“There's nowhere else in the world that feels quite like Las Vegas. And for me, there's nowhere else in the world that feels like home. And that is why we created the Diva. This is a place to be who you really are without shame because this city does that better than any other place on the planet.”
—Deborah Vance, opening The Diva
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During the time when Deborah has decided she isn’t going to go through cancer treatment, she constructs what she considers her final legacy in two parts:
Performing a free show for 30k people in Central Park, uncensored and on her own terms, before which she acknowledges the support and care from others that allowed her to get to that moment
Co-creating a new Vegas institution (publicly crediting Marcus for the transformative role he’s played in her life), then christening it with explicit instruction that people should use the space to be the people they truly are (right before the mayor christens it with blood lol)
Alongside all the artifice, all the glitz and glamour, the wigs and cosmetic surgery, the obsession with public image, this is a Deborah who’s grown comfortable with having needed people. She’s also grown comfortable with the way people have needed her, and that pair of realizations feels like a big part of why she needs to imagine people having a good time at The Diva after she’s gone, honoring her wishes to shamelessly live as themselves while they’re within the walls of the casino.
But alongside all that, there’s still her own private battle with shame and fear, the stuff she only lets Ava see. The agony around being seen as crazy, the dread of going through experiences that will make her body hurt and maybe even change the way her brain works. But she’s finally achieved some perfect things, a perfect show against all odds in a city that isn’t home, and a place in the city that is home that’ll be a lively homage to her memory long after she’s gone. It completely makes sense to me that she’d choose to die at that moment, convinced she’s going out on top. She won’t be around to see anything that might tarnish those perfect things down the line.
And then Paris happens. I was so, so, so moved that her relationship with Ava and her relationship to comedy are so deeply engrained, so indistinguishable, that her very human and very lovely and sad desire to have this sweet vacation with Ava means they spend the entire time making each other laugh. Because that’s what time with Ava means. With the exceptions of the desperate, beautiful fights about the decision to seek euthanasia, they’re just performing comedy for each other, their little comedy club of two, and it’s not really a performance at all—it’s just living through the filter of being funny for someone you love, and finding someone you love funny, and that being the most important thing.
Maybe even more important than dignity. More important than public legacy.
It’s so brave of Deborah—and so merciful of the universe—that she realizes that she can’t even conceptualize her own death without writing jokes about it, and that means a chosen, timed, planned-for death isn’t something she can go through with right now. She had every right to want that. But in the end, the time in Paris vanquishes a lot of those last shreds of shame and fear, even if there could be more around the bend as she goes through this medical journey. She will be able to handle it because she will be able to write about what she’s going through in collaboration with her creative partner. She has NEVER been able to fully count on that before, not without understandable wariness that she might be horribly disappointed, but Ava’s decision to be with her when she dies makes it possible for Deborah to want Ava to be with her while she goes through something messy and painful in the hopes of having more life.
Even with the pain of medical treatments ahead, even while facing (hopefully, if/when the reboot gets picked up!) the logistical stress of balancing life in two cities, even with the inevitable difficulties that will arise while crafting this next comedy hour, Deborah and Ava are already in their happy ending, and there is more to come.
Because Deborah’s two-part legacy is actually a trifecta—a perfect public show, a perfect public place, and the intimate joy of sharing a sense of humor with the person you know and who knows you most deeply. All three parts are indelible. No one can take them away from her whether she dies in a year, or in ten, or at the age of 109. She is triumphant, and life goes on.
