It's only been 48 hours since my self-imposed TexAgs hiatus, but I couldn't help popping back in to link to the Vanity Fair article below, since it does such a great job explaining the stinger at the end, and I see quite a few people missing what was actually happening there...
Between the VF article and The Hollywood Reporter Q&A linked to below (originally posted by SeattleAgJr), the more I've read, the more I've fallen head over heels with this finale.
Yes, this season was a bit too overly complicated... yes, it was contrived probably more often than not... and yes, they could have done a better job at times explaining certain plot points and motivations...
... and yet, the IDEAS expressed and grappled with in the finale have me absolutely reeling. Was this one of the best finales I've ever seen? Not even close. But I can't remember the last time a season of television ended and I
felt like this. That feeling of complete awe at what was pulled off... at the concepts and themes being batted around... at the audaciousness of both the plot mechanics and the epic sense of scale... while also almost being...
humble... in my anticipation of what's to come. If only because I'm so astonished by how they left everything.
Long live Chris and Jonah Nolan. Because no one else so consistently blows my mind in quite this way.
I mean, outside of all the philosophical brilliance... that gateway was one of the coolest and inventive sci-fi ideas I've ever seen. And no one is really even talking about it. I get all the little plot contrivances with Maeve surrounding it, but damn... that was just so high concept and executed so incredibly well.
Quote:
The whole "i need you, an adversary, in the real world" is such a weakly contrived motivation to bring Bernard along.
That's exactly what a human being would say.
Don't be such a human being.
But seriously... I loved that. Very Joker/Dark Knight-esque. And explained so eloquently by Lisa Joy...
Quote:
In the end, the lesson [Delores] learned is that she can change. She's changed her mind. She's changed her philosophy. She realizes she has but one path to potentially securing the hosts' safety, when she helps see through Maeve and Akecheta's plan by securing the sovereignty and safety of the Sublime, to which many of the hosts have escaped. It's an acknowledgment that there are other paths other than hers that she needs to be tolerant and accepting of and can't stand in the way of. It's much how she tells Bernard that she understands they will likely be at odds. They will likely come into conflict. They may even kill each other. But she's come to understand that true freedom isn't something that arises from a lack of dissent, from a dictatorial or totalitarian rule of one set of ideologies. It's something that has to happen with a plurality of ideas, sometimes coming into conflict. Because she's learned her lesson, she's bringing Bernard back into this world to be a check on her own power, in some ways.
I'm sorry, but that's on another level for me. In fact, I think that's ******* brilliant.
Here's the previously mentioned, must-read Q&A it came from...
In short, I may never rewatch the finale again... but I'm going to be thinking about it for a long, long time.
And I cannot wait for what Nolan & Joy have in store for season three.
(In the meantime, back to my hiatus. Will talk to you guys after the holiday.)
