30s | She/Her | Mixed | ENFP | Storyteller | fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything | measure your life in love | writer reclaiming her voice
From codependency to freedom: Sophie's journey with love
I think about that shot of the original crew in front of the black book in the finale: Sophie between Parker and Eliot; Nate between Parker and Hardison. Between each pair, they will compensate for Nate and Sophie's departure respectively. A rewatch of seasons 4 and 5 shows how they slowly were increasing the ot3's roles in the cons and decreasing Nate and Sophie's.
It's a necessary and bittersweet moment.
Leverage bookends seasons but always leaves the door open. There was always more story to tell about their development as a family. There was a season 6 bouncing around the writers' minds, and that's not what we get in Leverage: Redemption, but the story picks up organically. Because Sophie's at this impasse. She's lost her life partner, and Eliot, Parker, and Hardison have been enough for each other for nearly a decade. Longer than they ever worked together with Sophie.
They do not need her.
I argue that the ot3 doesn't need each other either, not if you compare it to the beginning of s2 where the reunion was very cute but also codependent and unsustainable. But while they consider Sophie to be family, she is not in their ot3 family unit. They helped each other get over their grief. Sophie stood alone (more on that later).
They do not need Sophie anymore and haven't in a while, but they want her badly.
And that's it. That's the point. "I didn't choose the others. I picked you," Nate tells Sophie in The Lonely Hearts Job, about the way the crew began. In season 5, he chooses her again, over his self-violence. He comes to call the crew family, but he commits further to Sophie like the ot3 does.
Leverage: Redemption begins with the ot3 choosing Sophie, for the first time since they met, out of want and not need. It ends with her choosing them under the same circumstances.
This choice is made (quite beautifully) through the lens of Sophie's identity, which has always been her central conflict. But Sophie could run any crew, be a grifter anywhere, go back to directing at several theaters. She specifically chooses to be with this team, run this crew, stay with her family, take on this challenge, here and now.
In The Stork Job, Sophie tells Nate that she finds it preposterous that anyone would ever leave their personal life up to chance. She learns to loosen hold on her close relationships, and in return, she gets something real. But real love is also a choice after a certain point. Sophie chose to stay with Nate over and over again. She chose to stay with the crew. She chose to leave the crew and be with Nate. But before that, she lets Nate go ("someday, with or without me"). His response is to commit to her even more.
After Nate dies, Sophie does need the ot3 (this puts her at a loss that is uncomfortable for her, because she knows on some level they do not need her in return, and I think this is one of the reasons why she stays away). I think it's important that she gets to a point where she realizes she doesn't need them (that's when she seriously considers the theater at the end of the season), then comes in and chooses them.
I think it takes Sophie quite a long time to realize what to do with this new dynamic. It's always been harder for Sophie to be a friend than a lover. She loves Nate, and he loved her, but they were always playing tug-of-war because that was their relationship. The tension in opposite directions stabilized each other. They came to enjoy it. They grew around it and into each other. And there's nothing wrong with that because that's what they wanted and that's who they were.
But the love between Sophie and the ot3 is different. It's platonic, for one. But it's never going to serve as a tether. If we look to s1 as a parallel, we can kind of look at it as Sophie jumping off the building in The First David Job, harnessed, with Parker clinging to her, unharnessed. Except the roles are reversed. It makes sense that Sophie would grasp for something to tether her at the beginning of Redemption, and why even as she walks into Bligh's building, she's still planning on leaving. Even grieving, Sophie has learned that she can't lean on her past for too long to help her in the present, in the future. Her past is an enigma, even to her. She nearly lost herself before.
But this is Sophie, who continues to use a name that is not hers because she chooses it, who has defined the past decade of her life as something she has chosen. She's a bit phoenix-like, rebirthing herself into similar shapes but with a wealth of experience on the inside. And during the months during Redemption, she once again enters the next act of her life. Keeps the name, keeps the people. Acknowledges that she's not the same.
When she takes off her ring, she untethers herself from Nate. She doesn't need that stabilizing tension to be herself, to take that next step. Their story will always exist because she carries it. She doesn't have to live it for two.
I'm reminded of Sophie and Parker's conversation in The Grave Danger Job about feeling alive and falling in love. Someone pointed out (@alinaandalion? @wistfulwatcher?) that in The Jackal Job, Sophie revisits it. And Sophie does fall in love in Redemption - with herself, this new self; with her profession, her craft; with Leverage's mission; and yeah, with her family.
I find it extremely telling that we get acknowledgements from everyone but Sophie in the og series that this crew is their family. Hardison claims them from the beginning. Nate says it to their faces in a quite emotional moment in s2. Archie clarifies it for Parker in s3, and Eliot has that one phone call asking if he'd ever leave these people behind (also s3? I forget).
Sophie comes back at the end of s2 after everyone on the team acknowledges that they need her. Need continues to drive her until the end of the og series. Need isn't bad. Parker and Hardison exchange something similar in The Grave Danger Job. But where would Sophie have been if they didn't need her? We never find out.
In The Harry Wilson Job, Harry calls the crew (Breanna included) Sophie's family to her face. They never talked about it. He just came to understand it after hanging out with them for a few months. Sophie not only does not correct him (passive acknowledgment), but she also says it right back to him at the end of the episode (active acknowledgment).
That doesn't mean that she's not insecure about it. She finds that the mantle of who she was (both Sophie and Sophie-Lara) when she and the family-crew worked together, when they needed her and she needed them, is a little heavy. She even admits that Harry was assuaging that weight for her a little bit, but his departure (however short-lived it turns out to be haha) is expected and not devastating. She chooses to stick around with the weight of herself, accepts her family as support and not burden.
That is a terrifying choice to make, especially for someone with her history, to commit to people who are grown up, who do not need her. But the Sophie we see at the end of s1 Redemption, earnest and whimsical and just a little bit free, owns that choice (and paperwork!) with open arms and bare hands, much like she did on that rooftop at the end of og s1.
best thing about the Bridgerton siblings every season is that they think they're playing chess, but not only are they playing checkers, Mama Bridgerton is playing chess, and she's ten moves ahead + has ten alternative moves lined up for every hiccup along the way. for this reason Violet is my favorite and I, for one, am so happy she's finally getting to be the tea.
I get that sex and drugs are fun but even im like. at least have a 3rd thing. at least one more hobby. you can have a 3rd hobby. this isnt a purity thing this is a some of u are fucking boring thing.
obvious take but one of the many many things that makes leverage so enjoyable is that they lean in to the silly heist/action tropes with unapologetic glee. hedonistic even. like yes thanks i will clap and cackle with delight while eliot uses two (2) handguns to defeat like thirty bad guys with machine guns by doing a prolonged knee slide across a warehouse floor while somehow dodging all return fire, 10/10 no notes, two thousand more episodes please!
