*spoilers from the trilogy ahead*
Suppose we get a few more seasons, here is what I don’t want to see happen: I don’t want to see Darklina treated as an afterthought. I don’t want the show pretending as if Alina falling for Aleksander was a product of her being alone and confused without Mal by her side, and that as soon as she found herself in his arms again, her feelings for Kirigan disappeared. They didn’t. Yes, she ran away once she learned the truth - Baghra’s truth - but deep down she didn’t want to run. She didn’t want to leave him, not really.
“The night that Baghra told you what I intended, the night you fled the Little Palace, did you hesitate?”
“In the days after you left, did you ever think of coming back?”
The Darkling is the only one who gets to hear the truth from Alina’s lips because, “it felt so easy to be here with him”. And honestly, who else can she confide to? Who else would understand? Bear in mind that this is from book 3. Three books in, and Alina still feels: “(…) that rush of hunger, the steady, longing beat of desire that neither of us wanted, but that gripped us anyway. We were alone in the world, unique. We were bound together and always would be”.
She didn’t stop loving Aleksander the minute she discovered his lies and not even after some of the horrible things he did. “Maybe I was just too tired to resist his pull” means that she thought about him constantly, and not just because he became an enemy she had to overcome, but because she missed him.
The whole time, she was fighting a battle with herself, struggling not to give in. Let me see that. Let me see the hunger she talks about, the desire in her eyes searching for the Darkling in the shadows of her room at the dead of night. Show me how, even from miles away, he’s still able to have her melt in his arms.
Not Mal, not Nikolai, Aleksander.
I don’t expect Darklina to be endgame on the show, that’ll never happen; but if they don’t at least respect their connection and the complexity of their relationship, it will break my heart.
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