expect? The season finale was, essentially, an elegant, cyclical repeat of the end of Act 1. In Act 1, viewers were primed to expect a moment of triumph for Powder, and they subverted that into a tragedy that felt like a point of no return. For the final two Acts of S1, viewers were still encouraged to hope that Vi could get through to her sister and that they could reconcile, and again, those hopes were dashed by another "there's no coming back from that" moment. If that's all this series has up its sleeve--encourage viewers to hope for Jinx and Vi to forgive each other, encourage viewers to hope for Vi and Caitlyn to be able to have a life together at some point, and then slap viewers' hands away again and again--then what is the point? When showrunners settle for simply shocking viewers in painful ways and repeatedly denying fans things that the writing deliberately created longing and hope for in the first place, then they have mistaken emotionally abusing their audience for good writing. They can't keep using the same "let's subvert hope into tragedy" trick over and over again without it becoming cheap and emotionally manipulative. There needs to be some light at the end of the tunnel, and "Jinx dies tragically and Vi breaks into a million pieces" ain't it. There's also the fact that this whole mess with Jinx, Vi, and Caitlyn is actually an unconventional love triangle, and eliminating the Jinx side of the triangle by having her meet a bad end actually makes it less likely for Caitlyn and Vi to be together, especially if either of them takes Jinx out. I don't think there's going to be a sunshine and rainbows ending for Vi and Jinx, but something bittersweet that Vi can actually mentally recover from, and that won't require Caitlyn to be her eternal emotional crutch, should not be out of the question. Every character in the show is a shade of grey, and if people can empathize with Silco, they can empathize with Jinx. The writing repeatedly encourages viewers to empathize with Jinx, even in the final scene of S1, and she's the most popular character in the show, so I don't see it being that much of a problem for most viewers. That said, I'm definitely unclear on what her mental state is going to be in S2 (I'm especially unclear on whether she had a breakthrough with her BPD or not) and whether the writers will still try to encourage viewers to empathize with her. It's going to be a long wait to find out...

I took it as her being tired of feeling like she has to "pass" and allowing men to be the arbiters of her passing, and also as realizing/accepting that her biology has less to do with her femininity than how she feels about herself internally. She was letting go of her strict interpretation of feminity and aiming for self-acceptance and duality. No idea if that's the right take, but that's what I got out of it! Also, many people who appear trans along the gender binary actually identify as nonbinary, so I think it was a shift toward that as well. I think I remember her wearing a jacket with both male and female symbols painted on it in the season finale.

I completely empathize with how Vi reacted to her blowing up their entire family (and Vi is actually my favorite character), but I do have a lot of empathy for Jinx/Powder. She was showing signs of early schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder even as a kid, and she seems to be experiencing psychotic and/or disassociative episodes in the present. She's struggling with multiple mental illnesses in a world that seems to have zero mental heath literacy, let alone treatment or therapy, and she was partially raised by a ruthless crime lord who discouraged her from trusting anyone but him. I don't think sending the message that a mentally ill and emotionally manipulated young woman is so beyond saving that her own already-traumatized sister has to beat her to death is the right move. It's also the predictable path since the writers set them up to parallel Vander/Silco, and we know how that turned out. Plus it's a complete non-arc for Vi, who is likely going to have to learn that some problems can't be solved by beating them to a pulp. I mean, that moment when she slapped Powder is shown as being her biggest regret, and a mistake that she was prevented from trying to rectify and can never take back, so forcing her to then compound that act by killing her sister is just way too... ugly. They both deserve better. I hope the show ends up being about breaking cycles of trauma, not perpetuating them.

It's been a while since I watched the episode, but it seemed like the cop did some digging, and Nick essentially "owns" those particular seats or that seating area? Season passes of some type? I don't go to sporting events, though, so I don't know the minute details of how that stuff works. Maybe someone else can shed more light on it!

Huh, I could swear it was the same guy! I remember them having scenes really close together and thinking it was the same face I had just seen. They seem to have made that needlessly confusing. What is the point of having two different cops? I guess one is going to be trying to take down Rio and the other will be trying to foil his efforts? Glad it's not just me! I'm usually good with faces, but they were both in this episode and I still thought they were the same person! Nick followed that up by saying something about Rio "showing her how big it is," which I took to mean that Nick thought it was about power and ego, not necessarily love. "For her" in the sense of showing off, not "for her" in the sense of benefitting her? They always keep the nature of Rio's feelings ambiguous, but they do seem to be delving into his life and his history more this season, so maybe his feelings will become less ambiguous by the end of the season. I have room for some grey area, but Beth and Rio are definitely not some typical swoony romance, they're 2 selfish people with a deeply problematic relationship!

I'm glad to see Rio finally getting something resembling his own storyline. It's at least renewed my interest somewhat, even if it does feel like they're retconning Rio's character to some extent--he's almost always been presented as cool and collected and one step ahead, but now it seems like we're supposed to see him as "the dumb impulsive one" compared to Nick? I was also pretty disappointed at the lack of continuity regarding the show's biggest and most controversial scene--Rio's chest was about as smooth as baby's butt, no visible scarring from those three bullets. I think a lot of fan's were hoping for Beth to someday get a glimpse of those scars and have some sort of complicated emotional reaction, and now even if they try to do that, it will look stupid because they couldn't be bothered with the continuity in this episode. I've liked this season a bit more than the last, but I guess some things never change... Seeing Stan call Beth on her crap was enjoyable. She feels things for others, but she's still a narcissist--she behaves in ways that benefit her and rarely gives enough thought to how her actions affect others. Even when she does something that seems generous or selfless, she turns around and negates it with some other thoughtless action. Also, I really wish they had given Nick a different name. Having Nick and Mick on the same show is just silly. I think he just knew that if he arrested Beth, his wife would find out about the strippers? He's the same cop who questioned Rio about Lucy at the beginning of the season (hence the scene with Nick in this ep), so he's definitely a cop. He doesn't know yet that Beth is connected to Rio, the guy he's trying to nail for Lucy's murder, so at some point I guess we'll find out which is more important to him, hiding strippers from his wife or catching Lucy's killer.

The show may or may not get cancelled, but the break is more about balancing the shooting schedule with the number of aired episodes. The gap between what they've shot and what they've aired is closing and they need to widen it before airing more episodes. New Covid regs are slowing down most productions, and this is the first time GG has actually been able to shoot a 16-episode season (last season was supposed to be 16 episodes, but they only shot halfway through episode 12 before Covid shut things down).

My take on this episode is that Rio essentially set himself up to have Beth turn him in because it would take suspicion off Beth so she could continue to make fake cash or whatever else he and Nick need her to do. I mean, Rio told her to make piles and piles of cash knowing she was under scrutiny from the SS and didn't tell her what it was for, and since we didn't find out any other use for the money, the events of the episode combined with the flashbacks seem to hint that he deliberately set himself up as part of a plan to take suspicion off of Beth. He even subtly threatened her family, and Nick leaned on her to not trust Rio, because both of them were pushing her to do what they wanted, which was to do the predictable thing and choose her family over Rio. They pulled exactly the same con Nick pulled in the flashback, but Rio was in on it this time. I also think Rio's anger at being arrested and his anger in front of Nick may have been for show because he's working his own angle and everyone thinking he hates Beth and feels betrayed works in his favor. Which is not to say he trusts her or is blinded by feelings, he's just not angry at her for doing exactly what they manipulated her into doing. She played her part and he doesn't hold it against her because he never trusted her to begin with. If Rio is playing Nick, then it seems likely he wants to take him out ("You wanna be the King, you gotta kill the King"), but considering that Rio and Nick seem to have a mutually beneficial game going for them, I'm not sure how Rio actually benefits from taking out the person who shields him from repercussions. So is this just our newly retconned "dumb and impulsive" Rio not thinking straight, or is there some twist, like Rio wants out but Nick keeps pulling him back in (the same way Rio keeps pulling Beth back in)? Maybe Rio sells Beth on helping him take Nick out by saying that he just wants out, so with Nick out of the way, either they can both get out... or Beth can take Nick's spot? Lots of room for one of them to double cross the other...

Rio showing Beth his secret gun compartment has to come back later, right? And surely that was a test of some kind, because they cannot write him as that conveniently stupid. I mean, Beth makes a big deal out of him being perceptive and always several steps ahead, but in the same episode, he's dumb enough to show his high tech gun hidey hole to a woman who has not only already shot him 3 times with his own gun but also seems to be working against him with the Feds? I have to assume that if Beth goes for that gun in the future, it either won't be there or it won't have bullets...

A lot of fans of that relationship were still squicked out by this particular scene, but too many weren't, IMO. I will say that I don't think the scene was intended to be sexy at all, but a lot of fans are hanging onto the past version of that relationship and not really seeing the writing on the wall, so they read it as sexy. I think the actual point was that it wasn't--it was all business, and it was also deliberately framed to reference the love scene in mid S2 when she invited him back to her house. The way they were positioned in the kitchen had them in opposite positions this time, there was a callback to her socks, etc. So the point was that this time there was no heat, it was clinical and cold. But even if it wasn't sexual, his insistence on forcefully unbuttoning her shirt without her consent still crossed physical boundaries. I've always found the relationship interesting, but this season they're adding a sort of bizarre sexual component to their interactions that's really uncomfortable to watch. Last season, all of their interactions felt cold, and this season they still do, but it feels like Rio is intentionally bringing a weird sexual vibe to some of it, like he's using their past intimacy against her and using it to call out her previous bad boy fantasy version of him. He's almost making fun of her, like, "What, you don't think this is sexy? You would have thought so a few months ago. What happened? Oh right, you shot me and left me for dead." I don't think Beth understands what he's doing, though, which is where it becomes creepy for me. As a viewer, I think he has zero genuine sexual interest in her at this point and isn't really even enjoying his own games, he's just still angry and he's doing whatever he thinks will keep her off-balance and easy to manipulate. But even if I do think there's a line he won't cross when it comes to sexual violence, she doesn't know that (and really neither do we), so I still find him using their sexual history to destabilize her to be icky. Men making women feel uncomfortable in sexually charged situations is a huge trigger for me personally, and for a lot of other women as well. And she is uncomfortable--Christina is playing it that way--because she knows she shot him, and she has no idea how far he will go or what his endgame is. She didn't know that in S2, either, but she was actively into his flirtation because she had her little fantasy version of him and he played along with it, and now she doesn't have that--her fantasy is over, the titillating mutually enjoyable power tripping is over. She can no longer justify telling herself he'd never really hurt her, so she doesn't know whether he's messing with her but still has a code, or if he's genuinely off-his-rocker obsessed with no lines left in the sand that he's unwilling to cross. That is a terrifying situation to be in for anyone, but especially for a woman, and him putting her in that position is unforgivable to me, whether she shot him or not. To me, this psychosexual intimidation shit is worse than him killing Lucy. I also think they are afraid to humanize Rio because they know it will only encourage fans' obsession with him, so they're doing it with Mick instead because he's more "safe." I mean, I think Mick is plenty handsome in his own way, but he's not the kind of attractive that millions of women are going to obsess over. I'm really curious whether they're actually going to peel back Rio's mask this season and show us that there's a human under there, or at least there used to be, or if they're going to chicken out and any backstory we get through the boss storyline is just going to be flimsy stuff that pushes Beth one way or another. They've hinted at hidden depths with him, but they always seem to hold back on actually diving in.

I just watched this first episode last night and felt like it was one of the worst TV pilots I've seen in a while. It felt like it didn't really have anything worthwhile to say, had no truly recognizable or relatable human emotions, and was just trying to get by on a combination of absurdism and shock value. Even the final moment of the episode felt phony, like the entire point of her dad fucking a blow up doll when she walked in was just because it was random and crazy. I was hoping for something genuinely stylish and interesting, but this felt juvenile and lacking in substance. This is not what I expect from HBO. They've had quite a few shows I really enjoyed in the last couple of years, but this felt like them throwing something at the wall to see if it stuck, and I really don't think it did! This show is definitely a pass for me.

I knew I was forgetting something in my laundry list of unresolved plotlines! And yes, as much as fans have bitched about unnecessary additions, she's one I actually liked because I think the contrast between how Wednesday treated her and how he treated Shadow was actually interesting. It also made me think about the conversation between Sweeney and Shadow in 2x07 where Sweeney basically tells Shadow that Wednesday makes you feel useful and important at first, and then eventually the shine wears off and he throws you away. Would Cordelia end up going the same way as Sweeney and Shadow in the end? I had also forgotten about Sam Black Crow and the lights that only seem to appear when she's around. Who knows if that was just a little red herring/easter egg or if it was supposed to go somewhere... You were the only person I could think of that I've encountered online who might be into that pairing as a series resolution, and even you don't think they set it up well! And as it turns out, they really didn't. I did some reading yesterday, and I came across the interview Orlando Jones did with Entertainment Weekly after he was fired, and he said that when he was part of planning S3 after S2 wrapped, the writing team actually discussed whether or not to bring Mad Sweeney back and what to do with Laura Moon. The fact that they even considered bringing Sweeney back means it's HIGHLY unlikely that any of this stuff with Shadow and Laura was planned from the beginning or even over the course of S2, and certainly not as a romantic pairing, so us feeling like this soulmates stuff was not set up well at all is completely justified. Knowing that there was no intention of hooking Laura up with Shadow as of the end of S2 does give me a little more hope that they're not actually going to try to sell us on the two of them falling in love in 2-4 hours of wrap-up, but even if they do, considering how much nonsense they're clearly pulling out of their butts at the last minute, I can also easily ignore it and go with my own headcannon...

Not only that, but they seemingly started new ones! I keep seeing books fans say that a movie or miniseries would force them to get to the point and wrap up the remainder of the book, but it's not about the book anymore. This is a TV adaptation with its own storylines, some of which they just set in motion this season and some of which don't necessarily follow the book to the letter. They have to tie up what happens to Shadow, what Wednesday's full plans were, the truth about Mr. World, and the true nature of Tech Boy and what his importance is to the story. It also seemed implied that Liam Doyle might make a reappearance and have some significance to the story other than being being a plot device. But the real kicker is Bilquis's vision, which seems to imply that Shadow and Laura are soulmates. If that's an intentional misdirect or it's not a romantic sort of pairing, then maybe they can tie it up, but selling those two finally falling in love to an audience who doesn't want it, in 8-10 episodes, was already a tall order. Selling that in 3-4 episodes or a 2-hour movie, along with everything else they have to tie up, is definitely not going to emotionally satisfy anyone. I mean, I don't think it would have anyway, even if they'd gotten a full 4th season, but with even less to work with...? I hope, for the showrunners' sake and my own sanity, that it was never truly in the cards. A pairing shouldn't be such a big deal, but they've put so much emphasis on Shadow being the "King of America" throughout the series--there were at least 3 references to Shadow becoming "King of America" in the first season, and then in this season, I believe the midwife told Bilquis that Shadow can't "rule alone" and needs the other side of the coin--so it seems like even beyond whatever conflict happens with Mr. World and Wednesday, that is the endgame.

Interestingly, I feel like they've done a bit of a reversal on this. She genuinely seemed to want to do the right thing for her family in this episode, but she tried to play Rio by giving him the old "I'm so sick of being a suburban mom" song and dance. For a time it was true, she was tired of being a housewife and got a thrill out of the crime stuff. Now that the shine has worn off, she's reevaluated and realized that she does care about her family and wants to be a good mom, and she's trying to figure out how to balance it all out. I think this is something that Rio figured out how to do for himself a while back, before he and Beth met, and that was part of why he related to her in S2--he recognized her struggle to figure out how to compartmentalize, to figure out how to separate the different parts of her life, to figure out what her "mask" was going to be, etc. In this episode, Rio and Beth just seemed... tired. They're each still playing their own game with each other because they feel like they have to, but the fire and excitement is gone.

To be honest, I have no emotional investment anymore and am just watching it because it's on. Half the time I forget to even watch it until 2 AM. The main draws were the relationship between the three women, which is barely there so far this season, and Beth's relationship with Rio, which doesn't really even exist anymore, certainly not in a way that's compelling. I mostly just feel uncomfortable when they're on screen together. I get what they're doing in a thematic/metaphorical sense--the shine has worn off, and neither the crime nor Rio (the symbolic representation of crime in Beth's life) contain any real excitement anymore--but it's not pleasurable to watch.

I haven't watched S3 so keep that in mind but, your comment reminded me of S1 when Laura first found Shadow. She saw him as a beacon of light and, she was pulled towards him. I think there was also a part about her heart beating when they kissed. I wonder if it's not so much a romantic soulmate thing but, that Shadow put some of his soul into the coin which then became a part of Zombie Laura? I also remember one of the Zorya's telling Shadow that the golden coin ("the sun") was given to him for this protection, but he gave it away (to Laura) because he didn't know that. The writers made a point of showing us, over and over, that Laura was essentially self-delusional. She didn't love Shadow when she was alive, didn't miraculously love Shadow when she was dead, and it seemed likely that a lot of her impulse to protect him may have been coming from the coin itself (because it was intended to protect him). And when he kissed her and her heart beat once, it seemed like his latent god energy and residual love, and maybe those 2 things interacting with the coin. To me, none of those things screamed "soulmate." They were all things that the writing, directing, and acting strongly hinted were being misinterpreted by Laura, who was mistaking a bunch of divine fuckery and magical coincidences as signs that she really must love Shadow now and her destiny was to protect him. "If he made my heart beat, I must love him!" Now it feels like the writers may be trying to retcon these moments into meaning the exact opposite of what they were intended to mean at the time, and it's not working for me. And when you compare those events to what Sweeney did for her... Sweeney may have killed her in the first place, but nonetheless, there are a lot of comparisons to be made where Sweeney did things with intent out of honor and love, and Shadow did not. There's also the fact that the only mutually loving sexual experience Laura has ever had was with Sweeney in New Orleans, and the most emotionally vulnerable we've ever seen her on the show was when she said goodbye to Sweeney and spread his ashes. Given all of that, it seems a little ridiculous to me that Shadow is her soulmate. They've kept all of Laura's eggs in the Sweeney basket (to the point of even spending 8 episodes on her wrestling with her feelings after he died and giving Laura and Sweeney their own theme song written by the new showrunner) for most of the series, and now they're trying to dump them all into the Shadow basket at the last minute? It doesn't feel right, and I have to wonder if it's not supposed to. I certainly hope that it's going to be a more platonic duality sort of soulmate, or even better, a misdirect because Laura is going to say, "I'll help him, but no thanks to soulmates." I feel like there are several signs in the show pointing to the possibility that things are not heading where we're supposed to think they're heading, the first of which is that it's just strange to reveal their hand now re: the endgame goal when there's still a season to go. A lot of things also just don't add up in terms of how they've been presented on the show thus far and how much time and effort has been spent on one thing vs the other, and it could just be unintentionally bad writing and retconning, but there's so much of it that I'm starting to believe it might be intentional misdirection.

Exactly, that's part of what I meant about not being sure that the writers fully know what they're doing! The characters can only be as smart as the writers, and the writers often seem to suffer from gaps in their knowledge (and sometimes gaps in their common sense). Breaking Bad this is not. I mean, that show had some implausible things and some plotholes here and there, but it generally hung together well enough, and my interest in the character relationships made me not nitpick over the small details. This show doesn't have that much going for it, unfortunately!

Since Mr. World hums or whistles the same song in the finale, I think there are pieces in place for a plausible theory, but it involves figuring out something about Mr. World and then making a connection to mythology, so I don't know how much to say here. For me, my takeaways were that: 1) Cordelia is important. She was one of the first things we saw, and she was shown facing Shadow. 2) Laura is probably the other/soulmate because the last image in the vision was her superimposed over Shadow and almost dissolving into him. (Not a fan of this development, but it seems like that's what we were supposed to get out of it.) I think having him say that was purposeful and intended to make viewers question. Why would he even know anything about their traditions? Do the New Gods make a habit of knowing the various traditions of the Old Gods?

Interestingly, my mom has been catching up on the show and just finished the season last night, and she independently came up with the same theory I've seen floating around about Liam Doyle coming back from Sweeney's hoard with a little bit of Sweeney in him. She's normally not much of a theory crafter, either, so I have to wonder if Eglee and Gaiman were really so clueless as to just hand off all the Sweeney stuff to a new leprechaun and think that was going to satisfy fans. It seems likely that Doyle will reappear in S4 since Laura made a point of mentioning him in the finale, and if they only need him to come back so Laura can get the coin back, then that could have been accomplished in 3x09, but instead they left it with him disappearing into Sweeney's hoard again. (If this theory is correct, I'm really curious where they're going with it, because expecting a completely different actor to be or become Sweeney is a pretty tall order. Would this mean it's still more of a love triangle than we think, or would it just be about finally letting her make things right with Sweeney?) I think the idea is that if she is Loki's daughter, then she is a potential god, but she hasn't gotten her "power up" to become a full-blown god. Same for Shadow. They're basically just human with a little inherited god energy (and Shadow knows he has powers--he can make it snow--but Laura doesn't). I'm also not sure if Laura was actually created intentionally to play a role in all this, or if she's more of an accident that took Wednesday and World by surprise, but they figured out how to take advantage of her. Do they know she's Shadow's supposed soulmate or not? Yeah, that's my biggest issue with it. I never felt like they were presented as an ongoing love story, but more as two incompatible people who had gotten tangled up in each other's lives and couldn't get untangled. They've barely even shared screentime on the show, so as a viewer, I have zero emotional investment in seeing Laura eternally tied to Shadow as his soulmate, especially after what she said to Liam Doyle in the previous episode about wanting to be free from the chains of destiny. I also feel like it diminishes Laura's arc across the series, like it turns out it wasn’t about her developing into a healthier person and breaking free of divine manipulation, it was about her finally becoming someone who can love Shadow, because he’s the main character. Meh. At the same time, and this is where some speculation comes in, I can't figure out if they're playing checkers or chess with this soulmates reveal. That seems to be THE potential endgame of the show now, Shadow and Laura becoming gods and ruling over America together, but to reveal that at the beginning of the S3 finale when there's still a full episode and full SEASON to go (whether they get to film it or not) seems a little anticlimactic. Did they reveal this endgame goal now because they thought viewers would actually emotionally invest in the idea, then see the two of them fight and see Shadow die and wonder how on earth they're going to get there, which they will show us in S4? (This would be checkers, IMO.) Or did they reveal it knowing that many viewers would just accept it as a given because it was revealed by a god having a vision, but then it's not actually going to turn out that way because Laura is sick of being dragged around by her destiny and no one asked her? (This would be chess.) I think they were trying to show us that what has always seemed like him just being directionless and clueless was really him buying into what Wednesday was selling and wanting to be important and powerful. He was trying to have his cake and eat it, too, by insisting he was honorable and wouldn't do anything shady while simultaneously assisting the man that he knew had his wife killed (among other things) because some part of him thought that maybe he'd get something worthwhile out of it without actually having to get his hands dirty. He bought into the idea that he was Wednesday's successor SO quickly in the finale and just started acting like a cocky ass who wouldn't listen to anyone who told him he was being an idiot. I thought it was interesting to finally see Shadow knocked down a peg and given a little more psychological complexity, but at the same time, they've failed to give him any significant character development until now (the end of the 3rd season!), so my investment in him as a character is still extremely low.