Darklina Season 2 Thoughts
WARNING SEASON 2 SPOILERS!
You know what, I actually didn’t hate what the did with darklina this season. There were some things I had an issue with but overall looking at the entire arc I don’t think it was a loss for darklina fans. It does seem on the surface like Alina has no romantic feelings for Aleks anymore, which I do agree that in the books her complicated romantic feelings were clear to see. But in the books you have the advantage of knowing what is going on in Alina’s head because they are told from her pov. In my opinion I don’t think it was that Alina has lost any romantic feelings she had for Aleks, to me it seemed like she was pushing them down. There were times when they would still peek through. But I also think she is angry she still feels those feelings, so she is drowning those feelings in her anger, she is telling herself she hates him, she is focusing on her feelings for Mal, telling herself that she has a future with mal, telling herself that is what she wants. But it comes back to that idea that there is a fine line between love and hate. Both are born from passion, when it comes to this scenario of a scorned lover then the more you love a person the more you feel hate when you feel betrayed by them. Interestingly scientists actually have done research into this ideology and discovered you can hate and love a person at the same time. I think this is what is happening with Alina this season. She had strong feelings for him in season 1, we also know that she dreamt of a future with him, she tells him that they could have had it all. You also have Baghra saying that he could have earned her love, all of this makes it clear that those feelings between darklina in season 1 were real. I don’t think those feelings have left, but Aleks did something terrible to Alina when he put the collar on her and stole her power. It broke the trust she had in him and that is something she is now trying to deal with. For me the part that really did convince me those feelings still lingered was the speech she gives to Baghra after she tries to break the connection with Aleks. When she talks about how he was the first one to see that she wasn’t just some weak stick from Keramzin. That he made her feel powerful, I think you can see all those complicated feelings coming through, that she still feels that connection to him, how special he made her feel but also she can’t escape the betrayal she feels. I think it was just easier for her to hide behind her anger and let that drive her, to tell herself she hated him, the moment with Baghra is one of those rare moments when that defence comes down and you see just how much she really is struggling with her feelings towards Aleks and all the things he has done. I think the reason why she is so desperate to break that connection between them is because she does still have those feelings for him and she is hoping that if she breaks the link she won’t feel them anymore.
Another moment that I think gives a glimpse of these complicated feelings Alina is having towards Aleks is when they meet in the mind tether in ep 2 and she is wearing the black and gold kefta and they are back in the war room. She says that line about why he has to drag them back to the past and sounds kind of annoyed. I do think this is a defence mechanism on her part because this is the room where they shared those kisses, if any room, any outfit is going to remind her of those feelings she has it was this. I also think that is when she is telling Aleks that he envies her love for Mal she is trying to wound him but also I think she is trying to convince herself that she doesn’t feel that loneliness, that she isn’t still drawn to Aleks. It did give me bringing up the new boyfriend in front of your ex just to hurt them and make them jealous vibes. Also when she scoffs at him saying that he does know how she feels about her tracker, I do think this is because she wants to believe that he is incapable of love. Its easier for her to ignore her own feelings if she can convince herself that his weren’t true, that it was all just a manipulation. When he starts talking about how she doesn’t yet understand what it is like to have to reinvent yourself over and over or to lose the ones you love again and again, you can see Alina’s inner struggle, she is beginning to feel that sympathy towards him but she doesn’t want to care about him and so she looks away, again its a defence on her part, if she looks at him and sees his pain, his suffering then she might start to care and she doesn’t want to do that. The same happens again when he calls her ‘my Alina’ she immediately breaks eye contact with him, she doesn’t want to look into his eyes when he says that, she doesn’t want to feel her heart skip a beat or that pull towards him. So again she looks away as a way of protecting herself. I think throughout this whole scene she is feeling hurt by him and this hurt is brought to the forefront because of where they are, because its bringing back that memory of their kiss in 1x05, so now she wants to hurt him back and you can see it through the whole scene, she is just throwing all these shots at him, talking about her love for mal, talking about Aleks’ past being the cause of all ruin, taking off the kefta, mocking him about his loneliness, all of it is meant to hurt him because she is hurting and wants him to feel the same hurt.
I am a huge fan of angst, which might be why I wasn’t disappointed by darklina this season. Because they sure were angsty this season. After the events of season one I knew going into this season they would both be very angry with each other, so I wasn’t expecting any fluffy romantic moments between them. What we did get was plenty of very charged scenes where neither one of them has any concept of personal space, but as I’ve said multiple times in the past darklina have this dynamic where even when angry with each other, even when disagreeing they still communicate with the other. This is true this season too, Aleks is continuously trying to explain to her what it means to really be immortal, to explain the way the world is for grisha, why the fold is not the problem, how they are the same and how it will always come back to the two of them. Whilst I do think Alina takes it in I don’t think she is ready to accept it. This season she really was just in denial, she’s not at a place where she can fully understand what it is Aleks is trying to tell her. But I do think come the season’s end she is starting to comprehend it, she’s not fully there yet, but those seeds have been sown. I think she starts to get it a little after sacrificing Mal but I do think it’ll be in season 3 (provided we get season 3) that it really will start hitting her when she realises that things haven’t changed even with the fold gone and that everything Aleks said was right.
One thing about darklina I loved this season can be summed up with one line, Like calls to like. There was something about Alina’s arc and characterisation that was nagging at me, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, until I took a step back and looked at the season as a whole. That’s when I realised that as the season goes on Alina begins to act more and more like Aleks. I noticed it first in that tether scene I mentioned where they are in the war room. The part where she mocks Aleks about justifying his actions, his loneliness and the wound that won’t heal. The way she speaks and moves is so similar to how Aleks does in those scenes when he is mocking both Mal and the conductor in season 1. The way she speaks with slow sentences, the way she moves slowly closer and the taunting words, I just couldn’t help but notice the similarity. It’s also similar to the way that Aleks talks to her in the tent scene of ep 7. Just something about her mannerism this season really did match with Aleks’. Alina, as the season goes on, also becomes more and more obsessed with saving Ravka and seeking more power to achieve that goal, which is exactly the same as how Aleks is obsessed with saving grisha and him seeking the power to do that. The way Alina talks about it as the season goes on is again very similar to the way that Aleks always talks about his grisha cause. I mean they really did take this idea of soulmates paralleling each other and cranked it up to a hundred this season. There are so many parallels between them. Alina believing she must be the one to save Ravka opposite Aleks believing that he is the one to save the grisha, the fact that they have both been leaders of the second army, all the talk about opposites and being each others balance, the talk of their being no one else like them two, them both losing someone they love in the same spot, one at the creation of the fold and one at the destruction of it. How Alina says she will never walk his path but then the season ends with her using a shadow cut. It’s all kind of poetic and it really did feel like they were really trying to highlight those parallels between them and to show that Alina is becoming more like Aleks and setting it up for that corruption arc in season 3.
One thing I was really worried about this season was that they were going to turn Aleks into a 2d villain with no nuance. But I actually think they did a really good job with his character this season. Yes he does some pretty villainous things but they added this really interesting element of the merzost poisoning him and him not being able to control it, so it made sense that he was now acting more violent and irrationally. But also his whole arc this season was about suffering and sacrifice. Throughout the whole season they make it clear that this is a man who has suffered through a long life, who has faced trauma and loss and that is what has made him who he is now, what pushed him to make the decisions he did and to walk the path he did. They show it in his speech to alina about losing everyone he has ever loved to sickness, desperation, hate and time. The show how much he struggled with having to reinvent himself over and over. They show it when he talks to Baghra about her burning villages for him when he was a child, showing that lesson he was taught as a child that violence is an expression of love and ok when you are protecting something, when he talks about how his mother would pull him about by his wrist, they show it when he talks about how he was a child once but had his innocence stole when he was betrayed and nearly died for it. They show it in the way he cradles his mother and griefs for her as another immortal talks about losing all her loved ones and having to harden her heart. In the way he offers to be Alina’s monster, to take on the hate of the world so she doesn’t have to, because he has more experience with being hated, he’s faced it his whole life. So whilst Aleks does have some villainous moments they also really did focus on showing just how tragic Aleks’ life was which keeps him nuanced and as a sympathetic character.
Yet another thing I adored this season was how they showed that Alina was Aleks’ peace. That scene at the end when he says he had once believed he could find peace and that for a moment he did and it shows darklina’s first kiss, I will be screaming about it for days. It was like being hit by a wrecking ball, such a punch to the gut because its just so romantic but also oh so tragic at the same time. But you do see Alina being this peace throughout the season. There are a couple of occasions when Aleks is spiralling and having bursts of anger and anguish and his response to this is to open the connection between them, he just wants to see her for a moment so that he can find that peace again.
There were so many amazing scenes in this season that really showed that magnetism between darklina, I loved the angst of it all. Some highlights for me were pretty much all of the tether scenes, particularly the wanting makes us weak one and of course the scene where he says he found peace with Alina. I personally don’t think this is the end of darklina’s story especially with that hint at a Alina corruption arc, I suspect that Aleks will be brought back in season 3 and that Alina will only be more drawn to him.
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