A long S2-centered analysis on why Kala’s character arc ends with a conservative lack of self-emancipation.
I’ve been reading laughable statements coming from many people depicting the polyamorous relationship established in the finale as a “feminist” and progressive choice, without providing an actual analysis on why exactly they think about it that way. These people obviously choose to ignore a two-seasonal development and focus entirely on the particular outcoming by itself. But things always need to be contextualized in the narrative coherence they belong to. Polyamory by itself has always been an obscure, almost prohibited topic in the monogamous nature of most societies, and it definitely represents a minority of people that should be acknowledged, normalized and properly represented on screen. But that doesn’t automatically mean that its realization embodies a message of feminism or progressivism. An unusual resolution does not automatically equal a groundbreaking one. And especially in Kala’s case, this weak, conclusive compromise is damaging and unhealthy at best. In fact, it erases the integrity of her character’s path during all the second season and deprives her of a fundamental emancipation.
I’ll try to be as clear as I can. Kala’s entire arc in the second season (before the finale) was focused on three steps:
Gaining self-awareness about what life she really wanted to pursue; in particular, realizing that the fancy lifestyle she conducted with Rajan and her role as his “trophy wife” made her deeply uncomfortable and unhappy.
Gaining the realization that feelings can’t be rationally processed and that “pretending isn’t a life”.
Gaining eventually the courage to follow what her heart really wanted and not what her mind thought was the best solution for her in order to please others.
The main problem of Kala’s character since the beginning of S1, according to her entire storyline, has always been her kind-hearted nature (that Rajan himself occasionally exploited). Her internal struggle — based on putting societal obligations before her real desires — steamed from a mentality that she had inherited from her cultural environment and imposed on herself. She has always been her own moral persecutor. The psychological pressure she has always felt came from an internalized indoctrination, not from an external compulsion. Kala struggled with the fear of letting her family down, not with the actual imposition of an unwanted marriage. And this is ultimately why her own parents have always considered her union with Rajan a “love marriage”, despite not being such. They never forced any decision on her because, as far as they have always known for these two seasons, Kala was supposed to be in love with her husband-to-be. Except, she wasn’t. And the only reason she actually went through with the wedding itself was that Wolfgang’s rejection at the end of season one forced her to repress her feelings and not freely act on them. By selflessly (on Wolfgang’s flawed but understandable perspective) pushing her away — in order for her to have a wealthy, “happy” life that she couldn’t have had with him ― he made it actually impossible for Kala to consider the idea of a different kind of life than the one she had the opportunity to start with Rajan. This marriage was not the result of a free and conscious choice on her, but of a dead-end condition that Wolfgang’s compromise created. She didn’t choose according to her desires: she did according to Wolfgang’s.
I’ve seen also people claiming that season two was about Kala falling in love with Rajan, and this is simply untrue and nonsensical. Kala married Rajan with the only hope that their marriage could someday make her genuinely happy and that she could develop a love attachment to him in the same way her parents managed to. But during all of S2 it’s proved several times that this is not the kind of life that could make her happy in any way.
The very only reason she even considered at all this union in the first place was to provide happiness to her parents (“I’ve never seen my parents so full of joy. You might have seen my father, dancing around the house. […] How could I say no?” [1x01]), but in many occasions during S2’s dinner gatherings their respective families have been fighting and arguing over the smallest things and creating an unfriendly, unpleasant mood that vividly saddened her.
Kala also believed Rajan to be a good man sincerely attentive to her work ambitions and who “believed women should be in higher positions of power” [2x04], but it turned out that he couldn’t care less about it and that the only reason why Kala got a promotion was just for him to be able to exploit her own work, leaving her clueless about the actual use he did with it — which was, of course, selling expired drugs to poor countries.
By being unable to escape Rajan visiting the temple, she actually started to acknowledge his lying attitude towards her while at the same time showing reluctance to confront him about it. This trust-less relationship between them was also the main thing that made Kala feel “trapped” and violated by his foreign approach to her sexuality.
So, several moments of all this season have made it clear that not only she was unable to come to be comfortable with Rajan, but also that she would have never been happy with him at all. She openly acknowledged that what made her happy was not what was supposed to according to how her society had always indoctrinated her. She had what externally people may consider a wealthy and satisfying lifestyle (“A house, a job, a husband, even a bodyguard” [2x05]), but that didn’t reflect what she actually wanted or who she really was. In “Polyphony” [2x04] we are shown a typical public display of her relationship with her husband, and here she gets treated only as a trophy. I can fight you on this. Rajan doesn’t even let her walk by herself, he basically pushes her from behind in order for the others to witness his “prize” (I remind you that from the very start of his interest towards her, Kala has always been an ambitious prize for him to achieve, as stated by Rajan himself in 1x11). He doesn’t introduce her with her name, he just calls her “my beautiful wife” in front of the others, and this is outrageous. Kala is publicly nullified as a person, and during all this scene her facial expressions show only discomfort and fakeness.
The only moment where she shows her true nature is when she is briefly alone and mirrors herself: here, by looking to her own reflection, she realizes that she is all dressed-up and that she embodies a fake image that doesn’t resemble her inner nature. Which only comes out when she tilts her head in a funny and inappropriate way, only for immediately composing herself right after: a clear sign that she is not apt to that kind of life and that her real, spontaneous self is denied of a proper exposure in that environment. This is what finally makes both Kala and Wolfgang realize, in the next scene, that she wants “something else” rather than what he had thought to be her best option. She doesn’t want the life Rajan can provide her of, because she ultimately realizes that she doesn’t like being a trophy wife and doesn’t gain happiness from the luxury and the fanciness she can have. Here the first step of her character’s path is concluded (and this is also why her decision in the finale to suddenly stay with her husband and keep all of this unchanged is so regressive, OOC and also self-humiliating).
What is worth noticing is that she is also terribly alone in this process: she doesn’t have a healthy relationship with her husband (they barely have conversations and constantly hide things to each other), she is denied the use of the temple (which was her only safe place in S1), and she is also denied to visit and talk with “the only person she ever felt she could say anything to” because Wolfgang prioritized her well-being over his own and wanted for her to make herself a life that could be safe and precious. So, as a result she decides to hang out to her father’s restaurant and talk to him about her situation. Their conversation is fundamental and is a turning point for her character.
Kala begins stating: “Sometimes all my good fortune makes me wonder whether I’m actually appreciating it enough. And if I’m honest, I have to admit that no, I don’t think I am. Which then makes me think that there must be some flow in my personality or my brain chemistry, which means that I just have to get used to the fact that, no matter what happens, I’m never going to be a person who can ever just feel… happy.” Here she is openly questioning all her values. For the first time she is actually claiming out-loud that she feels like an outsider to the same mentality she had been indoctrinated by during all of her life. She feels bad for not appreciating the kind of lifestyle she has and she even genuinely thinks that there must be something wrong about her because she can’t find the same happiness every other woman apparently has (let’s remind the cheerful attitude of the two girls who approached her in the bathroom after she visited Wolfgang in the last episode; they acted very differently than her). Tina’s acting is very on point here in communicating Kala’s deep unhappiness about her life. I don’t know how this can be misunderstood by a huge side of the fandom.
Sanyam corrects her and reminds her of how happy she has been during all her childhood, which testifies the fact that Kala is not precluded of reaching happiness: she is just living a kind of life that doesn’t let her have it. Here they talk about a red-haired doll named Ana, that contextualized in Kala’s perspective clearly symbolizes Wolfgang: “God, you prayed and prayed for that doll. On your birthday, the all family came over. There was this huge pile of presents on the table, but none of that mattered. It was like you had this x-ray vision. You went straight to it, ripped it open, and that was it: party over.”
“I loved that doll” Kala says, thinking about Wolfgang. And Sanyam adds: “As adults, we learn to carefully open all the rest of the presents and pretend they are equally important to us. But our heart always knows the truth.” Now, this choice of words is not random because these middle-seasonal episodes are focused on letting Kala understand that she is “pretending to be a good person” [2x04] and that “pretending isn’t a life” [2x06]. Even in this analogy, her marriage with Rajan is conceived as a pretense. She is taught by society and education that she should give the same importance to every present (Wolfgang and Rajan), even if there’s only one capable of making her happy (Wolfgang). The entire point of Kala’s character is that she is chained by her cultural values that she must free herself from to achieve her emancipation (i.e.: follow her heart and be true to herself). Her heart certainly knows the truth, she just needs to find the courage to pursue it.
“But what if the truth is something that can cause people to feel unhappy or disappointed or… even hurt?”. This is the recognition of her internal struggle. She needs to learn to value herself and prioritize herself over others. And she is starting to by acknowledging it. “But I’m a woman now, and part of being a woman is understanding that hearts are complicated things.” Notice the vocabulary she uses. Understanding, complicated. She is still fearful and is trying to rationalize her feelings. She is still imposing herself to let her mind control her heart. She has come to understand what she has to do, but she’s just not brave enough to go through with it yet.
This is why, later in the episode, the Cluster’s toast to “courage” is so important to her character. As Capheus says, “courage… it is contagious!”. Embracing it is what definitely triggers Kala’s decision to “try to be brave” [2x06] and finally listen to her feelings. It is made clear in this scene that when she is with Wolfgang she doesn’t feel the need to understand anything and that everything suddenly gets easier. “All the rules, the logic of everyday life, things that were so important to me… all go away. And all I feel is how fast my heart beats whenever I’m with you.” I swear I’m not inventing this: it’s the actual script. It’s beyond me how can people even think of Kala being indecisive between two men. She is torn between her head (education, cultural values, society) and her heart (herself). When she is with Wolfgang, she doesn’t feel the need to build a fake image: she is spontaneous, and free, and happy. When, later in the episode, she confronts him about what happened, she looks more confused than ever: not about her feelings, but about her morality. She committed adultery. In a moment of courage, she turned her back to the values she carefully followed for all of her life. She feels extremely bad about it. This is the effect of cultural indoctrination: she tasted what freedom was like, and now she is scared and regrets it. It’s the unawareness of what is unfamiliar that makes her question her actions and impose logic over feelings. She’s entering a world unknown to her, and she’s hesitant, but Wolfgang reminds her that “pretending isn’t a life”. She has to release the bonds she keeps having to the Indian mentality because they are suffocating her and preventing her from being genuinely happy. She knows this, and she comes definitely to accept it two episodes later. The second step of her path is accomplished.
In 2x08, she has a conversation with Will about the lack of trust and honesty in her marriage with Rajan (something she talks about very detachedly and matter-of-factly: there’s no emotion whatsoever). If it wasn’t clear enough before, here it is obvious that she considers marriage as a mere duty. She also states that she wants to confront Rajan directly (another sign of her bravery awakening that suddenly disappears in the finale, i.e. when she has the occasion to act on it). The important point here is Will’s clarification that she “is in love with someone else”. Again, I’m not creating this line, it’s actually there. There is no love triangle. There is no feeling indecision. She doesn’t love her husband but loves another man. And she feels extremely shameful because of this, as Tina’s expression suggests. But eventually, it’s the idea of losing Wolfgang during the restaurant fight that gives her the ultimate courage to follow through with her desires. In 2x10, she openly says that she realized that if something were to happen to him, she literally couldn’t go on with her life. I already expressed my thoughts about Kalagang moments in the last two episodes at the end of this post [x], so check it out if you need to: I won’t write everything here again. I just want to add that in these two conversations (this one and the love declaration in 2x11, that represent the conclusive step in her evolution), it’s tremendously evident that Kala is finally able to make the only choice that can free her from the societal expectations that trapped her and let her evolve both as a character and as a powerful, self-aware Indian woman. This is not debatable or apt to interpretation: it’s objectively stated and especially shown. Look at Kala’s smile after “Good, because I want it to be just for us!”: she has never smiled like that, ever (finale included). This is the face of happiness. She is finally happy: in her heart she knows she is finally choosing something for herself and liberating herself from what obstructed her self-realization.
Knowing that this has been Kala’s marvelous character development during S2, it’s quite clear that the finale’s writers: 1) deeply misunderstood her path, 2) portrayed her highly OOC, 3) erased the internal struggle she had for no reason and providing no explanation (literally, they just pretended it never existed in the first place), 4) sent a horrible message by letting her stay in the cultural trap she spent this entire season trying to escape from, 5) rejected her bravery awakening, 6) invented out of nowhere a cheap love triangle that is completely incoherent, 7) murdered Kala’s demi-sexual nature, 8) forced her to appear pleased by the idea of staying with her husband and being just his trophy (because that’s how Rajan treats her). And this is a conservative, insulting and humiliating ending. She ends up behaving like Rajan’s property, because she stays with him out of obligation and despite being in love with someone else. She was supposed to emancipate herself and ends up destroying her self-worth on her own. This is a sick, sexist ending for her character. Something I would have never expected from Sense8 of all shows.
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