"...despidiéndose de su relación conmigo."
Ouch, it hurts. And it will keep hurting for a good long while (longer than soap logistics allow for).
Not really a silver lining, but I am positively surprised (I say, as I sit sniffling in my office y es que ya tengo una edad) at the time and the weight the writers' room allow here - as they know they have to transition from their OTP narrative of Mafin to a clean slate ahead - for allowing Marta time and dialogue lines to grieve, and for grieving and celebrating Fina and her relationship with Marta, even as it feels rushed for us. (when I am going to be over Marta with Fina? Ask me again after I am dead. I will be a Mafin kind of poltergeist - #mafinity was another good #ashtag there.)
Marta, for the first time, gets to name her "relationship" with Fina in front of Carmen and Claudia: a shared family moment of grief.
Carmen and Claudia validate Marta's pain, after Marta leaves wiping at tears, and Carmen calls Fina, speaking of Marta, "the love of her life".
And Marta getting to voice her worries with Carmen this time ("I wasn't brave enough", "I didn't prioritize her enough") and getting to finally talk about their relationship, getting to say she misses her, misses holding her, getting to name the entire new perfume in tribute of their relationship, validated by Carmen who affirms their love and the bond they shared: that is a band-aid, and it's a band-aid that f*cking hurts because this wound is far from closing. But being offered this kind of band-aid? Someone in that writing room cares, against the constraints of the genre (also because Mafin is - was - a major international press and selling point for them).
So yes, all this is building an emotionally honest (as far as possible) closure for Marta and preparing the next arch, laying her story with Fina to rest and trying to leave Marta in a place where she could meet someone else, and that is really not what I can stomach in Grief Stage 1. (the clearly written-at-different times (months?) press materials released this week make it worse, from "separated for a time, hold on!" to "I hope Marta will find love with someone else down the road!" to "so long, it's been great, but it's over! No big deal!" in a span of not even 48 hours for us) And the worst moment of this episode may be Pelayo calling Buenos Aires about giving Fina an incentive to stay, "so that she won't want to come back." Because Fina saying "no, I don't want to return even though I could" would break the narrative promise of the Mafin romance in terms of putting each other above everything.
And that's why this hurts so much (and I am collecting a few comment bits of mine across the last day here): because *that* would mean not only to move on from Mafin to Masinfin and eventually to Ma+X (as has been hammered home in three interviews now, ugh), but to undo the nearly-400-episode narrative that brought all of us here.
The show's problem is that Mafin was was set up and told and promoted as THE epic romance, and now one actor leaving means they need to unseat that narrative to give the actor staying on the show a clean character slate to move on, and that feels jarring as long as Fina lives, and as long as Pelayo has not been uncovered.
And even a closure of the Pelayo plot is a problem at this point - because how can they do that without diminishing the Mafin plot? If Belmonte stays on and Brunet does not return at all, the show is doomed to destroy the OTP narrative it has so carefully, lovingly built - because if the Pelayo scheme is resolved, but Marta and Fina do not reunite, it would be "No thanks, I love my new freedom and career in B.A. more than you"; or "No thanks, the company and the family and my new love interest matter more to me now, I am not packing my suitcase to move to B.A." And that is simply not the story they have built.
It is, sadly, the story hanging over them now, due to structural circumstances beyond the narrative. They will be forced to break the promise of their own narrative if Brunet is out for good, and that is massively unsatisfying (and also heartbreaking because it feels like a betrayal of the narrative set-up, genre constraints be damned, and, yes, people absolutely grieve stories, too). Also there is something very callous - even if this was not intentional - about the working class character being the replaceable one (Fina is not replaceable, of course, and thanks to Belmonte for that interview line that defies soap logistics, in calling stories and people not replaceable). And I certainly don't want to see any of that five minutes after they ripped away the narrative and said "here, take another one", as if Mafin hasn't been built up as singular.
And I think that is the conundrum the producing team is in: the narrative they created, across nearly two years, has been upended by personal circumstances beyond the show, and now, in terms of being a capitalist product, they have to try to tide queer viewers over to the next storyline that perhaps wasn't intended, but that they now need to go for, and everyone involved has to sell it (of course they do, it's their job. I also have to sell things in my job that I wouldn't have chosen affectively).
But for a queer viewer (at least for this one), the show is not (just) a product. As humans, we make sense of each other through stories, we strive for things beyond our lives through stories, from the first fairy tale we are told as kids where the good ones win against the bad ones. We all know life doesn't work like that, but stories help us to hold on and stretch yet a little farther towards something good, to be better, to create a little more brightness around us, to make it through something bad because we can imagine something better. And Mafin has been such a fairytale. It has delivered on so, so many promises. It is the best and most satisfying long-term lesbian relationship representation I have ever seen on TV. And part of that is that it is so wildly romantic in its exclusivity, which is a narrative trope we react to. It's the fairy tale.
You know I am prone to quoting the Bard in the tags, and this is sonnet 116: "It is the star to every wandering bark / whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken".
Mafin, narratively, is that North Star.
And to go, within the span of a few days, from a long-term established "here, this is the North Star!" (ep. 377) to "Nah, this star has gone out, take another one, there are many to be had, that's life" (the interviews released this week) --- that hurts. Because it upends a fixture that was based on being unable to be upended, or overwritten, or changed. There is no moving on without breaking the promise of the entire previous narrative.
So this is not just something ending (stars will continue to shine long after they have dissembled, aka Hello, fanworks), but the attempt to make a star into a passing set of lights in a tunnel in retrospect, so that the show can go on. And that is jarring. Especially, owed to the genre, as a fast push to replace, as if this were replaceable. And it is not.
That said, I am deeply appreciative of the thoughtful and careful wording Belmonte used in the interview released yesterday, as a performer perhaps more acutely aware of what this narrative means to queer fandom: that knowing where Fina is would mean Marta going to find her because that is the story we have been told for nearly 400 episodes. #obviously (if I use the term "betrayal", it is in terms of being given one narrative that then is taken away; this is in no way blaming performers or writing rooms or showrunners for doing their jobs in adjusting to circumstance or for living their lives)
This writing room is exceptionally good. They may find a way to tell a new romance well. Belmonte is an exceptionally good actress; this is her job, she will sell it, independent of what she might personally be attached to in terms of storylines, which is an attachment performers can generally not allow themselves. And a 40+ woman as a queer show lead is something worth supporting in terms of necessary industry shifts either way. (Will the show be daring enough to make a new love interest another woman (I think they will), perhaps someone of the same age or older? (I fear they won't))
But, back to Mafin: creating something that is told as singular means just that: it is singular. You cannot have two singular things.
A new storyline might even be good. Who knows? But it will never be Mafin because you don't get to say "Singular!" twice.
And that is, as stated above, the issue at stake: if you need to double down on your singular thing because circumstances force you to, while fandom holds onto the singular thing as, well, the singular thing.
Because for fandom, it's not a job (and it might be more than just a job for some people involved, too). It is that North Star story as which it was told. And for many of us, it will continue to be that.
