Honestly think the Carl betrayal hits harder in some ways because like… Stratt was never fully Grace’s friend.
He was certainly closer to her than most people got to be, and he clearly made an effort to reach out to her as a human being, but they didn’t exactly hang out.
Stratt was Grace’s boss. She made an effort to support him and believed in him when others didn’t, but it was a workplace relationship.
Carl and Grace were actual friends. Like you can debate how close they were (since Carl doesn’t get too much screen time) but they indisputably enjoy hanging out together in the scenes they share.
Carl and Grace muck about together, mirror watch other’s body language and act much more like peers than Grace and Stratt ever do (because, again, she’s his boss).
Carl is professional and very much Here To Do A Job, but he’s having fun with it.
And like, how often do we think he gets to have fun at work? Dude’s job is kidnapping scientists to help avert the apocalypse. He’s probably CIA or something. Carl has likely seen and done Some Shit.
But hey, sometimes you get to take a breather. Sometimes you get a cushy job goofing off with a middle school science teacher and you get to do a bizarre craft project and justify putting candy on your expense account.
Oh, what’s that? The fate of the world now rests on killing the fun science teacher? While he screams and begs for his life?
Like I keep thinking about how Carl ended up by the fence. When Stratt picks up her phone and says “yep he’s running”— wouldn’t it make sense for the person on the other end to be Carl? One of her main security guys? Also someone Grace explicitly trusts?
And now he has to watch the guy fall and listen to him beg for his life while knowing that he can’t help him. The stakes are too high, it’s the whole world vs one man.
But also the guy just wants to go back to teaching kids, something he would be doing right now if Carl hadn’t encouraged him to take those dots.
Stratt is furious with Grace for his cowardice, and honestly I think with herself for allowing this catastrophe to happen. Like maybe if she’d put in more failsafes when designing the trolley, she wouldn’t now be stuck holding the lever.
Her last words to Grace are meant to hurt.
Carl, on the other hand, does try to give him some comfort. He can’t save his life, can’t spare him from the horror he’s about to go through, but why not let the last words he hears on Earth be something kind?
“You know who you are. You’re gonna do great.”
Let him go out knowing someone believes in him, even when he so wholeheartedly doesn’t believe in himself.
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