i read some of your older posts and you mentioned that alisa and nash would've made each other grow. can you elaborate on that?
From a narrative standpoint, considering how their characters were written, I truly believe Nash and Alisa would have helped each other grow if they had ended up together.
Each of them had something the other lacked, and that missing piece is exactly what would have allowed real emotional and personal growth.
If you think about it, Alisa is the stability Nash rejects (not because he doesn’t want it, but because he’s afraid he doesn’t deserve it and doesn’t know how to deserve it).
Nash is the freedom she can’t afford.
Nash would have helped Alisa grow beyond duty and beyond her identity built around the Hawthorne family. Alisa grew up inside a system that told her who to be: flawless, rational, always in control. We see how this sometimes consumes her, how she speaks about pressure and everything she had to sacrifice. Nash was one of the very few places where she could be herself, vulnerable, imperfect. For someone like Alisa, who learned to survive only through control, a person like Nash — someone who knew her every day before she put on that mask, and who loved her regardless of what she does or doesn’t do for the Hawthornes—means a lot.
Nash is the only person, and we see it multiple times in the books, with whom Alisa can’t hide her fragility. He knows her too well, and he has seen and loved every version of her throughout her entire life.
Alisa, in turn, would have helped Nash grow by facing what he keeps running from.
Nash is someone who has always avoided staying. He runs because he’s terrified of stability, of not being enough, of hurting someone. Alisa, instead, stays. She knows consistency, dedication, and she sees Nash for who he is — not for the failures he thinks define him. She loves Nash because he is Nash, because she truly knows him. And she loves him despite his defense mechanisms.
He can’t hide from Alisa and the fact that she knows him so well is a sort of condemnation, because she met the fragile boy no one wanted, she knew him before he locked himself into the role of the savior, and she loved every version of him (even the one that hurt her).
Alisa truly sees Nash and chooses him. But Nash doesn’t know what stability means, what staying means. It’s terrifying for him that someone loves him deeply, because nothing like that ever happened to him as a child. So he repeats Skye’s pattern: he leaves before he can be left.
He keeps asking himself: “Why me?”, “What does she see in me?”, “Why doesn’t she run like everyone else?”
I wanted to make a full post about Nash’s childhood psychology, but I’ll mention it here: Nash has traumas the series heavily underestimates. He carries wounds he never faces. Because running away from the environment that hurt you will never heal you—it’s inside you, not in a place. Any psychologist would tell you that.
During the saga, Nash comes home and stays because it’s easier: Tobias is gone, so he can be in Hawthorne House without confronting what broke him there. Staying for Libby is normal; it’s easier. Libby gives him peace. Being with someone completely disconnected from the place that traumatized you allows you to avoid dealing with it. Even more so if, with her, you can be the version of yourself you want to be—the caretaker, the steady one.
In storytelling, you can choose for a character between peace and growth. For Nash, the story chooses peace.I would have chosen growth but there’s no right or wrong answer!
Alisa, for her part, had a nice arc of growth with Avery. Avery helped her understand she can choose, she can take control of the game instead of remaining trapped where Tobias forced her. But being with Nash would have added an extra layer to that growth.
Anyway, back to the main point:
With Alisa, Nash would have been forced to confront his sense of inadequacy, his fear of becoming like Skye, his fear of abandonment, the belief that he doesn’t deserve love unless he earns it, and his savior complex.
They wouldn’t “change” each other, they would complete each other, give each other space to become a fuller version of themselves. They free themselves from the roles their environment forced onto them, and it happens naturally, because if they didn’t, they simply couldn’t stay together.
I think they are exactly what the other needs to confront the arc they’re built for.
Behind their roles (the protector and the perfect attorney) there are, respectively, the abandoned and unseen boy and the vulnerable girl who was manipulated.
Many say they’re “too different,” but despite being opposite personality-wise, they share traits that make them mirror each other.
They’re the two characters whose entire lives revolve around taking care of others, trapped in the role of responsible adults who don’t know who they are unless they’re taking care of something or someone. Sure, they act differently (Alisa is practical, Nash is emotional), but the foundation is the same. Neither of them is the role they were pushed into, and being together makes it easier to see that, because they grew up together, saw each other before, during, and after wearing those masks, and loved each other even then.
In other words they can’t run from each other.
I hope I explained myself well and that this rambling isn’t too chaotic.
It wouldn’t have been easy and it wouldn’t have been comfortable, but I think it would have been better in the long run for the development of both characters.
And just to clarify: this is in no way a hate post against Libby or Nash/Libby. It’s simply my opinion on what would have better served the growth of two characters, and I truly hope it doesn’t offend anyone.
@leenloveslotsofthings @alisaismother
@nothinggggg7 @taylorownsme888
