Hey can we talk about how the very recent SAMS stuff has turned out to be a brilliant twist of audience complicity?
With the most recent eps, its become blindingly clear that Dark Sun has been manipulating or influencing Moon's actions to some degree. And looking back over it, it's really fun trying to pick out the point where Moon started going downhill and being like 'oh, that's how he was being pushed'. Folks remembered that Moon was the first person Dark Sun ever grabbed, forcibly scanning him before sending him back home. Dark Sun outright told Eclipse that he wanted to do something to Moon.
Now Moon's reactions make more sense. The yelling, the lashing out at his family in a way he's never done before. The extremes that seem so Out-of-Character.
But at the time it was happening?
No one was talking about manipulation. Everyone was willing to go 'I guess Moon sucks actually'.
How great is that! We're omniscient, more or less! The audience is exposed to interactions and monologues that the characters never see. We have knowledge like the exact things Moon said to Old Moon, or Dark Sun said to him. We can go back and reference them!
And yet we were led into the exact same trap as the characters-- looking at Moon and going 'you're no better than Old Moon'.
The thing Moon hates the most! That comparison to Old Moon, the fear that he really isn't any better. Haunted by a spectre of a shitty person that was apparently loved anyway. And you'd think we, as the audience, would remember that, but as soon as he slips up the comparisons start flying. I was doing it too!
And that's why I think the recent twist has been brilliant, because they hid it inside what they knew the audience would assume, like a pill inside some shitty cheese. By tying Moon's instability to his grief, it made his actions seem more plausible, and therefore it was seen as a failure of his character. Oh, clearly Moon just sucks as a person I guess.
We the audience failed the guy just as hard as his family did for not stepping back and going 'waaaaaait a minute', and we were manipulated by the writing into that failure (as, y'know, that's how writing works).
And that's fucking brilliant, 10/10