As promised, why Morgan and Reyes' dynamic interests me more than Morgan and Emma.
The root of it is how these two seem to be on parallel tracks in therms of their character arcs. Morgan is someone who, not even is convinced she's a bad person, but has invested so much of herself in the idea of her own inhumanity. She is convinced that she is less than human and that she's just pretending to be normal to survive in between 'feeding the hole' inside her. She is convinced that she's incapable of loving another person
And yet, she is almost always acting irrationally, for others and having a positive impact in their lives. David, Carlos, Serra, Sosuke, Fran, she goes to bat for all of them, even at great personal risk to herself. She waves this off as personal interest or just the desire to win, but we know that's bullshit. The text makes it blatantly clear that the person she lies to most to is herself. Sure this of itself doesn't make her a good person™, but it makes her human. Something she keeps trying to tell herself she's not because what she was brought up to think being human is does not line up with humanity. So despite viewing herself as a monster, she's a net positive in several people's lives.
Contrast this with Reyes, who wishes beyond hell and high water to be a good person. To be a respectable representative of the state who brings wrongdoers to justice and makes the world safer for everyone. The dream many o' bright eyed rookies join the force to try and fulfill. We see this drive to go good in everything she does as a homicide detective. How seriously she takes her job, how much she seems to idolize London and by how much she despises anything she thinks is an obstruction to justice.
Of course this desire clashes severely with the fact that, well... she's a cop. A cop in a cyberpunk surveillance state to boot Her job isn't to do good. It's to uphold the status quo. The dream of cops being the heroes has always been just that. Dreams. Fantasies stirred up by copaganda films and tv shows. And Reyes is always chafing against that reality in her job as well as her own temper and other shortcomings. They put her in homocide to begin with so that no one else would have to deal with her, she was that frustrating to work with. And despite it being her job description, she doesn't solve any of the murders in the game. In fact, she almost put an innocent man in jail in her fervor to try and catch Heartbreak.
The one who DOES solve all those murders is the defense attorney she so often antagonizes
So we have one character whose convinced she's an unfeeling monster, yet who does good for others in her life, be they close friends or perfect strangers. And we have another who wants to be the hero but is hamstrung at every turn by the fact that her chosen profession will mean she'll likely just cause more harm than good. Like I said, parallel tracks.
So this likely means that bother Morgan and Reyes are going to come to a crossroad at some point. One where they realize that their perceptions of themselves just isn't the reality. And they'll each be met with a choice. They can either accept the truth and adjust their paradigm to become better, or at least happier people. OR, they can double down and commit themselves to the sunk cost fallacy to the detriment of themselves and others. And with how Of the Devil is going so far, either choice is entirely possible for them.
This is all well and good when it comes to them as individual characters, but it's when these two interact that things start getting fun. Sure, Reyes is mostly just a 'boss fight' in episode 0 but their dynamic really picks up afterwards. They demonstrate to be on similar wavelengths multiple times, they're very good at getting each other's goats, but what really gets me going is the quieter moments.
There are moments in episode 1 and 2 where Reyes despite herself, expresses a moment of vulnerability with Morgan. And crucially, Morgan doesn't burn her for it. Even if she doesn't have much to say or would rather be doing anything else, she listens to Reyes when she doesn't have to and doesn't cast judgement.
@farahreyes has a fantastic post showing how Morgan's relationship with Reyes actually mirrors her relationship with David. It's one of the reasons I really got invested in their dynamic. And it's true. David, post mortem, values Morgan's friendships for reasons we see demonstrated between her and Reyes in real time.
These two are becoming increasingly entangled, which means that their individual character arcs, namely the crossroads each of them will face, it definitely going to impact the other. We already see hints of this in the last episode. With Reyes seeing Morgan bringing two murders to justice where the state was ready to convict the wrong guy, with how vulnerable she's already been around Morgan and not getting burned by it, and with whatever shady secret London's got that threatens to erode her idolization of him, everything's gearing up to push Reyes closer to Morgan. And Morgan is going to be met with the realization that people genuinely like her.
Perhaps... they'll become better or worse... together? 0w0
But me getting shippy over two disaster women aside, compare this to Morgan's relationship with Emma. I mean, sure, Morgan is certainly obsessed with Emma to a degree, and Emma is becoming increasingly obsessed with Heartbreak (at least the version of Heartbreak she's building up in her head). I'm sure that's interesting to some people, but in order for me to find their dynamic interesting, I'd have to find both of them interesting. And... I'm sorry, but Emma is literally, canonically, a true crime girlie. That's just... very dull to me.
Anyway, thank you for listening to my ramshackle dissertation. I'm going to bed and snuggling my wife. Thank you.
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