I don't say that to be cheeky. I mean that earlier this month whatever FROM media intern posted a video on IG as if trying to claim credit for/celebrate featuring a same-sex couple--because it's Pride Month--which generated a deluge of uncontested homophobic bile in the comments . . . and this production did so with the audacity knowing that season finale would kill off one of the characters in that relationship. In Pride Month. The WTFery.
My anger and annoyance stem only partly from the death of Marielle itself. I'm so much more incensed and frustrated that the narrative didn't service, cultivate, develop, and protect the queer relationship up to that death.
That is, this finale destroyed two couples with losses. Leading up to this, what did Fatima and Ellis get to be throughout every season? Affectionate, supportive, physical, expressive, communicative, tender, demonstratively loving even in frustrated moments because the frustration was rooted in concern. (I was rooting for them.)
What did Kristi and Marielle get to be for two seasons running after Season 2? Distant. Physically. Emotionally.
If they were affectionate, it happened off-screen, which informs us of and impresses us with nothing. The fact that Kristi and Marielle were affectionate in S2--when Marielle was under the influence, lol, I can go on a screed about that decision, too, in view of the big picture--made the lack of intimacy between them in the following seasons more obvious. That casual parting kiss in 4x09 proved they could have been casually intimate onscreen the whole time.
That is not giving the audience--especially an audience that the narrative itself has positioned to be oppositional and skeptical, if not outright hostile, to the proposition of a queer couple as opposed to its preferred heterosexual pairing that was being sold to them all throughout Season 1 to such great effect that it poisoned the well of any deviation--evidence on which to, at the least, base acknowledgement of Kristi and Marielle's relationship that doesn't rely solely on the narrative stating there's a connection, much less invest in the relationship. Show, don't tell! You need to foster a buy-in so that a loss, if you're going to do it, hits the audience as a loss. You don't invest in a couple who is not coupling.
Kristi and Marielle literally didn't kiss in the stretch from 3x01 up to and including 4x08. Heck, they hugged . . . perhaps once or twice in that interval, and not in any casual or private setting. (I'm not even sure there was hugging, now that I'm mentally reviewing.) That visual dearth tells you everything about how under-served their intimacy was. How many opportunities did Kristi have to comfort, hold, acknowledge, any-verb Marielle in Season 4 and we don't see it? Ellis took Fatima to destroy cars as a therapeutic exercise and then they hugged and kissed afterward. We never even got to see how Kristi responded to excavating Marielle's confession that she wasn't fine at the end of S3. Like, great, Kristi got Marielle to finally admit it--what happened next? Demonstrate to me how these two women wound up engaged to one another if this is how they respond to the other in crisis?
That Marielle's final request is to have a kiss feels like insult to injury when their narrative treatment is taken in altogether. My initial reaction to this scene was: Wow, the dialogue and blocking choices in this "heavy" scene leave something to be desired. (It's Kristi's devastated reaction that sells it, kudos to Chloe Van Landschoot.) I could spin this to have narrative weight--when Kristi went missing, Kristi and Marielle presumably didn't get a heartfelt goodbye, certainly not one laden with knowledge of their impending separation; their last kiss was probably along the lines of the casual everyday exchange we saw in 4x09--and this is goodbye, a final and permanent division, they both know it, and the last thing Marielle both wants to receive, to be her last sensations, and to give, to leave behind to Kristi as a final impression, is a kiss.
Yet infuriating because a kiss feels like an anomalous and rare occurrence between them because of the preceding narrative neglect.
Was there a queer person in the writer's room?
I feel bad for the actresses who endured so much unnecessary, bigoted vitriol from sectors of this audience in part because the narrative (and the production) didn't elevate or protect their characters and, truly, their love to shield them from animus that started at prejudiced--and then to have the narrative wind up here. Endured the abuse for what?
Credit, I guess, for allowing Marielle to go out acting in a manner true to her character: trying to help. Her instinct was to protect Fatima, who was more or less a patient entrusted to her care. Marielle's claim that she was going to be okay, knowing full well how bad her injury was, felt both wild and in the spirit of trying to soften the reality for a distressed Fatima. That the first thing among the last things Marielle says to Kristi is an apology? Thinking about Kristi foremost. Sorry for what, who can say--being there in this awful place to add to Kristi's stress, arriving relapsed, dying, having to leave Kristi on her own? Half-expected Marielle to get a "thank you" in there, as well, why not, hit almost all the final farewell points (I love you, I'm sorry, I forgive you, thank you--for The Pitt watchers).
Kristi reduced to sobbing "I love you!" over and over again also felt like salt in the wounds--not a sentiment these two verbalized to each other after Season 2 until, you guessed it, 4x09.
My first thought was, Oh, they fridged Marielle for the sake of propelling Kristi on an emotional journey--but then I thought: Actually, maybe not even for that? Because the narrative doesn't bring up Kenny's dead parents. Jim is dead but he doesn't haunt the narrative to the extent I expected he'd impose as a presence at the beginning of S4--the Matthews kids are now way too terrified at the prospect of being orphaned entirely and having only each other. Abby (and Father Khatri) are the ghosts who really haunt the story because they drive Boyd, who is more or less the de facto protagonist burdened with making all the big, critical decisions for the community.
But Kristi is more akin to Kenny--the supernatural hasn't touched her so she's not going to be haunted like Boyd. If I were writing S5, this is exactly when I'd dump Kristi into the deep end of experiencing supernatural phenomena firsthand. Kristi being subjected to seeing Marielle's ghost--knowing, maybe replaying, some of their last conversations on the topic of Marielle telling Kristi that the dead in this place are trapped here forever--would be a mindfuck: especially if Kristi couldn't tell if it was this place fucking with her with apparitions or if it's the actual ghost of Marielle trying to communicate with her and what Marielle said was chillingly true. Why else grant so much time to Marielle dwelling on death and the afterlife and the suffering of this place? Make it pay off.
Will that happen? Unlikely. Everyone is going to be too stressed trying to play hide-and-seek now that there are no more sanctuaries. Although--shouldn't there be one talisman remaining in the clinic, the one Marielle dropped? You really just need one and then house everyone in one building (Colony House) at night. And with how the faraway trees work, talismans can be rediscovered distributed who knows where.
Kristi has seen a lot of death, failed in her mind to prevent much of it, but this is the first loss with a personal, intimate, historical connection to her. All other deaths have been at removes--relative strangers she met in this place, people with closer ties to other people. I actually didn't think they'd kill off Marielle because I reasoned it would possibly break Kristi's spirit in a fundamental way. Marielle is the unique case of someone who showed up separately. Kristi spent six months being estranged from Marielle but also comforted somewhat that Marielle wasn't trapped suffering with her, wasn't in constant danger and subject to the possibility of premature death. Kristi guiltily did wonder if she was the reason Marielle ended up here. (We don't have the answer to that, actually.) Marielle almost died in S2 and that prospect had Kristi spiraling and questioning greater and higher purposes, hope, anything rational. Now Marielle is actually dead--and that alters what getting out of this place looks like, what the landscape of "returning to" looks like. Returning to what? Think about Marielle going to Kristi's parents with the news that their daughter is missing; now Kristi, if she can leave, would have to bear the news of Marielle's death to Marielle's kin. I mean, if Kristi believes what Marielle said, do her priorities shift and she becomes determined to free the suffering souls?
The arcs do open up for Kristi--but will they be pursued? I don't know if they will devote any time to her mourning. (And, quite frankly, not much of the audience will be mourning Marielle because of narrative dereliction.) Because that's how FROM operates now. The horrors are so relentless, there isn't room to breathe for the characters or the audience. The losses can't be felt because survival can't make space for it. That's what made Season 1 captivating, a balance of lulls to build the world and establish the characters and their relationships with the tension of threats. The former element has been pretty much phased out.
RIP to Elgin, we hardly knew thee, but in the end I'd say he passed his test. He chose not to harm and the only way to do so was to bow out of the narrative. (The truth about how he lost his eye did not, in fact, come out this season. Will it? Will it matter if it comes out later?) Boyd wasn't wrong: three people were lost this day, just not the ones he thought.
Fatima . . . girl, they also did you dirty but at least they gave you love we could all see. I do have a lot of questions. How many of the monsters are original? How are men turned into monsters? Because it couldn't have been just the influence of the Man in Yellow's blood since Fatima's vitals were already alarming when she ingested it and the Man in Yellow is putting their blood in all sorts. ????
I accept that I'm likely in a minority that's angry. Which also makes me angry for all the reasons stated above, because this is a failure of storytelling. And sad because it feels like our stories don't matter and will be denigrated as they're depicted and maybe even celebrated when they're torn down. No sense of duty from the narrative in their handling of queer story and audience.
I'm disappointed. But not surprised. Maybe that says it all.
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