“You were you, and I was I; we were two before our time.
I was yours before I knew, and you have always been mine too.”
― Lang Leav, Love & Misadventure
This is what we do, I push too hard and you do things without my consent. That’s our relationship. Now we can end it or we can just accept it as it is. That felt like ‘accept it.’
Yeah, it’s not perfect—no one’s saying it isn’t. How could their relationship be anything other than messy when Cosima is in constant, inescapable peril and the only way Delphine knows how to deal with it is to devote everything she has to protecting her from the people who destroyed both their lives?
But I think the really important detail here is that neither of these characters know what we know. We know that they are in the middle of the last season of this show and all this shit’s all about to end. They have no idea, and that’s why these lines are so important.
Read more for waay too much commentary.
It could end any number of ways, but we can be pretty confident that this saga come to some kind of conclusion, and we’ll be left with some sense of what the future will be like for each character.
Yeah, it could end with Cosima or Delphine dying (even though I think they’ve each had that plot line once already) or circumstances separate them forever. In either of these cases, these two have a very limited amount of time left, and all I have to say (through my weeping) is ‘please just make up and then make out for the rest of the next 5 episodes.’
But the other possibility is that they survive and have a chance to be together without mortal illness or Neolution or DYAD or Topside twisting up their lives. And in this situation, Delphine can stop keeping secrets. Cosima can stop rebelling against everyone who wants her to do something. Delphine can drop her crusade against anyone who’s ever even dreamed of hurting Cosima or her sisters. Cosima can let herself start trusting again. We know that everything causing Cosima and Delphine pain--everything poisoning their relationship--comes from the cruel forces from outside that relationship that act on it, and once Rachel and PT and the Neos are gone, there are so many new possibilities for change and growth and happiness for them.
We can hold onto that because we know that all this ends soon, but neither Cosima nor Delphine have that to hold onto.
In fact—and correct me if I’m wrong—but none of the clones or their loved ones seem to reflect on possibility that there’s life after this horror show. None of them have offered comfort to one another with the assurance that someday this will all be over and they can go on living their lives the way they want to. That might be partly because they simply cannot see how any of this could ever end well, so they’d rather not think about it having an end. That interpretation carries with it a sense of hopelessness that we see sometimes in Cosima’s plot, sometimes in Sarah’s, obviously it’s rife in Beth’s. We see it rarely in Allison’s, and all the clones’ loved ones are hell-bent on hopefulness: Siobhan, Delpine, Felix, Donnie.
It could also be a writing choice. Not acknowledging that the pace of this plot is simply unsustainable for real human life could be a tool the writers use to leave their options open for an ambiguous conclusion. It also helps drive up the stakes of the conflict (if the only real options seem to be death and enslavement or defiance, the stakes are pretty damn high).
But it could also be because that’s how humans react to intense, negative emotion. We feel awful and think, ‘it’s always going to be like this forever.’ Fear and sadness and depression keep the human brain from being able to imagine a future that’s different. It’s possible the writers know this and have decided the characters are so overwhelmed they aren’t able to look toward a less-stressful possible future.
And yet even as Cosima and Delphine slog through the never-ending fear, stress, danger, uncertainty and pain of fighting off multinational corporations and science cults and ancient evil dudes, they’re strong enough to stop for a second and put everything on the table. Cosima has been thinking about and dreaming about and mourning and loving Delphine since the start of season 3, and she’s been reflective enough about it to identify what their problems are, and here in this moment, she’s brave enough to say them all out loud.
And here’s where I just want to hug Delphine. She can be strong and brave for Cosima but she can also be strong for herself--strong enough to give Cosima the chance to say ‘it’s over.’ After almost dying and giving everything she has to protect Cosima and her sisters, Delphine isn’t too afraid to admit their relationship is hard, and that Cosima gets to walk away if she wants to.
But Cosima doesn’t want to. She doesn’t know it’s half way though the last season of the show, and she still doesn’t want to.
So when Cosima and Delphine agree to accept that their relationship is all kinds of flawed, that they’re going to stick with it anyway, that they’re going to try to love each other anyway, that they’re going to keep being defiant and keep protecting each other, they’re saying:
‘I’m going to keep loving you, even though I don’t know how or when this ends.’
‘I’m going to keep loving you even though I can’t promise this life gets better or we survive it or we ever get a chance to be safe and happy and together ever again.’
‘I’m going to keep loving you, even though...’
It’s Delphine and Cosima admitting they’d rather struggle through this crap together than do it alone, even if the struggle is all it’ll ever be.
It’s not perfect but it’s real and honest and brave.
