"I'd like to imagine that she's in a beautiful land, somewhere far away. She finds a small town to call home. Safe from the danger of the Black Hand. And it is here, at last that she finds peace. That she finally finds happiness."
I am so satisfied to see how well they have developed Mike and Eleven to this mature couple even when they are just still around sixteen only. They have been through every key phase of a relationship— liking, falling in love, yearning, honeymoon phase, struggles and differences, acceptance of love— and finally they have become these strong individuals who can exist outside of the relationship with their own identities, and yet be absolutely in love with each other, in an all-consuming and soul-merging way. You can tell they don't 'need' each other, they 'want' each other, and that is why they choose to be together.
Finn was so right when he said during season four that Mike is a part of Eleven, and Eleven is a part of Mike. That's soul merging love.
And also, I just want to say that their entire sequence in Episode 1 is just getting to me in a stronger way with every watch. They are so mature, he is so hopeful and trying to encourage her, and her trying to believe that. The sunset. The background score. The softness. The peace. It's too damn good.
I’ve been thinking about this scene so much since Season 2 Part 2 came out. It’s just so rich in terms of the implications for Tyler and Wednesday as well as their relationship with each other.
This is the moment Tyler asks her to kill him. It’s deeply depressing that he wants to die, but it really says a lot about his mindset and how he views himself. He’s dealing with suicidal levels of self-loathing and thinks he’s nothing without his Hyde, even though it’s cost him so much and will eventually cost him his life. But he sees the Hyde as a core part of who he is, and if he can't have his Hyde, he doesn't want to live. He claims being a Hyde is the freest he’s ever felt, even though (up till this point) he has to have a master controlling him, or he’ll go insane and die prematurely.
Which means he felt so trapped before becoming a Hyde that being a monster under someone else’s control still feels like freedom to him. It isn’t, it’s not true freedom, but it’s the only freedom he knows. More on this later.
Another thing that’s striking about his request to Wednesday is that he doesn’t even beg her for help. He doesn’t think he deserves it, least of all from her. He’s done some pretty awful things to her and to the people she loves, and I suspect he blames himself for it all, even the things he didn't have a say in. So he sees her holding the axe and just surrenders to her, because punishment and death are what he deserves, right?
Also, he’s asking her to kill him, yes, but in a strange way, it’s also an act of trust. He’s placing his life in her hands. He has nothing and no one left except for her because even his mother and uncle have betrayed him. This is the girl he deceived and betrayed, the girl who trusted him and opened herself up to him (which for Wednesday is huge, given how afraid she is of emotional intimacy), only for him to break her heart, humiliate her, and mock her over what happened. And yet he still trusts her to kill him because she’s all he has left, the only person he knows he can count on even if on paper they're still bitter enemies. It's like he's saying, “If someone has to kill me, I want it to be you. You deserve to get to do this after what I’ve done to you.”
This moment is especially striking after the graveyard scene, where he watched Isaac bury Wednesday alive and couldn't do anything to help her. I think he desperately wants to be punished for his inaction by the very person he failed (on top of paying for his other misdeeds), even though his mother likely told him not to help, plus Isaac would've sabotaged him anyway if he'd tried. He also probably thinks he deserves to die over tossing her out the Willow Hill window while in Hyde form, because that moment at the hospital after he's seen her safe and alive and awake for the first time since then, the anguish and sheer relief on his face when he thinks no one else is watching just says so much. Sure, some of it was probably due to the physical pain he was in, but I think a lot of it was driven by his feelings for Wednesday.
He also speaks softly enough in this scene that Isaac can’t hear him, only Wednesday can. He doesn’t want to ruin her chance to kill him, and it makes the moment feel strikingly intimate, like these are his deepest darkest secrets he only trusts her with: his self-loathing, his vulnerability, his death wish.
Now, onto Wednesday’s side of things. I love how she lifts the axe like she's about to do it, she’s about to kill him, and then her expression changes, and you realize right at the same time she does that she can’t do it, she can’t kill him.
She’s staring into his eyes and he’s staring at her because he wants her to be the last thing he sees, much like she kept staring at him when she was being buried alive. And then it’s too much and he squeezes his eyes shut like a lost, frightened child and braces himself for her blow.
And that’s when she makes her split second, impulsive decision to free him.
This moment is so, so huge, because it’s such an important turning point for her character arc and shows so much growth.
This was Wednesday’s big chance to get her revenge, to permanently end the threat to her life and Enid’s life that Tyler has posed ever since he escaped Willow Hill. It was also her opportunity to avenge her broken heart and satisfy her wounded pride. But she shows Tyler mercy and compassion instead.
He’s quite literally completely at her mercy, strapped to a table, unable to free himself or use his power, and he’s being tortured physically, emotionally, and mentally as his Hyde is being forcibly removed, and she does the merciful thing and frees him because she can't bear to watch him suffer like this any longer. We all know this is a girl with a sadistic streak who normally loves witnessing torture, especially when it's someone she doesn't like who’s getting tortured. Just look at her face as Dort is exposed and then dies just an episode before, she 100% enjoyed that, much like she enjoyed unleashing the piranhas on the boys who bullied Pugsley in Season 1.
And yet she doesn’t enjoy Tyler's pain here. She can't enjoy it. That really speaks to the strength of her feelings for him, especially because she was so easily able to gloat over his situation back in Episode 2. But there's no denying she has feelings for him still, and in this moment, I think it hits her for an instant (before she goes back into denial mode) just how deeply these feelings for him run.
This moment is also really important because she's the first person to truly free him. Everyone else in his life has put him in chains, physically and psychologically, and even Wednesday herself tried to chain and control him earlier this season with her plan to become his master in Episode 5. She also tried to strangle him as a werewolf in Episode 6 until Enid talked her down. It shows so much growth on her part that she isn’t trying to control Tyler anymore, that she relinquishes the control she tried so desperately to grasp and gives him his freedom instead. And this is true freedom, born from the desire to give him back control over his life and fate that everyone else, even his own family, has taken away from him. And that gift of freedom gives him the strength to defy his mother and master as well as his uncle, and he repays her merciful act by fighting Isaac and Francoise and thus helping her save her family.
By saving him, she’s also telling him that there’s something in him worth saving, worth sparing, even after everything he's done. She believes this about him even when he doesn't believe it about himself. For someone like Tyler, who loathes himself and quite literally spelled out that he believes he deserves to die, that's life-changing, and I think it's going to kickstart his growth to become a better person. I also think her giving him back his freedom is going to drive him to be his own master along with the support of the Hyde community.
I also love that in freeing Tyler, Wednesday defies him in a way, and she also denies his death wish. It was just such a Wednesday thing to do. She can't give him exactly what he wants. That would be too boring and predictable, and she can't let that happen.
I also love the moment when he realizes he’s not dead, he’s free:
And I love the look of shock and awe and disbelief on his face:
So much good stuff has already been said about “Why?” and “I missed,” but I’ll say a few things as well. Jenna and Hunter did such an amazing job with their acting this whole scene (and season), but especially during this particular moment. Tyler looks so shocked. His voice breaks and his “why” is so soft, like he can hardly believe what just happened. He never even dreamed Wednesday would free him, and his entire world just turned upside down because she did. And now he wants an explanation. He thinks he's undeserving and unworthy, and he desperately wants, no, needs to know what drove her decision. Why me, when I'm a monster. Why me, after everything I've done to you and your loved ones. Why me, when you could've and should've killed me.
And I think a part of him also wants to know how she feels and is begging for the confirmation his heart hardly dares hope for. He’s asking if she feels the same way about him that he feels about her deep down, beneath all the anger and confusion and pain.
And then “I missed” is just such a perfect Wednesday answer, and props to Jenna for improvising it from the sounds of it. Wednesday never misses, and she and Tyler both know that. She certainly never misses at point blank range with an axe. Which means she did it on purpose, and again, they both know it.
But of course she's not going to admit to that, let alone the feelings that drove her decision. “I missed” is the most she’ll allow herself, and it speaks volumes. She's a very proud person to the point she tips over into arrogance quite frequently, and yet in this moment, she's willing to slander her own abilities to admit, in her own roundabout way, what she can't bring herself to say out loud.
And Tyler wouldn't love her if she wasn't her delightful Wednesday self. I love the look of disbelief he gives her after she says “I missed,” like, “Yeah right, we both know that’s BS, now please give me a second as I desperately try to process the implications of the depth of your feelings for me because this is A Lot and I've had a long night.”
And then of course he transforms after this and helps her, and they get right back to the business of sabotaging Isaac and his machine, stopping his mom, and saving her family.
Couples that slay together stay together, am I right?
Anyway, I just had a lot of thoughts and feelings about this scene that have been stewing in my brain for several weeks that I had to write out. Thank you for reading this, and feel free to chime in with your thoughts!
If you think about it Wednesday and Tyler are not actually enemies to lovers, they are just two kids who broke each other’s hearts and now they can’t have a proper conversation but would run away together if they could.
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