The Root of Stolas’s Trauma (Healing era)
Stolas’s Season 2 arc after Western Energy isn’t really about him “losing love for Blitz”, but about what happens when love gets entangled with trauma, ethics, and survival recalibration all at once. Western Energy functions like a rupture point, not just physically but psychologically, where intimacy, vulnerability, and power suddenly become things that can be exploited, withdrawn, or weaponized. From there, Stolas doesn’t stop feeling attachment, he starts restricting what he believes he is allowed to do with it.
Just Look My Way” sits an right before that full ethical collapse into withdrawal, and it matters because it shows the emotional continuity still intact. In that moment, Stolas is not writing distance into existence, he is still openly expressing longing, devotion, and the desire to stay emotionally close.
The key detail is that there is no break in affection there, only a heightened awareness of connection and fear of losing it.
Which is honestly to be expected from someone who has an “Fearful/Disorganised” attachment .
So when The Full Moon later happens and he pulls back, it doesn’t contradict “Just Look My Way,” it reframes it. The shift isn’t “I no longer feel this,” but “I still feel this, and now I have to regulate what it means for both of us.”
That’s why it doesn’t read like emotional closure. It reads like ethical containment under strain. He still, evidently, longs for Blitz, still gravitates toward him emotionally, but he consciously pulls back because the situation feels morally and structurally unsafe for continuing the same dynamic. So what looks like “letting go” from the outside is actually:
Stolas:
Blitzo, I'm giving you this because I care.... very deeply for you. And I have for some time. [He places the crystal onto Blitzo's glove, embedding itself into his hand.] But this transactional thing we have, it's not right anymore. It hasn't been. It never was. And now all I can see is how wrong it is to be so tethered to someone in such an unfair way... and not know how they feel. But I want you to continue to be who you are, your business. You don't have to stay here with me. [He removes his hat.] But... I want you to. I want you to stay here with me because you want to. Only if you want to.
Moreover this actually deepens the continuity instead of resetting it. When Blitz appears in Stolas’s fantasy space in the S3 clip, it isn’t evidence of renewed or returned love. It’s evidence that the attachment never stopped existing in the first place. The emotional bond doesn’t restart because it never actually ended, it simply moved from external action into internal persistence (safe space). Even after ethical withdrawal and emotional restraint, Blitz remains the mind’s default reference point for closeness, longing, and safety association.
So the through-line becomes really simple but powerful:
Western Energy breaks Stolas’s sense of safety and agency (possibly including sexual activity in THAT position that involves being prone and the other leaning over would absolutely cause a sense of fear and helplessness)
Season 2 is him trying to ethically do the right thing by Blitz whilst also regulate a love he still fully feels
Season 3 shows — even if for a literal minute — that the love he has was never gone, only contained.
Or in one continuous thought:
Stolas didn’t stop loving Blitz after Western Energy or The Full Moon. He just entered a phase where love had to be held back rather than expressed, because trauma and ethics forced him to separate what he feels from what he believes he can safely or responsibly act on.
Furthermore…
That’s why S3 clip appearances don’t read as a return of feelings either, more of a glimpse sneak peek of what’s going to be involved in the new season. They are the continuation of something that never actually went offline. “Just Look My Way” shows the attachment in its most emotionally unguarded form, The Full Moon shows the attachment under ethical constraint, and Season 3 shows the attachment persisting internally even after external withdrawal.
In other words, “Just Look My Way” isn’t the before he stopped loving him moment.
It’s the proof that he never did.
The Fantasy Aspect:
Some viewers seem frustrated that Stolas is still perceived as “glamorising the relationship,” and this is often compared back to Season 1. But I think that comparison misses that the emotional engine underneath his attachment has fundamentally changed.
In Season 1, Stolas’s desire reads more like:
“I want you in any way I can have you.”
It’s idealised, emotionally indulgent, and heavily imbalanced, which gives the relationship a kind of romanticised distortion—especially because it’s largely one-sided at that point.
In Seasons 2 and 3, however, the motivation shifts into something more psychologically grounded:
“I want escape from something that hurt me and left me feeling powerless.”
The writing around Stolas after Western Energy and his demotion can be read as portraying a trauma response built around helplessness, loss of agency, and lingering psychological echo. The cause is not sexual violence, but the emotional pattern being depicted shares structural similarities with how characters often respond to coercive or violating experiences: a disrupted sense of safety, altered boundaries around intimacy, and a lingering need to reclaim control in environments that previously felt overpowering.
Because of that, some of the framing around his later emotional and romantic behaviour can resemble familiar “post-trauma intimacy patterns” seen in narratives involving violation or coercion. Not because the events are equivalent, but because the psychological architecture being explored overlaps: recovery expressed through control, trust recalibration, and redefinition of vulnerability.
It shares some of the same narrative trauma patterns often written in stories involving sexual violation, without the cause being equivalent.”
Within that framing, it becomes interesting to consider how intimacy with Blitz might evolve later on. In earlier Seasons 1–2 dynamics, Blitz is generally the more sexually dominant (top) partner, with Stolas often positioned in a more receptive (bottom) role. That established dynamic is why any deviation from it later on would feel narratively significant rather than incidental.
If the relationship ever progresses into sexual reconnection in a more emotionally grounded way, a temporary or situational role shift could carry extra meaning. Not as a reversal for its own sake, but as something shaped by Stolas’s psychological state following his trauma—particularly his need to regain a sense of agency in spaces where he previously experienced helplessness.
In that reading, sexual dynamics wouldn’t be fixed or “corrected,” but responsive. Less about labels like dominant or submissive, and more about who feels safe enough to hold control in a given moment, and who is learning to give or receive it without fear attached.
Side note (Theory):
And honestly? I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole trauma thing would affect Stolitz’s sex life well up until S4… maybe that’s when “together in spirit” becomes “together physically” 🤔
I mean I don’t know a lot about ‘rape victims’ —or similar patterns—but I do know it takes a LONG time to “get over” the physical side of the trauma that they can’t sometimes even be in the same room as their partner
(I’m of course going by the events of Oytlander, yes THAT scene if you know what I’m talking about 🥺💔 in terms of reference even though they’re not necessarily the same situation)
