Woohoo! Great things happen all at once, don't they!
Oh, it’s good to be back!
I hereby decree this to be SPOILERLAND!
Mike and Katherine seemed a little rushed. Katherine bounced back into old patterns, only with a lot less rage. There was a time she would have been right there slugging Porec, or tossing Fesmer off the mountain. She’s grown out of her rage, but not her walls.
Mike’s suggestion that ‘maybe it wasn’t a mistake’ was a bit of a surprise, but I can’t help but wonder if it was just a knee-jerk reaction that he didn’t really mean. I’ve said before that Mike is a natural Galahad, and maybe he feels a little guilty, given that he knew it was a mistake (Because of the timing if nothing else). If he was, then he might have read more into it than he meant to, because he felt it was the… for lack of a better word, the ‘honorable’ thing to do.
Arkahn and Mike achieved a measure of closure. And it wasn’t such a difficult road. It might have been, but it wasn’t the time, and then the moment passed. That happens. Mike and Arkahn are the ‘Might Have Been’, Mike and Katherine the ‘Never Was’… now if we could just straighten out ‘The One That Got Away…’
And speaking of Shauna Brown…
ARRRRRGH! The ending! Mike followed his instructions in all things, and he got what he wanted. Mike’s desperate enough to ‘get it right’ that he was willing to read the directions this time.
And it worked. So what the hell is he going to do now? Everyone asked him the question. Once he’s found her, what will he do? Mike’s Gone West around the whole world without knowing. The fact that she’ll probably be happier to see Porec than Mike is gonna stick in his craw. Mike oh so correctly pointed out that the next step depends largely on Shauna, and Ainorem only knows what happens next.
And speaking of Ainorem, that’s the new twist. Another thread unraveling. Well, what’s one more? When it was revealed that the spooky voices are not ancestral spirits, I got a real bad feeling, because there are very few other things that they could be.
Drayenmeyer is, if memory serves, a ‘weak point between worlds’. But we’re in a series about reality-shifting. That could suddenly mean many things. Think about it! The only seriously fantasy elements of the series are ‘Spirits of the Ancestors’, the ‘Undying’, and the Magic Spells. We’re just explained two of them as not being fantastical in a stroke, the third fitting into the real world seamlessly, if only in simulation.
The all knowing voices were whispering to Mike about a world ending and with it all the others, and there are at least two worlds that we know of. Shauna and Oren were making plans to ‘pull the stopper’ on another, or something to that effect.
The real question mark, as it has been the entire season, is Shauna. She’s got 900 years of resentments in her head right now, and depending on how that memory has stuck with her, she might be glad to see him, or she might consider him the enemy.
And if Mike’s going to play the ‘You Deserve A Choice’ card, swearing on a stack to Shauna that this isn’t an attack from her betrayers of 900 years, but a rescue… then having Fesmer blow up whole chunks of Sonsa will really set the record straight.
Fesmer just crossed a line. There are civilians in Sonsa, and given his hatred of the Legion, I’m not prepared to think that he was just mistaken. He’s been swiftly unraveling for the entire season, and the fact that he only seems comfortable with people who hate as much as he does, just enforces the fact.
Mike made a tactical error by saying so before they went in. Letting Fesmer know that he stood alone meant he didn’t have to worry about standing alone.
Shauna’s dream became a nightmare because there were so many agendas. Fesmer’s agenda is about to cost them big time. What Arkhan didn’t ask was the most important point. If the SpellBombs are the first part of an invasion, how far behind is the second part?
And the most horrifying part of it is, Shauna was about to give Fesmer everything he wanted. Unless I quite dramatically missed the point of 2.13, she was about to remove Oren for him, and usher in some Brave New World, under her own banner.
Unless baby Ainorem was trying to warn him of what I think she was, in which case there’s way more at stake than Mike’s unfinished business, and Fesmer’s blood feud.
Tune in Next Year to hear the most anticipated conversation of the series.
You can read more of Matt's work at mattstephens.me