#and bringing them back was less tense than pike using a guaranteed divine intervention to resurrect vex

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

The wildest thing to me about Ashton's Deus Essek Machina resurrection is that Matt didn't even call a resurrection skill challenge for it, it was late and I may have missed it, but I don't think he even rolled as Essek to see if his contribution of raw dunamis would be enough. Essek intervened and Ashton simply... was revived, at the cost of Essek revealing himself to the Dynasty which had zero emotional impact on the Hells.

Which is nuts when considering that after she was resurrected Ashton asked Laudna: "What was it like to wake up and everyone was still there?" As after they fell out the window of Jiana Hexum's mansion when that burglary went bad the Nobodies bailed on them, and it was only Milo's intervention and impulsive use of a Potion of Possibility that saved him. How emotionally resonate would it have been for Ashton to fall again, and hear the voices of his friends calling him back to life, because they are STILL THERE and refuse to give up on them.

I'm not against having to have dunamacy involved in bringing Ashton back, delivered via Essek or otherwise, given the nature of how Milo saved him in the first place, but I think the stronger choice was to have that be what allowed the resurrection to proceed as normal, in much the same way freeing his soul from Orthax allowed the normal progression of Percy's first resurrection. Rather than what we got which was that Essek poured dunamacy into Ashton and they were immediately fine. There was the opportunity to sit in the moment of Ashton's friends not abandoning them this time and him getting to wake up to everyone still there, and it's bizarre that in a finale that ended up nearly 9 hours long, that we effectively fast forwarded through it.