Many have said that Bly uses BYG. Some even contend that it's the worst BYG they've ever seen. But I would argue that the entire story is predicated on loss.
And it becomes such a metaphor for depression and other mental illness that doesn't have much representation, let alone in a queer character who is in a relationship.
It is crucial for the story that Dani dies. Because it's who she is. And it's how the story was always planned to go in order for it to make the most sense and have the right continuity.
The way the story is written is, to quote a favorite YouTuber, all about impermanence. When an elderly and slightly more jaded Owen makes a toast at the wedding, he says "To truly love another person is to accept that the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them." He points out the very real notion that if your marriage doesn't end in divorce, there is a strong probability that you two get to watch each other die -- the preferred outcome.
When a younger Owen, brighter in spirit but still bludgeoned by the pain of life and loss, loses his mother to dementia and then death, Jamie talks about how she couldn't do it. She couldn't watch someone she loves fall apart like that. She would leave.
Turns out, Jamie is very fragile due to a painful and exhausting life and sticking around for anybody, just isn't her thing. It's too much for her when everyone she's ever known has proven to her over and over again that she's on her own in the world.
Then Dani tries after a kiss interrupted, to get Jamie to let them try to be together, whatever that looks like. And Jamie decides, she wants to be together in a real way. Dani is making her feel seen and she is such a goner for Dani the moment she first sees her in the kitchen. She decides to tell Dani everything about her. She talks about moonflowers. How rare they are. How hard to cultivate. And how soon they die. And it's the most vulnerable she's ever been. But this is about going into a relationship knowing it will end someday. Nobody else seemed worth the effort, but Dani, Dani, like the moonflower, really seems like she could be.
When Dani lets the Lady of the Lake in, rescuing Flora, all Jamie can do is hold her because she's a wreck.
All she can do is link her pinky with Dani's while offering her company. Because whatever fucked up struggle Dani is facing, Jamie wants to be there for her through it.
And as a year passes, she knows she's made the right choice. She's fallen in love with Dani, and their life in a little flower shop. She gifts Dani with a moonflower. Reminding herself and Dani that however much time they have, she's worth the effort.
They have years of peace and love, domestic and relaxed, safe in the knowledge that their love is real and that their person is worth the effort.
And then, Dani sees her. The harbinger of an eventual end to this peace. And she decides life is too short. So she proposes to Jamie. All nerves and precious gestures. And the proposal, "Let's wear the rings and we'll know," is all about commitment and how worth it it is to Dani to continue cultivating this. Even though it's going to end.
She starts seeing the Lady of the Lake more than she sees herself. And the only thing helping her feel the least bit grounded is their love. Is Jamie trying to feel enough for the both of them. Begging her to not let this go, because, it may need to end someday, but Jamie will fight like hell to stop it from happening too soon.
Jamie has become the caregiver she used to talk about not becoming. But the reason she is there is because she decided long ago that some people, like moonflowers, like Dani. Are worth the effort.
And even though it hurts and it tears her heart out of her chest to watch the love of her life losing herself to an internal battle, the caring for her, the loving her, that comes as easily as breathing.
When Dani wakes up with her hand ready to squeeze Jamie's throat because of the murderous ghost inside of Dani's own body, she is resolute. The Lady of the Lake will not hurt anyone anymore.
This story, like the other Hauntingverse stories, is about the haunting nature of grief. It does not make sense to allow Dani to live as corporeal with Jamie in the narrative's end. This story, as we soon learn, is Jamie's. And it's all about how she chose to accept that the work of loving Dani was worth the pain of losing her. Because she truly loved her. Not possessively. She loved her and then she had to let her go. Because life and love, much as we hate to admit it, are unyieldingly impermanent.
So, while yes, Dani, a lesbian, did die, she died because the story required it. She died because it was within her character to do so. She died because the entire point the show was making was that when we love someone, we recognize that we will lose them someday. But that loving them was infinitely more worth it then never knowing them at all.
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