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It could be that it’s all explained. It could be that for whatever reason I can’t wrap my mind around the “truth.” But I can’t help but shake the feeling that something in the LiS ending was wrong. And, I understand our deep desires for wish fulfillment, or whether we believe something was told badly or whatever. But really, I think this has nothing to do with that. This is just things not adding up to me.

In the two options, “Bae or Bay” as so aptly coined, it’s the less involved ending, sacrificing Arcadia Bay that seems more real to me. Not necessarily because their’s a “correct” option and a “wrong” option. Obviously there’s no correct option as we’re left to create our own head cannon. Rather, the option to sacrifice Chloe was left with too many loose ends (and I mean that with all puns intended). And I don’t want to rant and rave about it, but I do want to air out my thoughts, I don’t want to feel alone on this.

So…

In the end, the option to sacrifice Chloe is intended to “correct” the course of time. It’s intended to “fix” things. To set them back onto time’s intended course. But, in truth, this can’t physically be done. Max can’t go backwards and simply set things back onto their exact path by allowing Chloe to die in the bathroom. The act of Max, past/present time traveler being there changes things. She has knowledge that she shouldn’t have. She has experiences. She herself has grown into a wildly different human being than the one who should have been there in the bathroom that day. When Max travels back, when Chloe walks in, the outside of the bathroom door is still a glow. Is still a limit on the moment. A frame. Certainly, it’s much closer to the originally “intended” reality for the original Max, and the correction needn’t be as vast and thus the storm never comes to strike down Arcadia Bay. But it cannot be the same. Max can never get back there to the original path because she herself no longer belongs there. And while she may accept that particular reality, in which she lets Chloe die as one she can live in, can accept, it will still never be “hers.”

In contrast, sacrificing the Bay and saving Chloe, despite the losses, feels better. Feels more valid. We’re never told explicitly that every person in the Bay dies. We’re shown mass destruction. We’re shown and know there are lives lost. But I’ve lived next to a town (within 15 minutes) that was leveled by an F5 (the actual current highest point on the Fujita Scale, though there is described possibility for an F6 in the future. So I see what you did there LiS). Despite the incredible, massive scale of damage, there were no lives lost there. (Feel free to look up Newton Falls, Ohio 1985 F5 Tornado if you want to hear about it.) The deaths we’re warned of in Max’s nightmare ring more true as being her fears as she grapples with decisions she knows she has to make, rather than a true description of the death toll that will certainly come.

Additionally, we cannot simply forget that Arcadia Bay was sick before Max ever received her powers. The Bay was already dying its own slow death. The fish had disappeared, the fisherman on their last attempts to make a living. The residents were leaving, or stuck based on circumstances. The only prosperity seemed to be the Prescotts who were only further driving things to their own whims. For their own purposes. The destruction of the storm gives the town an ability to rebuild. To come alive again. We don’t simply leave towns in prosperous areas to rot anymore, we know in reality that it can and will be rebuilt.

Finally, while sacrificing Chloe yields the blue butterfly, Chloe’s soul’s acceptance, sacrificing the Bay gives us a confirmation in nature that things are okay. The birds haven’t all died, they fly over top of the wreckage. The deer, more real than we’ve ever seen it lopes towards its companions. Not simply a guiding spirit but an active creature. Nature returns. The balance after the storm is shown. We feel that it’s over. We can breathe again. Choosing to sacrifice the Bay isn’t just the “selfish move” because Chloe is the number 1 priority. (Even if she is the motivation), but it’s also the acceptance that just going back in time once again to “fix it/break another reality” isn’t the only way forward. There doesn’t have to be the endless loop. There’s also pure acceptance of the consequences. While traveling back in time stops her from having to deal with any repercussions, the storm which grows is a culmination of every time she couldn’t just stop and handle it.

In any case, I know this was long. And I know that it doesn’t really mean much, because any person’s head cannon can be valid. But this just bothered me. And I guess I needed to validate why I feel no guilt in sacrificing the Bay.