“What do you want Agent Keen? What do you really want?” - Thoroughfare by Ethel Cain
The first time I heard this song, the thing I immediately thought of was when they went on the run. (I really need to find a new medium that doesn’t have to do with season 3)
The ironic thing is that the scene that inspired this entire edit was a scene from before they went on the run. “What do you want Agent Keen?” Because I felt it really tied with the line But in these motel rooms I started to see you differently
Because that scene… holy crap I invite yall to go rewatch it because there’s no reason it should be should be as sexually charged as it is.
But returning to the edit, let’s talk about that first scene where she’s holding Tom Connolly at gunpoint to I met you there in Texas somewhere on the thoroughfare
Thoroughfare is defined as “a road or path forming a route between two places.” In that moment, when she chooses to kill, not an accidental fire like when she was a child, no, a fully conscious choice to end the life of another human being, is when she chooses to converge her path into that of Red’s.
THE BEST PART is seeing her resolve harden. Elizabeth’s hand starts off trembling, but as Connolly continues to speak there’s no hesitation in her. There’s a really good quote from a fan fiction I read a while back and I searched for an hour but couldn’t find the link. (If anyone can find it pls lmk) But it narrates what her inner monologue sounds like better than I ever could.
But Connolly had forgotten that he was just a man, who had threatened the very last thing she had left to lose, and that she was a woman with a gun.
When she frantically calls Red, telling him what she’s done, it’s not out of guilt, but fear that everything that they’ve both worked for will be lost. Because the murder allegations aren’t completely false anymore, and she knows no one will accept her now, except for Red.
And her choosing to become a fugitive with him, hence seeing the West, because (as I mentioned in a past post) he’s all Liz has left. Her moral compass has been completely skewed, and we see how far she’s come since the federal agent we met in the first season.
Then of course, we have the infamous motel dream sequence. Which by the way, who was going to tell me we never even see them share a motel room when they’re on the run 😭
“What do you really want?”
Her subconscious knows she’s battling with these newfound feelings that she has no idea where to put. Her love for Red literally kills her love for Tom it cannot get more straight up than that.
And of course the perfect scene, my absolute favorite reunion between them, when, after being exonerated and freed from all charges, there’s only one person waiting for her.
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