I'm really curious - what did happen exactly? You don't have to post this publicly (Or answer it hehe :'D )and it wont be spoilery for me anyways since i don't listen to podcasts.
//LOUD EXASPERATED SCREAMING//
Sure I could use someone to vent to ahaha. Serious The Black Tapes spoilers under the cut. If you have not yet finished the podcast, do not read.
There is literally no ending. No proper one. Long rant short - they throw a lot at you in the third season that answers no questions, doesn’t really provide you with relevant information, and then they chop off the ending in such a way that it’s not really an end, they just weren’t nice enough to tell you they didn’t have the time or energy to work on it anymore.
So the whole thing about The Black Tapes is the idea that there are demons in the world, being let in piece by piece or glance by glance via musical portals that are back doors into our world. There’s a big to-do about a cult as well, and a corrupt multi-billion dollar corporation that’s helping said cult in creating an end of the world scenario. And in the middle of all this are the main characters Alex Reagan and Richard Strand. Alex being the reporter and Strand being her main informant/topic of conversation for her podcast.
To the podcast’s credit, it’s spooky as hell and has some good pacing and story telling - especially for the first season. The first season is almost perfect. Everything makes sense, all the information they find is strategic and convenient. And it’s scary. Which is great since this is a horror podcast!
Second season still has some really good spooky moments, mostly to do with a dream diary sequence where you the listener get the vibes that perhaps Alex is being haunted by the demons she’s learning about. Like the third season, the second season ends on a cliff hanger, but one that is manageable. It’s a big “oh god! the end of the world is at hand and we probably caused it with our errant journalism!” kind of ending, and honestly I would have rather they just leave everything there than leave it where they did in the third season.
The third season we already knew was going to be the last season because of various tweets from the producers of the podcast and things of the like. Which made it all the more confusing when instead of tying up the loose ends that made sense in the second season, they start adding a ton of new information. All of which was interesting, but to me seemed kind of half-hearted and loosely related. Gone are most of the things that made the first two season scary, both because the listener is getting used to them and because now we have faces and names to put on the monsters. The demons aren’t demons, they’re tricks of the mind, hysteria, and some death cult in Europe. And what’s more, the season isn’t doing what a finale season is supposed to do, and that’s build up the plot.
We’re rocketing towards the climax right? But there’s no suspense or air of finality, which even Alex the main character points out at one point. We’re nearing the end, how come no one here is paranoid and scared and making preparations?
And then in the final episode you find out why – because there is no true ending.
The last episode is a mess. All previous plot points are dropped. You learn some things about Alex and Strand being stalked - which isn’t new information we’ve been told this over and over, we just now have video proof in the form of Alex being filmed in her sleep (supposedly with a demon in the room as well? except we’ve been told again and again through Strand that we as the viewer should be skeptical of these things being laid out before us so it’s hard to really be scared there’s something in the room). All this is supposed to scare the main characters away from a conference in Geneva where, somehow some way, the end of the world is supposed to be ushered in - something we’re told and not shown like the rest of the series. It has to do with an Axis Mundi brought up earlier in the season, but while that one was given a reason this one was literally “Oh the Axis Mundi is in Geneva,” with no other context.
There is also a very last minute love/romance angle added in for this final episode that we saw literally none of previously. For the entire previous seasons, and even the episodes of this season, it’s been made clear to us that while Strand wants Alex to trust him (and vice versa), he’s still very dedicated to his wife who is currently missing, he loves her very much and has even used this podcast to try and regain contact with her somehow. Similarly Alex has shown no interest in Strand outside of (maybe?) respect for him as a friend, and even that she tends to throw away frequently for the sake of her story.
But here in the last episode suddenly one of the producers is asking if Alex is in love with Strand, Strand is inviting her out to dinner and they’re promising to get drunk together, and Alex throws out the “let’s run away together” card. And immediately after? The episode ends. It ends before this conference in Geneva which is supposedly the climax we’ve all been waiting for. It ends right after Alex brings up they could run away together.
So we the listeners are supposed to glean from this that they do in fact run away together and don’t go to Geneva and in a… somewhat back-door fashion that was implied… save the world. Because they’re needed in Geneva to bring about the end of the world or whatever.
And it’s like…. what was the point? What was the point of this story now? Why did the developers choose to do this?
Why add a love angle that didn’t exist until literally the final episode? Why leave literally every loose end undone in the plot? There are missing people, connections that have been implied but never actually made, friends and guests we haven’t talked to in ages, literal demons we’ve discarded as if they never existed in the first place. As if this entire thing were supposed to be two people growing close over mutual fear when the entire series has actually been a bitter old man mourning how crazy his life has become and a reporter falling in way over her head in something that makes her paranoid.
I understand the angle these developers are going for, I really do. All their podcasts they advertise as fact instead of fiction to really immerse the listeners and make us wonder maybe this is real. Which is a fun angle for sure. And like real life unfortunate and unsatisfactory things happen - like the main reporter and informant in an elaborate scheme deciding this isn’t worth it and just checking out to try and find happiness. I understand that’s their angle and they’re trying to make this realistic, because they will lose that realism if they actually force us to confront these forces they’ve cooked up for their story.
Buy as a story? That was terrible! It’s like Aragorn going to face Sauron and when the army gets to the gates he decides meh… I don’t wanna fight this fight, and just runs away. It sucks. It sucks. All this mystery and suspense. All this fear and wondering what’s going to happen - for an ending that basically tells you it doesn’t matter. You don’t even know if the evil exists, because Strand and Alex’s entire rapour is them making cases for and against the paranormal actually happening. All you’re left with is several hours wasted on something that will never have closure. More than that, it’s something that even the developers seemed to have lost the fire for. Tell us Alex and Strand died. Tell us their story was cut short for a reason that isn’t out of character and isn’t pegged on a shitty romance that never existed up until this point. Tell us the bad guys won, or tell us the bad guys never existed, or tell us the good guys found a way to stop them. Don’t give us a bs reason for why you decided to drop your story halfway through! It feels almost like the producers went into the third season having wanted to end it with the second, but choosing to continue it just because it was popular with no real plan of where to go next. Or maybe they had story they wanted to tell but were too spread thin on their other projects to do it well. I honestly don’t know.
sigh
Point being this: I feel like I wasted my time on a podcast that was never intended to be finished. Which would have been fine if I’d gone into it knowing it was never finished. I can never fault a content creator for dropping a project - I do it all the time. What I can fault them for is (what feels like) lying to me and pretending they didn’t. See! We have an ending! Don’t you want to know the mystery ends?
Except the mystery doesn’t end, and not in the fantastical sense where the darkness is always out there and you have to be ready for it. It ends as if it never should have begun in the first place, and in such an underwhelming and abrupt stop that it was almost a waste of time to get excited about it in the first place.
And that’s my rant on The Black Tapes! XD I really wish I’d just pretended the world ended in season 2 and stopped listening there. Because it really was a good podcast. The developers just proved that even the best story can be ruined by a terrible ending.
