Hey guys, I’m afraid I’m going to continue critiquing the DSMP finale.
So, with the first two streams I don’t think there were any major issues. I dislike the Dream and Punz friendship personally as staged disc finale was my least favourite plot twist so seeing that actually cropping up in canon isn’t fun. Another arc where Tommy and Tubbo decide to go and kill Dream is a little dull too but theyre good at making it feel fresh enough.
It’s with the third stream that issues really start making themselves known. Dream and Punz’s plan is not all that good or interesting, certainly not when none of these are going to be explored at all given that it’s the penultimate stream. Like, what does people’s limbos being determined on how they die mean? What did it matter? It doesn’t even fit with past canon! And why did the revive book allow Dream to mind control Ranboo? What even…?
More importantly though, Tommy is forced to give up all his possessions in his enderchest. Then he has to sacrifice his discs. I am incensed by this plot point. It’s once again reminding us that Tommy’s made to lose everything again and again thanks to Dream and these sacrifices are portrayed as a positive thing? Loving things isn’t a problem and he shouldn’t have to learn again and again to give up all he has without being seen as selfish. Its not fun seeing this character beaten down again and again. I was hoping that the finale would subvert this idea once more and remind us that it was cruel and wrong and that Tommy deserves to be happy and live.
Going into the final stream, I again hated that Tommy’s plan involved killing himself. Tommy’s character has low self-worth and has had suicidal thoughts so this is not a good plot! He should learn he has worth, not the opposite. He shouldn’t need to die for his friends and he certainly shouldn’t apologise for existing. His story was all about how it’s okay to be yourself. It was always thrilling to see him standing up and moving forward unafraid to stand for what he believes him no matter how much he was crushed.
Sadly the finale exceeded my expectations for how bad it could be.
All those ideas I mentioned? Discarded. Tommy plans to die… and does die. Tubbo dies as well, so the sacrifice meant nothing in the end. Everything was lost. All the memories and stuff that made the Dream SMP the special place that it was, gone in an instant. None of it mattered in the end. No one stepped in this time to save anyone.
And yet, that’s not the worst thing. Because this stream doesn’t really focus on Tommy. It’s Dream’s story. Tommy in the prison realises that Dream is just a person in the end, who had reasons for what he was doing. His reasons were his friends except Tommy joining the server got in the way of that. According to Dream’s narrative, Tommy provoked him into becoming what he was and Dream has always secretly longed for those simpler times.
Tommy finds understanding when he sees a memory of Dream before Tommy had joined being happy. And this causes Dream to have doubt and he makes it clear that he wants those times back, that he might give up on all his evil plans just like that. Tommy apologises to Dream for hurting him that first day and that’s apparently a sign of Tommy’s growth in finally learning to see the other perspective.
This plot is rancid. Dream makes no attempt to understand Tommy, not even a little. Despite Tommy repeatedly pointing out how much it all hurt and how much he’d suffered, Dream doesn’t show the slightest sympathy. Yet the narrative paints Tommy trying to understand him as this special thing? Like it was the solution all along. Dream can abuse people and cause immense suffering but its up to his victims to try and understand him? Why is the story telling us Tommy, an incredibly thoughtful character anyway, needed to learn understanding? Why is it hinting that Tommy and Dream were not so different and their stories mirrored each other, both secretly desiring the same things?
Dreams motives are so flimsy and it makes so little sense that he’d question his plan now. Yet he asks whether its too late and you can see Tommy’s regret for the nuke plan. His whole sacrifice thing, is everyone’s doom. How cruel. Dream can ruin everyone’s happiness but the question we should be asking is ‘what about Dream’s happiness?’ apparently.
And finally, we end u with the characters on a new world with amnesia. Though they’ve forgotten everything, we still see Tommy and Dream becoming friends and this is some sort of triumph, implying with what came before that yes Dream and Tommy could’ve been friends had Tommy not ruined Dream’s world by causing trouble on that first day.
Annoyingly, so many of these points don’t even make much sense. Tommy has tried to understand Dream before. He visited in the prison for instance. Tommy wanting to kill Dream is framed as a bad thing, like it was wrong to have this fixation but this fails to recall how dangerous Dream is to Tommy and how he’s promised to kill him repeatedly in the past. Tommy had been living alone drinking invisibility potions in fear!
Each element taken on their own is a problem, but the whole is so much worse than the sum of its parts. The bigger picture is that Tommy dies learning that his abuser was a person with feelings too that he screwed up and he ought to have been more understanding but his plan got himself and everyone he cared about killed. He is the monster that killed the server and everyone he loved.
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