#itopia

[weaversweek]

S4C - Itopia, Cyfres 4, Pennod 1

Cyfres newydd o'r ddrama Sci-Fi. Mae'r criw yn cwrdd yn Itopia, adeilad segur llawn dir...

Itopia.

Series 4.

This friday.

[becrystalamazed]

🩷💜💙 Alys Hunter🩷💜💙

[becrystalamazed]

🎵"Give it to your sister and never wonder, if the same pressure would have pulled you under"🎶

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ITOPIA SERIES 3 AT THE END!

Hunter Sisters my beloved <3

[becrystalamazed]

🎵"I'm a sad, sad post-teen, caught up in the love machine. No dream, come clean, walking like a zombie"🎶

Did I wait until I had something for Alys and Lwsi to post this? Maybe so. Zac isn't even in my top 5 Itopia characters, and yet this song is so aesthetically and lyrically him that I was compelled to make it.

[becrystalamazed]

So! Itopia series 3 has emotionally ruined me. There better be a series 4 or I will never recover.

I’ll put my thoughts under the cut to avoid spoilers, except for this one - Alys Hunter is canonically bisexual.

Firstly they don’t have English subtitles for episode 6 yet, but there are Welsh subtitles on Clic, so I went through and google-translated it line by line.

I love how Lwsi’s central desire in all the  series is to be normal. Series one: get a Z to be normal. Series two: help out around the shelter to be normal. Series 3: hide her identity to be normal.

Gutted they didn’t tell us which course Lwsi was doing. It looked like some kind of maths or science by Izzy's coursework

I am very sure that the set for Lwsi’s accommodation is the same set they used for the Hunter house but repainted.

I love how the second Alys doesn’t have to be responsible for anyone she immediately vanishes off to the middle of nowhere and stays there.

Also, Alys and Sara as a couple recontextualises a lot of their actions in series 2. Of course Alys immediately latched onto Sara, she had a crush. Of course Sara followed Alys all the way into Itopia and back to the school, she also had a crush. Sara didn’t decide to stay after watching Alys and Lwsi’s sisterly bond, she stayed after watching Alys. Although, dating the girl who reminds you of your dead best friend has got to be rough. Brian Hunter seems to approve though.

As much as I hate to admit it, Zac getting the illegal Amber treatment is also very him. He’s always been very insecure, especially with what he can bring to a relationship, and with the long-distance strain something was going to give. At least he had the sense to immediately download the patch. That being said if I was Lwsi I would have dumped him on the spot. Also, why does he spend so much time crouching in shady alleyways?

As for the teens, I thought they were cool. Nansi has hypersensitive hearing she needs an aid for, she’s just like me for real for real. And I don’t normally like characters like Freddie, but somehow he managed to be my favourite. It really seems like he just wants to be friends with the others but they're not getting it. Also every time Mr Rhys told Ash he was disappointed in him specifically I wanted to throttle him. Can’t you see that boy’s self esteem is hanging on by a thread and that thread is meeting others too-high expectations?

I thought the Nansi-Ash-Eli love triangle was a bit silly, although it makes a nice juxtaposition to the borderline eugenic-y and eventually eco-fascist conflicts in the wider narrative.

It’s also nothing that a bit of polyamory can’t fix. Freddie should join too.

I also wish that we could have had flashbacks to Ash and Nansi being infected, to reinforce the idea that Ambers never really get over their past as Zeds.

Also - if your fusebox blows that many times in a row, you’ve got a fire hazard somewhere. You don’t just keep switching it on again.

Also Mums! We had a mother and a child running away from some Zeds, we have Freddie who’s a caregiver for his mum and we even got what I think is a picture of Zac with his mum. Do we have any mums with names or speaking roles? Still no. But it’s progress(!)

I love Itopia’s commitment to naming the background characters. All the classmates get names, even though only one of them is actually named in dialogue. And they get full names too! Ems was Emyr Miller, Izzy is Isobelle Grant.

The prime minister being an Amber is a nice call back to the news indents of Prosiect Z saying there were rumours that the prime minister is a Zed.

The Zero movie was a fun touch. Of course Zac, zombie movie fan and Zero's actual boyfriend, keeps a poster above his bed even though Lwsi doesn't want to see it.

I loved the parallels between Freddie trying to talk Ash into getting the patch and Eli trying to talk Nansi out of it. They really are the angels and devils on the shoulders.

I liked the little touch of Jen’s blog - Lwsi Hunter was my best friend. Nice callback to her.

The Alys and Lwsi dynamics this series were spectacular. Alys almost drops everything to get to Lwsi when she hears about the Zeds, but Sara talks her out of it, point out that Lwsi has proven herself capable many times over. Meanwhile Lwsi nearly drops everything to warn Alys and spends most of the time wishing Alys was with her. And the pep talk Alys gave Lwsi was wonderful.

I don’t want to talk about it but I have to. Alys got infected. Her plot armour finally ran out. She wasn’t even sacrificing herself for someone. And then Sara had to walk away with that heartbroken - heartbreaking - look on her face (which honestly did the most to sell me on their relationship). And she was the one in the white van to save the kids in Alys’ place. How could they do this to me!?! The infection music into the Prosiect Z theme was just salt in the wound.

Also, the little detail of Sara carefully stopping the car before answering the phone. She’s not losing anyone else today. Not after Heledd. Not after Alys.

My knee jerk reaction to the evil, all powerful eco-fascist AI Aliza was dislike. But with the whispering in the Amber’s heads thing - oh she has great potential. I’m so excited to see how she’s used. She’s the product of the remnants of the Itopia network. And you know who was the second to last person to have access to the Itopia network? Nina. She’s still out there, somewhere, and I refuse to let my guard down.

But, fun fact! Aliza is called Aliza in the subtitles and Eliza in the credits! We once again have a character with two ways to spell their name! Zayn/Zane lives!

In conclusion, I loved this series, it broke my heart and I desperately want a series 4. Not just to resolve the Alys cliffhanger, but because they’ve started some legitimately interesting plot threads.

[becrystalamazed]

Itopia Characters Explained Badly

Lwsi Hunter (S1-3): Normal teenage girl desperately tries to be a normal teenage girl, accidentally ends up as the chosen one.

Alys Hunter (S1-3): People keep sacrificing themselves for this bisexual scientist and it’s not making her atlas personality any better.

Brian Hunter (S1-2): Grieving dad trying to be there for his daughters by being nice to their partners, mean to their exes and providing a getaway vehicle to escape from zombies.

Zac Evans (S1-3): Zombie movie enthusiast finds himself in a zombie apocalypse not as the hero but as the love interest. He does a lot of crime.

Macs Woodward (S1-2): Heartbreaking! Your conspiracy theorist tabloid journalist ex might actually be right about something!

Mari Thomas (S1-2): Rocks up late to the series, gets incredibly traumatised, sacrifices herself, gets her happy ending, leaves.

Dr Ed Thomas (S1-2): Tries to prevent the zombie apocalypse from the inside, fails, his daughter and his favourite employee need to pick up the pieces.

Dr Megan Crane (S1): Her reports are being changed so no one believes what she says, her co-workers who know the truth are being kidnapped and infected, she’s living in a one person horror movie and it’s technically her fault.

Nina (S1-2): Scientist wants the recognition she deserves! (note: does not actually deserve any recognition)

FN Stine (S1-2): Straight white male billionaire believes his point of view is the most unbiased, gets shocked when he discovers that consequences can happen to him.

Emyr ‘Ems’ Miller (S2): Shady bastard. Massive simp.

Ceri Stine (S2): Lwsi Hunter Bad Ending AU

Sara (S2-3): Local lone wolf won’t stay that way if Alys has anything to do about it!

Isobelle ‘Izzy’ Grant (S3): “God, I wish I’d had an evil supercomputer in my head that turned me into a zombie, life would be so much better” she says to flatmate, who had an evil supercomputer in her head which left her forever alienated from the rest of humanity.

Ash (S3): Boy’s self esteem is directly tied to meeting people’s expectations of him, please stop telling him he’s a disappointment.

Nansi (S3): Hypersensitive girl is betrayed by the people she trusts most, and now there are voices.

Eli (S3): Girl loves the fact there are people with superpowers even though she isn’t one of them herself.

Freddie (S3): Young carer just wants to be curious and cause chaos, why is he now the most sensible person in the room?

Mr Rhys (S3): Really regretting chaperoning this residential.

Aliza (S3): oh no.

[becrystalamazed]

Itopia series 3 trailer! I'm so excited!

[becrystalamazed]

16th of December let's go!!!!

It looks like we've got Lwsi, Zac, Alys (<3) and Sara carried forward. I don't know why Zac is on the Amber side given that he was never infected... maybe something happened in between series?

I assume Ash, Freddie, Nansi and Eli are the four teens along the bottom. Ash, Freddie and Eli are all fairly androgynous names so I can't really make guesses for who is who. We'll probably get more info in the month to come.

We also have two new adults, no idea how they're going to be involved in the plot. Really hoping the woman is someone's mother though, to restore balance.