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thegayhimbo · 8 days ago

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Stranger Things (1x03): “Holly Jolly” Review

I remember viewing this show for the first time on New Years Day in 2017. I managed to binge the whole season, but it was rough to get through. I was dealing with an ugly combination of anxiety and depression at the time (I still have those symptoms, but I have a better hold on them than I did 8 years ago), and even though this was a show set in the 80s (and I’m a big fan of 80s related media and aesthetics) I was ambivalent about whether or not I would like Stranger Things. By nature, I’m pretty reluctant to get into new shows, and it’s only been in the last few years I’ve started to overcome that. There were certain aspects in Stranger Things that set off my anxiety (particularly in regards to topics like bullying and abuse), and while I pushed through those issues at the time, it resulted in me only viewing that season once. Same thing happened for season 2. It wouldn’t be until season 4 came out in 2022 that I committed to doing a full rewatch of the entire show before the premiere.

I’m grateful I did at the time, and I’m glad I’m doing this again before season 5 drops. One of the nice things about rewatches is it helps you pick up aspects you missed the first time while also allowing you to reevaluate the show with a new perspective, especially with the knowledge of how later seasons will turn out. Having new life experiences as the years go by is also useful in allowing for a change in perception regarding certain characters or storylines.

Take Steve’s character for instance: I HATED Steve the first time I saw this show. So much to the point that when Jonathan beat the crap out of him three episodes from now, I was cheering, and saw it as long overdue karma. My feelings towards Steve mellowed by the season 1 finale when he came through for Nancy and Jonathan, but if you were to ask me who my least favorite character was at the time, I would have said him. I was at least willing to give Steve a chance in season 2 (which thankfully paid off) compared to characters like Troy, James, Tommy, and Carol whom I just wanted to go away and stay gone.

Viewing the show again, especially for these reviews, has helped me see a lot more clearly in regards to Steve’s character in season 1. There’s a lot of subtext, both in Joe Keery’s performance, and with the way Steve is written, that not only helps foreshadow Steve’s eventual redemption, but also establishes that the character had redeeming qualities to begin with. Compared to characters like Billy and Angela, who were bullies that got a sadistic kick out of cruelly putting down others, Steve’s reasons for his behavior, while not excusable, at least have more nuance and understandable context than I realized at the time.

Same thing goes for the whole show, especially with the release of season 4: I remember so many fans after season 3 (especially on Reddit and Tumblr) who turned negative towards the show, saying it should have ended at season 1, that the Duffer Brothers were just spinning their wheels and didn’t have a coherent story plan, and so on. It was hard NOT to get sucked into that mentality (Fandoms sadly bring out the worst in people). With the release of season 4, and the mytharc questions that are finally answered, a lot of those fan criticisms not only feel outdated, but just dead wrong. There is a clear plan for where the Duffer Brothers intended to take the story, and based on how season 4 ended, there is an endgame being built up to that I'm excited to see play out. I mentioned this to @skellybonesandtrees in my last review, but part of the reason for doing these reviews is untangling myself from past fandom perceptions, and looking at the show through my own perspective with my own opinions and theories.

Part 1: Barbara

Poor Barb. She really got the raw end of the stick this season. First, she goes to a party she had no interest in attending only because Nancy asked her to be there. Then she gets a cut on her thumb from being pressured into shotgunning a beer can. Then she’s left behind by Nancy for sex with Steve. Then she gets dragged into the Upside Down where she’s subjected to a gruesome and lonely death. It’s not a fate I’d wish on anyone (except maybe Angela).

I know there are people who complain about intercutting scenes of characters having sex while others get gruesomely murdered, and how tasteless and sleazy it is. In this case though, it serves a purpose further down the line: This is the moment that would forever taint Nancy and Steve’s relationship going forward. The same time Steve and Nancy officially consummate is when Barb dies alone, and it’s something that’s going to haunt Nancy for the rest of the series. Nancy already felt guilty about telling Barbara to go home beforehand, but it was easy to reassure herself at the time that she would see Barbara again at school and that she could explain to her that things turned out okay. Then Barbara doesn’t show up, and we see Nancy’s guilt turn to worry as she’s left imagining the worst: Did Barb run away (as Powell and Callahan snidely infer to Nancy in the next episode)? Was she kidnapped? Did she get attacked? Was the creature behind Steve’s house that Nancy sees later behind it? All of which leads her to telling her mom and Barb’s parents that she thinks something happened. Which it did. Even when Steve and Nancy later get back together, she’s still left wondering if she could have prevented Barb’s death by simply going with her, and that grief and guilt impacted her ability to be truly invested in any relationship with Steve. Four seasons later, she’s still feeling those emotions, and it’s something Vecna is all too eager to exploit:

With the revelation of Vecna and his connection to the hive mind, as well as what he specifically tells Nancy in “The Massacre at Hawkins Lab,” there isn’t any question that Vecna is the one who killed Barbara. What I’m curious about is whether he only acted through the Demogorgon he was controlling at the time, or if he was physically present in the pool with Barbara and did the deed himself. It’s a little murky since Barbara’s death doesn’t fit Vecna’s usual M.O. (i.e. limbs snapped and twisted, spine broken, eyes gouged out, etc), but that could easily be explained by wanting Barbara’s body to manufacture larvae that would eventually grow into future Demogorgons.

I talked about this in my review of The Other Side, but this is a big reason why I don’t subscribe to the theory that Vecna and the Mind Flayer only wanted Will to reproduce these creatures. They had plenty of other victims like Barbara (including the two hunters who disappear two episodes from now) that they could have taken and used if that’s what they were aiming for. Whatever reason for why Vecna and The Mind Flayer have a fixation on Will, it goes beyond that.

And while we’re on the subject of Will surviving and Barabara dying………..let’s discuss fan reactions towards Barbara’s death, and how that led to the #JusticeForBarb activism:

I remember watching season 1 for the first time, hoping that Barbara had survived, and being disappointed when she hadn’t. I also remember the fan fixation on Barbara’s death, and how it lead to a huge debate about whether the show was misogynistic in its treatment of female characters, about Fridging, and about the way Barbara’s death was treated by characters in-universe. I wasn’t even in the fandom at the time (I wouldn’t actually interact with people on social media until 2019), and even I was aware of this phenomenon when it happened. This was a big enough deal that the Duffer Brothers went to great lengths to address this in season 2, which is why we got the storyline of Nancy trying to avenge Barbara’s death and exposing Hawkins Lab in the process.

I’m just going to state this point-blank: I do NOT believe, nor have I ever believed, that Stranger Things is misogynistic. Not in its presentation, and certainly not in its treatment of female characters. I believe the show has explored themes of misogyny (internal and external) in relation to characters like Nancy, El, Karen, Joyce, and Max, along with their respective arcs, but that isn’t the same thing as indulging in hatred or condescension towards women. Girls and Women on this show have fleshed-out personalities, they have motivations beyond simply being the “Sexy Lamp” love interest to the male characters, and they’ve been allowed to have vulnerabilities and character flaws that help them avoid falling into the “Strong Independent Woman” caricature that Hollywood promotes, or even the “Mary Sue” stereotype. By the standards of other TV shows and movies with female characters, Stranger Things looks pretty damn progressive.

This is a horror show, and characters are inevitably going to die, regardless of their gender. Two episodes ago, Benny got violently murdered just because he was in the same room with El. Two episodes from now, we’re going to learn about the two hunters (Dale and Henry) who also become victims of the Demogorgon. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in regards to character deaths that are forthcoming.

Barbara’s death is tragic and sad (just like Benny’s), but for fans to imply it’s only because of misogyny is not just insulting and patronizing, it’s missing the forest for the trees: Vecna is established as a misanthropic genocidal monster who views all humans as one in the same, couldn’t care less about gender, race, sexual orientation, social class, etc, and wants humanity wiped off the face of the Earth. We don’t know the reasons yet for why he wanted Will alive, but it’s fair to say it wasn’t out of the pure goodness of his heart.

As for the accusations of Fridging…………if the Duffer Brothers had gone with the original Montauk script, where Barbara barely had any personality beyond her interest in Nancy’s crush on Steve, was just there to drive Nancy to the bonfire party, and was immediately killed off in the first episode with barely anyone noticing, then I could understand that accusation. However, that’s not the version of Barbara we got in the final product. We had several episodes to get to know her where we saw that, while she wanted to be supportive of Nancy, she wasn’t above voicing her concerns, had zero interest in kissing up to the popular crowd (and even expressed contempt for individuals like Tommy and Carol), and was one of the few people next to Nancy who was concerned for Jonathan over Will’s disappearance. Supplementary Materials like Rebel Robin (both the book and the podcast) added on to Barbara’s character, both in showing that she was progressive for a high school student in the 1980s (i.e. knowing about Mr. Hauser’s homosexuality, but keeping it a secret for his sake), and demonstrating how she was a genuinely kind person overall. I’m not surprised Nancy and Barbara were friends for as long as they were:

As for the complaints about how Barbara was forgotten by everyone except Nancy (not helped by that stupid SNL skit), that's really taking things out-of-context.

First off, at this point in the episode, Barbara was barely missing for 24 hours the same way Will had been missing for several days, and everyone had assumed she was somewhere else during that time. It wasn’t until Nancy came clean to her mom and Barbara’s parents that they were even aware about her disappearance.

Second, Brenner and Hawkins Lab weren’t aware at the time of Barbara’s disappearance when they were faking Will’s death with a dummy. When it was brought to their attention later on, they took care of it: Barbara’s car disappeared, and the story was put out that she ran away. I know the SNL skit tapped into fandom outrage at the time (“NO BODY FOR BARB! NO FUNERAL FOR BARB!”), but let’s think critically about this for a minute: What would have happened if the Lab faked a body for Barbara like they did for Will? How were they going to present it in a way that didn't create awkward questions? There’s already a kid who disappeared, and a man who was murdered that was staged to look like a suicide. Assuming they presented a dummy to look like Barbara's corpse, would anyone actually believe Barbara’s death was a random accident at that point? Or would people start to suspect there’s was a serial killer in the area, and that these death’s weren’t just a coincidence? Given Hopper has dealt with a serial killer in the past (as demonstrated in the prequel Darkness on the Edge of Town), I’m gonna wager he would have seen through this immediately and launched a full-scale investigation. He was already suspicious of Hawkins Lab and what they were hiding to begin with, and the last thing Brenner wanted was to draw attention to a situation he was desperately trying to contain.

Third, out of all the main characters on this show, Barbara had the closest relationship with Nancy. Therefore, it makes sense that Nancy is the one who’d be expressing the most concern for Barbara's whereabouts during this time. Jonathan and Steve barely knew her (at least that’s the impression from their brief interactions with each other), and it’s questionable if Mike, Lucas, or Dustin knew her beyond simply being Nancy’s best friend. It’s not a case of others not caring for Barbara’s fate; it’s that characters like Jonathan, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas didn’t know her as well as Nancy did, and they were fixated on finding Will because they had a closer relationship with him.

I know this is lengthy, and I will talk more about Barbara in future reviews, but I wanted to give my due diligence to her character because she deserves to be discussed. That being said, let’s move on to the other teenagers.

Part 2: Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve

Even before I saw this scene for the first time, I could already predict from the previous episode that Steve was going to find out about the photos and there would be an ugly confrontation with Jonathan. I remember feeling frustrated with Jonathan and wishing he'd destroyed the photos he took (or at very least, only develop the photos related to his investigation into Will’s disappearance while destroying the photos of the pool party). And to develop them at the school where someone (in this case, Nicole) was going to inevitably see them, and run to tell Steve, Tommy, and Carol. Ugh! 😖

I’ve already made my feelings clear in the previous review over what I thought about Jonathan taking the photos, but just in case it needs to be said again: This wasn’t a deal-breaker in terms of liking his character. Yes, it was creepy and wrong, but the show acknowledged it as such, Jonathan later apologized for it, and he hasn’t done anything like that since. I know there are fans who want to beat this dead horse, but I’m not interested in joining in. It’s fucking trite constantly going over past wrongdoings.

In regards to Steve’s behavior in this scene, my feelings are mixed.

On the one hand, I don’t begrudge Steve for being angry about this. If someone was taking photographs of me without my knowledge or consent, I would be furious enough to want to smash their camera or phone. I cannot begin to express how enraging I find it when I hear stories about videos circulating on TikTok of people who were unknowingly filmed without their knowledge or consent, and those videos are later posted without their permission so the user who filmed them can rake up their view count. Doubly so if the people in those videos are being humiliated. It’s creepy, exploitative, and gross on so many levels. It’s another reason why I have such a negative reaction to the Rink-O-Mania scene in season 4: It wasn’t just enough for Angela to have her face smashed in. I wanted El to take the video camera that Angela’s friends used to film El’s humiliation, and beat the shit out of them with it until it broke.

On top of that, it’s noteworthy that, unlike Tommy and Carol who are just there for shits and giggles, Steve looks genuinely pissed:

So I get Steve’s anger and why he came after Jonathan over this issue. I’m NOT saying it was okay how he handled it, but it’s a lot more complex beyond Steve-Antis claiming that Steve wanted an excuse to bully Jonathan. As I've discussed before, nothing in the show or supplementary materials has ever given the impression that Steve targeted Jonathan for the LULZ the same way Angela did with El. The most he had for Jonathan beforehand was indifference.

Where Steve loses me, however, is when Nancy shows up. Like I said, I can understand Steve smashing Jonathan’s camera in anger, but the way the camera-breaking happens here makes it look like Steve was showboating for the benefit of Nancy and his friends. Doubly so for Nancy since I’m sure he wanted to emphasize to her that he was being a protective boyfriend. However, that’s not how it came off to Nancy. If anything, Nancy looks upset that this is even taking place at all.

It does introduce a self-absorbed side to Steve that isn’t pleasant to watch, and is something that turns Nancy off from him (even if she doesn’t vocalize it). It doesn’t cancel out the genuine concern Steve has for her (which we see when Nancy later leaves to go look for Barb), but it’s not a good look either.

What is interesting though is seeing Steve’s reaction to the aftermath of having sex with Nancy. Not only did Steve NOT tell anyone about their affair, but he still wants a relationship with her. Compared to Montauk!Steve, who would have immediately dumped Nancy and bragged to everyone and their dog about the details of his sexual conquest, Steve's quick to reassure Nancy here about her anxieties. Even the scene where Steve points to a butterfly sticker on Nancy’s locker (a not-so-subtle metaphor for Nancy losing her virginity and “transforming” in the process) is depicted as a sweet moment.

There’s also Steve’s interactions with Tommy and Carol. I didn’t pick this up first time around since I pegged all three of them as one in the same in terms of personality, but rewatching season 1 again has helped me pick up subtext regarding how uncomfortable Steve is with Tommy and Carol’s mean-spirited jokes, as well as how they seem to use Steve. We got hints of that in the previous episode (like Steve’s reaction to Tommy and Carol banging in his parents room), but we see it further when Tommy is a dick to Nancy at lunch and Steve tells him to knock it off, or Steve's unimpressed reaction to the gross cracks Tommy and Carol make about Mr. Mundy. The way Joe Keery plays Steve in these scenes conveys that he's bothered by how Tommy and Carol act, but grits his teeth for the sake of their friendship. That is NOT something that will last down the line as they continue to show no respect for anyone else’s boundaries.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people on social media act the way Tommy and Carol do, and then they wonder why others get fed up with their behavior and cut them off. 😒

Finally, in regards to Nancy and Jonathan, I will talk more about their interactions as they develop in later episodes, but if there’s one good thing that came out of the camera incident (even if it was unintentional), it’s that Jonathan got the photo of Barbara with the Demogorgon in the background, and Nancy was quick enough to notice and pocket the pieces of the photo. Nancy was already conveying in her body language that she wasn’t happy about what Steve was doing with Jonathan, but considering she was already worried for Barbara during all of this, and then saw that photo, I can understand why Nancy was willing to overlook the camera incident, and why she didn’t hold it against Jonathan.

Part 3: El and Brenner

One of the inspirations for Stranger Things, according to the Duffer Brothers, was an anime called Elfen Lied. Originally a Manga that ran between 2002-2005, it was adapted into an anime show released in 2004 consisting of 13 episodes and 1 OVA that lasted one season. It centered around a secret laboratory on an island that experimented with Diclonius, a mutated human-like species with horns growing out of their heads and invisible arms known as “vectors” that they use to kill humans, levitate objects, or slice through anything that stands in their way. Because Diclonii can spread their mutation through their vectors touching male humans, they are kept quarantined (and in most cases, killed) to prevent them from infecting humans and overrunning the population. One night, a Diclonius named Lucy, believed to be the Queen Bee of the species, manages to escape from the Lab (we later find out she received assistance via Professor Kakuzawa, the son of the Director overseeing the Program), slaughtering multiple people in the process, before getting shot by an anti-tank rifle, knocking her into the ocean and allowing her to escape.

The impact of the bullet, combined with trauma she’s endured during her lifetime (and even perpetrated), causes her to develop a split personality: Lucy, the ruthless Diclonius with her memories intact, and Nyu, a childish persona with no understanding of the world. She is taken in by a university student named Kohta (whom Lucy is later revealed to have known in the past as a child) and his cousin Yuka. The rest of the anime deals with Kohta and Yuka aiding Lucy/Nyu and helping her adjust to life at their home, all while government agents attempt to hunt her down and send other Diclonii like Nana/Number 7 and Mariko/Number 35 to deal with her.

There is a lot in relation to story, themes, and characters from Elfen Lied that works its way into the fabric of Stranger Things, not just in this season, but in season 4 as well. This episode especially pays homage to certain elements from the anime.

Take for instance the scene when El finds Nancy’s music box with the spinning ballerina, and how it mirrors Lucy/Nyu's fascination with a music box Kohta owned that played a soothing melody she liked:

The music box in Stranger Things was more of a curiosity for El and one of many interesting things she found in Nancy’s room, especially given she had next to nothing at the Lab AND this is the first time she’s aware of an older girl like Nancy and wants to know what she's like. The music box in Elfen Lied is a recurring plot element that foreshadows how Lucy knew Kohta in the past, and that they once shared a childhood friendship:

In regards to Lucy’s character, while there are parallels that can be drawn between her and El (particularly when it comes to their abusive upbringings, how they were treated as freaks for most of their lives, and the similarities between Lucy’s hellish experience in school and El’s miserable time in Lenora), it’s pretty disquieting how much Lucy and Vecna resemble each other in terms of personality and backstory. Even the play The First Shadow has certain story elements that come from this anime, particularly with how the childhood friendship between Lucy and Kohta mirrors Henry/One/Vecna’s childhood relationship with Patty Newby.

For this reason, I will save the more in-depth discussions about Lucy and Elfen Lied’s themes and motifs when I review season 4.

For now, I want to focus on the parallel that is obvious in this episode between Elfen Lied and Stranger Things: The relationship between Dr. Brenner and El, and how it mirrors the relationship between Nana/Number 7 and Dr. Kurama.

There are plenty of inspirations for Brenner’s character that will be discussed in later reviews, but Dr. Kurama is a big one: While he isn’t the head of the Laboratory (that would be the Director) he is a senior scientist who was hired through his connections to Professor Kakuzawa, and helps oversee the experimentation on the Diclonii. Unlike Brenner, who was trying to create as many special kids as possible via Henry/One/Vecna’s blood, Dr. Kurama’s motivation is to find out how the Diclonii spread their mutation and whether there’s a cure or an origin point for the mutation. He was also not above mercy-killing Diclonii babies, which he (and everyone else in the Program) viewed as a necessary evil to prevent the spread of the mutation and save the parents from their Diclonii children growing up and slaughtering them the first chance they got. Unlike Brenner, who specifically went out of his way to assert control over the special kids like El and made sure he was the dominant authority figure in their lives, Dr. Kurama’s connection to the Diclonius is tenuous as best. Lucy and Number 3 hate him, and Number 3 even infected him out of spite, which would later lead to his wife getting pregnant with Mariko/Number 35, another Diclonius that he has limited control over. The only Diconlius who really followed Dr. Kurama’s every word, and was desperate for his approval, was Nana/Number 7. And just like with El, Nana/Number 7 was conditioned to see Dr. Kurama as her “Papa” as a means of surviving the experimentation done on her while giving her something to live for.

The best way I know how to describe Dr. Kurama in relation to Brenner is that he’s a slightly more sympathetic take on Brenner's character (but only slightly). For all of his flaws, Kurama was genuinely invested in preventing loss of human life, and even showed concern for the well-being and safety of his staff, which contrasts sharply with the cold, dismissive attitude Brenner had towards employees who worked under him (as we see in the flashback with how Brenner steps over the bodies of the orderlies El killed just so he can reward El’s use of her powers with his affection). Unlike Brenner, who deluded himself towards the end of his life into thinking he was a good person and a loving “Papa” to the special kids, Dr. Kurama has no delusions. He knows he’s a hypocrite and that his actions towards the Diclonius were monstrous. And despite having killed plenty of Diclonii babies over the protests of their fathers, he was unwilling to do it for his own Diclonii daughter Mariko (albeit because his dying wife begged him not to as a last favor to her) and kept Mariko/Number 35 locked in solitary confinement with a bomb implanted into her because of Mariko’s psychopathic tendencies.

Neither Brenner nor Kurama are winning “Father of the Year” awards anytime soon, but at least Kurama takes responsibility for his role in the person Mariko/Number 35 became and for the damage he caused (which Brenner absolutely refused to do, even towards the end of his life). And while Brenner’s relationship with El was based complete control over her and her powers, with the implication he wanted to live vicariously through the greatness she was born with (at least from what Vecna infers about Brenner in S4), Dr. Kurama’s relationship with Nana/Number 7 was a lot more complicated. Yes, he used her to bring Lucy back, but when that failed and she lost her limbs as a result, not only did Dr. Kurama provide her with new artificial limbs, but he goes against the orders of the Director to terminate her for outliving her usefulness, and orchestrates Nana/Number 7's freedom from the Lab while providing her with money to survive.

As for Nana/Number 7, she eventually gets a second chance at an ordinary life when she's taken in by Kohta and Yuka (and even makes her peace with Lucy in the series finale despite what she did to her), but she still maintains that daughterly affection for Dr. Kurama. This contrasts with El, who outgrows her dependence on Dr. Brenner’s approval over the course of the series, and (rightfully) comes to view Brenner as a monster for what he did to her, her mother, Henry/One/Vecna, and the other special kids.

One aspect they kept from both the anime and Stranger Things was El’s aversion to hurting animals, similar to Lucy’s aversion to killing dogs. The scene with the cat and El at the Lab takes on a much different context come season 4 when we’ve seen what Henry/One/Vecna did as a child to the animals and pets around Hawkins. It wasn’t just about testing El’s powers on the cat the same way she did with the Coke can, but seeing if she could reach into the cat's mind and consume it the way Vecna would've:

I’m curious if Brenner assumed El finally did this when she killed the orderlies who were going to lock her up, and that’s why he awarded her with affection. If that’s the case, he’s dead wrong. El certainly killed them, but I seriously doubt she consumed them the way Vecna would have. There seems to be a very specific ritual to do that, and El did not follow that pattern. It’s even questionable if she knows how to, or if Brenner ever taught her how to based on his time with Vecna. In any case, it does act as future foreshadowing that El was NOT the one who killed the other kids at Hawkins Lab, no matter how many red herrings the Duffer Brothers planted in season 4 pointing to her.

Another call-forward to season 4 comes in the conversation Mike and El have later when El infers that Mike has been bullied and implies that the same thing has happened to her in the past:

Mike: I was tripped by this mouth breather, Troy, okay? Eleven: Mouth breather? Mike: Yeah, you know…..a dumb person. A knucklehead. Eleven: Knucklehead? Mike: I don’t know why I just didn’t tell you. Everyone at school knows. I just didn’t want you to think I was such a wastoid, you know? Eleven: Mike… Mike: Yeah? Eleven: I understand.

Conversations like this make me question how much El remembers prior to Vecna’s banishment to the Upside Down in 1979. She apparently recalls the tunnel Vecna showed her that she would later use to escape, and this conversation implies that she remembers being viciously bullied at the Lab. However, she doesn’t seem to remember the massacre itself at this point, or even Henry/One/Vecna for that matter. It makes me question what Brenner told her about the fates of the other special kids. Did he just not say anything? Did he tell her they all died, but wouldn’t give specifics? In any case, the fact El later believes she’s the one who killed them, and that Brenner never made any attempt to dissuade her from that belief (at least not until she completed her work with The Nina Project), is just one more example of him being an abusive figure in her life.

Part 4: Searching For Will (Mike, Lucas, and Dustin)

To call these scenes the highlight of this episode would be fair. In fact, if I were to pick the arc I was most invested in during season 1, it was the one pertaining to the boys and El and their attempts to find Will. They have a certain charm to them that holds up, and it’s nice seeing different inspirations from other media that were used to make the friendships between these characters work. One of those inspirations that’s present in this episode (and paid homage to in later episodes) is Stand By Me.

Stand By Me is a 1986 coming-of-age movie by Rob Reiner, which was adapted from a Stephen King story called The Body. It centers around four boys named Gordon, Chris, Teddy, and Vern who, in the summer of 1959, hear about a body of a missing boy named Ray Brower in the woods. Believing they can get famous and appear on TV if they find the body, the four boys venture into the woods to look for it. However, during the journey, they're forced to confront hard truths about their lives and what the future holds for them. It’s a bittersweet story, but one of Stephen King’s best, both in terms of his books and the movie adaptations based on them.

Also, for those fans who whine about characters like Lucas being politically incorrect this season, Stand By Me is a helluva lot more crass with how its characters talks about sensitive subjects. At the same time though, it comes off as how boys in the 1950s would’ve talked, and there’s a refreshing honesty with how the movie tackles hard topics like death, bullying, and ostracization that isn’t patronizing.

The main arc here for Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and even El to some degree, has its roots in Stand By Me, along with other 70s and 80s movies dealing with friendships and the ups and downs of them (The Goonies, Breaking Away, etc). The common theme in each one involves an adventure where the characters are forced to do some inner soul-searching, either regarding their flaws or problems going on in their own lives, and come out stronger and wiser in the process. It doesn’t magically make all their issues go away, but they at least are able to deal with them better than before.

In this episode, the journey has just begun. We have Dustin showing up with the snacks (which El later eats) and we have Lucas show up with all of his dad’s gear from Vietnam: Binoculars, Army Knife, Hammer, Camouflage Bandana, Slingshot. He came prepared. Or as prepared as he could be.

Both the show and supplementary materials (like the comic Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons and the novel Lucas on the Line) have subtly alluded to Lucas’s interest in what happened to his dad in Vietnam, despite his dad’s reluctance to talk about it. Given that Hawkins will likely become a war zone in the final season, especially with the military present, I’m wondering if that aspect could come into play, either through Lucas’s father getting an expanded role in putting his military experience to work (to help the Party of course, not Colonel Sullivan), or through Lucas finding out about what his father went through in Vietnam and putting that knowledge to use in helping to defeat the Mind Flayer’s army. Unlike Teddy from Stand By Me, Lucas has the athletics similar to Steve to be able to fight back (which we see him do against Billy and Jason in later seasons), is good at improvising, and could even get his father’s help in combat ideas. There’s a juicy story here for Lucas that the Duffer Brothers could explore in season 5 if they grab it by the horns. Lord knows that whenever they’ve given Lucas his own arcs, not only do they turn out to be great, they actually result in some neat character development that carries over into other seasons (just like with Steve).

In any case, the boys and El set out on their late night adventure, but unlike Stand By Me, where there’s a whole lot of introspection and deep conversations the characters have BEFORE they find the body, they end up finding Will’s body a lot quicker than they anticipated. Or so it appears:

I know this moment for many people was emotional, but for me, I didn’t buy for a second that Will was truly dead. I was skeptical about Barbara’s survival (especially because the Demogorgon was in the pool with her and we saw her get dragged under), but Will’s staged death here was easy to see through. This was only Episode 3, and we had 5 more to get through at this point. Considering how much emphasis the show had placed on flashbacks to Will prior to this, as well as Joyce’s entire arc in this episode, it would have been premature to assume he was dead because it would have rendered all of that moot.

Like I said, the parallels between this season and movies like Stand By Me are still there. They may be taking aspects of the story out-of-order as a subversion, but the journey Mike, Dustin, and Lucas undergo where they have to do some serious introspection is yet to come. And the journey to find Will and save him isn’t over yet.

Part 5: Joyce, Karen, and Holly

Ever since the Stranger Things Spoilers account on Twitter/X began releasing BTS photos for season 5 while placing a huge emphasis on Holly, it has inspired me to look closer at Holly’s role in the first four seasons. Particularly of note are the photos they released of Holly and Vecna at what appears to be the Creel House.

This makes me question whether Vecna and Holly are interacting for the first time here, or if that’s been a thing as early as season 1 and the audience is only now being made aware of it.

Take Holly’s scene at Joyce’s house for instance: The way Holly is lured into Will's room by the flashing lights before something starts to break through the wall makes me think it was Vecna doing this in that moment. I seriously doubt Will is the one who lured her, especially because he wouldn’t ever do anything to endanger Mike’s sister like that with the Demogorgon lurking about:

The last frame catches my eye because that doesn’t look like the Demogorgon’s mouth. That looks like a large hand. It’s possible it could be the monster’s hand, but what if it was Vecna’s?

I want to talk a little about Karen since, aside from her unhappy marriage to Ted, she doesn’t really get as much focus on this show like she should. Regardless of her flaws, I've always appreciated how she’s one of the few parents on this show to be emotionally available to her kids. We see that in her interactions with Nancy at the beginning when she’s upset about Nancy coming home late but also implores Nancy to talk with her, an offer Nancy takes her up on when she realizes Barbara is missing and might be in danger. We also see it at the end of this episode with her and Mike after Mike comes home in tears thinking Will is dead:

Personally, I feel like the show made a mistake not including Karen in the line-up of adults (Joyce, Hopper, Bob, Murray, etc) who find out about the Upside Down and what’s been going on with her kids. That will likely get explored in season 5 now that the Gate is open, but we could have gotten it so much sooner as opposed to dragging out her loveless relationship with Ted or her inappropriate crush on Billy (which was never going to amount to anything). I like that she gives good advice to her kids, and that we see hidden depths to her character beyond simply being a shallow, superficial housewife.

Finally, there’s Joyce. It should go without saying that her picking up on Will’s ability to communicate through the lights was inspired, and it led to this iconic and clever set design on her part:

The Duffer Brothers have talked extensively in interviews about the different inspirations for Joyce, from Richard Dreyfuss’s character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to Hugh Jackman’s character in Prisoners, to Jack Nicholson’s iconic role of Jack Torrance in The Shining. Each of these characters share the same trait of obsession and myopic fixation, to the point that it begins to impact their lives and alienates loved ones around them. The plot of Prisoners especially is central to this show, with both focusing on the disappearance of a child and a parent’s determination to get their kid back no matter the cost.

I will talk more about Prisoners and The Shining in later reviews as Joyce’s story develops, but Close Encounters of the Third Kind is relevant here, particularly with Joyce’s behavior. In that movie, Dreyfuss’s character, named Roy Neary, is one of many people who has a “close encounter” one night with a UFO, resulting in him getting half his face sunburnt and developing an obsession with the image of a particular shape that’s been implanted in his head by the aliens. What follows is Roy’s fixation on said image and what it means (later revealed to be Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, where the aliens establish contact with humans) at the expense of his family. His behavior becomes so unhinged and nonsensical to the point his wife takes their kids and flees to her sister’s house.

I saw this movie for the first time back in 2015, and even rewatching it years later for this review, I was never able to connect with Roy and found him unsympathetic. His abandonment of his family (whom we never see again once his wife drives off with the kids) left a sour taste in my mouth, and it made him look like an irresponsible parent. Steven Spielberg (who wrote and directed the movie) admitted later he wasn’t a fan of how he wrote Roy’s character, and would change it if he could to have Roy stay with his family, indicating even he came to recognize the problems with how this aspect of the character was handled.

All of this makes me question why the Duffer Brothers made Roy’s character and mannerism the centerpiece for Joyce’s character. Joyce is obsessed with getting her son back alive (as I’d imagine any parent would be in her situation) and while her behavior looks irrational on the surface to people like Jonathan or Karen, she isn’t trying to drag people into her fixation the same way Roy did in the movie (as we see when she demands Karen and Holly leave her house out of fear the monster may attack them). And unlike Roy, who discards his family by the end of the movie in favor of boarding the alien ship, Joyce establishes she does care for Jonathan and is trying to balance supporting him while looking for Will.

Funny enough, I would say Joyce has similarities to the character of Jillian Guiler. In the movie, Jillian has a three-year-old son named Barry who also sees the UFOs with his mother. Later, in an extremely creepy scene, the UFOs show up at her house, causing the electricity and appliances to go haywire (similar to the electromagnetic fluctuations that happen whenever something from the Upside Down is near) and her son gets taken by the aliens. Like Roy, she has the obsession with getting to Devil’s Tower at any cost. Unlike Roy though, where it comes off like he’s looking to have his obsession validated and therefore show he was in the right for how he acted, Jillian’s motivation to find her son provides a more sympathetic context to her actions, and makes it easier to relate to her. I would argue that sympathetic context also applies to Joyce, which is why the parallels with Jillian work better than they do with Roy.

As for Joyce’s situation with the monster in her walls, am I the only on who saw similarities to the video game Silent Hill 4?

Again, the Duffer Brothers have cited Silent Hill video games as inspiration for the show, particularly in relation to the Upside Down. I find it interesting how Joyce's story in season 1 parallels that particular game. The premise of Silent Hill 4 centers around a man named Henry Townsend who moves into an apartment that turns out to be haunted, resulting in him being locked inside and cut off from other people. All the while, he begins to have nightmares, and eventually finds a hole in his bathroom that allows him to travel to certain locations that turn out to have a connection to a serial killer and his victims.

There’s a lot here (particularly in regards to the killer and how he mirrors Vecna in his motives and the mindscapes both of them inhabit) that factors into season 4, but the main theme of Henry Townsend and Joyce being isolated from others while there’s a monster in their walls is notable. In Henry Townsend’s case, it’s supernatural (and even acts as a metaphor for how closed off he is from people due to being an introvert). In Joyce’s case, it’s self-imposed. She is able to leave her house, but doesn’t want to because Will is there, and she intends to stay there until he is found, regardless of how crazy her behavior looks to everyone else.

Part 6: Hopper’s Investigation

That reference from Powell about Hawkins Lab being “Emerald City” gave me a chuckle. The Wizard of Oz movie doesn’t dive too deep into the politics of Oz (I can’t speak for the books because I haven’t read them), but compared to the letdown of the Wizard being the “Man Behind the Curtain,” what lurking behind the curtain at Hawkins Lab would not be nearly as disappointing. Even Callahan’s snide remarks about “space weapons” pales in comparison to the horrors we’ve seen from this building.

In any case, I’d argue if you were going to draw parallels between this show and Oz, then the play Wicked, and its 2024 movie adaptation, would be your best reference. The way the authorities in Emerald City and the Wizard are depicted in those adaptations, with their sinister motivations, works a lot better as a parallel to the shady shit Hawkins Lab was engaging in, particularly its ties to MKUltra.

Speaking of which, this is the first episode that goes into the MKUltra program and how it connects to Hawkins Lab, specifically El’s mom, Terry Ives.

MKUltra was a real life human experimentation program created by the CIA which dealt with the use of different drugs and psychological warfare to control and manipulate human behavior. Mind Control and brainwashing were key themes in the program, particularly the idea of erasing someone’s entire personality and creating a new one through drugging, psychological torture, operant conditioning, all with the purpose of making that person susceptible to suggestions from the person exerting control over them. The proverbial Manchurian Candidate, if you will.

The program had its origins from the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), which was created from different branches of the military during WWII. This would eventually lead to the development of the CIA in 1947. While there were shady experiments done during this period, some of which were inspired by the Nazi’s experimentation of Jews with different drugs like mescaline during the Holocaust, it wouldn’t be until 1953 that the program officially became MKUltra. Some of the Nazi scientists, like Dr. Kurt Plotner, who oversaw the mescaline experiments on Jews, not only were recruited by the United States under Operation Paperclip, but were also encourage to continue their research, which was eerie foreshadowing for how MKUltra went forward with its research: Unethical human experimentation based on mind control and the use of drugs (about 125 different types were tested), stimulation techniques of the brain, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, you name it. There’s a video that goes more in depth about what kind of experiments took place:

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One of the drugs used in the program was LSD, the same one Terry Ives took during her experiments at Hawkins Lab when she was pregnant with El. During the 60s, CIA specifically funded research into LSD to see how it enhanced the consciousness of a person. While the purpose was centered around making someone susceptible, either so they would spill information that the interrogator wanted, or to create a new personality within the subject, both season 1 and the novel Suspicious Minds (which is arguably non-canon at this point) implied that LSD was one of many drugs that could break down reality barriers set on the mind and allow those people to see other worlds beyond this one. It’s the idea that a mental gate is opened via the drug, which allows the mind to connect to different worlds and realities, including the Upside Down.

Unfortunately, while this idea was touched upon in the show, it’s not one the Duffer Brothers ran with. As we see with season 4 and The First Shadow, the reason El and other special kids like Kali/Eight have powers is because Brenner took Henry’s blood (which was altered due to transporting to the Upside Down as a child and encountering the Mind Flayer) and did blood transfusions to create multiple kids. In El’s case, Terry was likely given a blood transfusion without her knowledge or consent while pregnant during those times she was experimenting with LSD at Hawkins Lab. Pretty much in line with how unethical everything about this was to begin with.

MKUltra’s research allegedly stopped in 1973 due to distrust with the government that arose publicly after the Watergate scandal, resulting in thousands of documents related to MKUltra being destroyed to prevent a full investigation. What followed were a series of committee investigations into the CIA by the U.S. Congress, and even lawsuits from people who were test subjects in the program and were given certain drugs without their consent. Some of that is alluded to in the newspaper clippings Hopper and Powell view at the Library regarding Terry Ives’s attempts to sue Brenner and get El back:

Some people might question how Hawkins Lab is even able to be around at this point in the show (1983), but considering the shadiness and illegality of these government programs to begin with, as well as how there’s a history of programs starting out one way before it’s succeeded by another (similar to how Project Artichoke became MKUltra and MKUltra spawned other government sanctioned programs like MKNAOMI), I wouldn’t be surprised if Hawkins Lab became a program of its own that was off-the-books and pretended to distance itself from MKUltra, all while keeping the same ideology and techniques as its predecessor. It reminds me of the illegal CIA Treadstone program from the Jason Bourne movies. Treadstone was decommissioned after it got exposed in the first movie, but a new program called “Blackbriar” was introduced immediately afterwards, with the same people brought on board and continuing the goals of the previous program.

Part 7: Song Choices

For this episode, there were two key songs featured: “Waiting for a Girl Like You” by Foreigner, and “Heroes” by Peter Gabriel.

“Waiting for a Girl Like You” is self-explanatory in its lyrics. The song deals with the narrator who’s been desperately looking for love, all while dealing with crippling loneliness in the process, and finally finds it with a girl that he can connect with. Given this song plays while Steve and Nancy have sex, the impression is Steve believes that he’s finally succeeded in finding someone (Nancy) who loves him and that he can truly love and have a meaningful relationship with.

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I will talk more about the relationship between Nancy and Steve, as well as the entire Steve/Nancy/Jonathan love triangle that exists in the first two seasons (and is sadly brought back for season 4) in later reviews. For now, I will say that, given everything that happens later, the impression on rewatch is that Steve’s belief is misplaced and Nancy isn’t the girl for him. He will eventually find love, but it won’t be with her.

“Heroes” by Peter Gabriel is the song everyone remembers from this episode. It’s also featured in the season 3 finale “The Battle of Starcourt.”

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The song used in the show is a remix of the David Bowie version. The original version was recorded at Hansa Tonstudios in West Berlin in 1977, during the time Germany was split East and West by the Berlin Wall. The lyrics themselves depict two lovers on opposite ends of the wall who desire to be together, with the aspiration to transcend the boundaries that keep them apart (“swimming with dolphins” being a metaphor for freedom). David Bowie later would reference his producer, Tony Visconti, and his backup singer, Antonia Maass, as inspirations for the song, including the love the two of them shared at the time and how they would kiss by the Berlin Wall. There's a whole article here that goes more in-depth about this topic.

The song itself has been subjected to multiple interpretations about whether it’s optimistic or pessimistic. In both “Holly Jolly” and “The Battle of Starcourt,” the song plays at the end of both episodes during moments when it was believed a loved one died. In “Holly Jolly,” it plays after Will’s body is supposedly found in the quarry. In “The Battle of Starcourt,” it’s played after El reads Hopper’s letter following his supposed death while she’s moving to Lenora. It’s a downer song in the moment that becomes bittersweet in hindsight knowing that both Will and Hopper survived and are fighting their way back. Even the lyric “We can be heroes just for one day” is applicable to pretty much all the main characters. The idea that anyone, regardless of their circumstances, has the potential to be heroic, even if it’s just for a day, which is a recurring theme Stranger Things does an excellent job conveying.

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lassieposting · 7 months ago

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God okay so, as a movie/show fan who’s never actually read the vast extended universe of books, this meta explains so much about Sauron’s characterisation in ROP.

Like. He is absolutely riddled with red flags for someone with serious complex trauma. I picked up on it the very first time I watched the show; it’s what got me Begrudgingly Invested, even though I hate Amazon and I really wanted to hate their take on Middle Earth. But what I didn’t understand was why, because at no point in the movies or the show do we ever see Sauron involved in a situation or a dynamic that would create those red flags. But if Morgoth inflicted such a horrific punishment on him that he was either imprisoned or in no state to fight for the entire War of Wrath? Yeah, that starts to makes sense.

(Long and rambling dissection of the trauma markers and how they could relate back to this meta under the cut)

Doormat Tendencies

This is a recurring theme throughout the season: Sauron is an immensely powerful divine being – arguably the most powerful divine being outside of Valinor – but he consistently defers to Galadriel on basically everything, even to the point of giving up on his own plans, and he does it with very little fuss.

1x02: He asks her for a heading for the raft, even though he’ll later claim that he had his own plans.

1x03 – 1x06: He wants to stay in Númenor. She wants him to return to Middle Earth. He returns to Middle Earth.

1x03 – 1x06: He just wants to find work as a smith. She wants him to claim the crown of the Southlands. He ends up taking the crown.

1x08: He wants redemption. She tells him it’s too late, he’s already an irredeemable monster. He believes her, and becomes an irredeemable monster, rather than continuing to try for redemption on his own.

Now, I’ve seen a few different takes on why he acts like this – manipulation, fondness, boredom – but to me, the implication here is that this is someone who is used to being dominated and having his wants trampled over by a stronger, more forceful personality: Melkor.

“It would seem I am not the only elf alive who has been transformed by darkness. Perhaps your search for Morgoth’s successor should have ended in your own mirror.” – Adar, 1x08

It seems that, at least in the ROP universe, Galadriel and Melkor have similar personalities. Specifically, they’re both driven, stubborn, mercurial, tempestuous, fiercely independent, highly ambitious, and assertive to the point of…well, bulldozing people to get their own way or achieve their own goals. This is a personality type Sauron has always been drawn to and gelled well with – Halbrand more or less becomes Galadriel’s devoted sidekick throughout the season, just as Sauron was Morgoth’s. He’s someone who is drawn to impose order on chaos, and that means he’s drawn to chaotic people.

And so, with Galadriel, Sauron quickly falls back into comfortable, familiar patterns of behaviour, because to his fucked-up Normal Meter, they actually read as safe – this is a dynamic he understands. He’s learned, over many long millennia with Melkor, that it’s better to adapt around chaotic behaviour and erratic demands than to try and push back against them. And we can see echoes of this even thousands of years after Melkor is defeated: the few times Halbrand does challenge her plans for him, Galadriel talks over him or brushes him off, and he lets her. It’s a token resistance – he wants to show he’s not a complete pushover, but he doesn’t actually expect her to care what he wants, or to factor his wishes into her longterm plans.

Halbrand: “As a matter of fact, my intention was –”

Galadriel, interrupting: “My companion is simply feeling the weight of his task. Come time, I am sure he will do his part.” – 1x05

Basically, S1!Galadriel is benefitting from the fact that Melkor has spent thousands upon thousands of years conditioning Sauron to do as he’s told. And how do you teach someone as stubborn and headstrong as Sauron to do as he's told? Well, if you're Morgoth - prideful, cruel, impatient, increasingly twisted and insane - probably with violence. Which brings me to -

2) Fighting Style

For this, I’m gonna focus on that one scene with the Númenorean smiths.

This scene has me absolutely vibrating because for all that it serves to showcase how much damage “Halbrand” can do, it’s actually not wanton violence. He tries to deescalate this situation three times once he realises he’s been caught out – first with humour, then with a warning, and then by trying to physically leave.

We know they’ve already triggered his temper – we see his homicidal thousand yard stare when they’re mocking his apparent relationship with Galadriel. And while the smiths are under the impression they’re picking on a Man, Sauron is obviously well aware that they’re starting shit with a Maia, and that he can take the lot of them. But even knowing he’d win the fight, he doesn’t throw the first punch. He’s willing – he wants – to walk away.

And if he’s genuinely repentant here, that tracks. He’s sick of all the violence. He doesn’t want to fight anymore. But his line, “Please don’t do this,” is not please don’t hurt me. It’s please don’t make me hurt you.

And the second he realises they're not going to let him go? The second they start beating on him? He erupts like Orodruin. He goes feral.

Like…look at the fighting style here. It’s vicious, absolutely, but first and foremost it’s highly effective self-defence. He targets vulnerable, immediately disabling spots; eyes, noses, windpipes, knee joints. He relies on speed and agility to dodge blows and give himself space to manoeuvre. He doesn’t get caught up in focusing on one opponent; he’s tracking all their movements around him and prioritising targets accordingly. He takes each of them out of the fight as quickly as possible, and once an opponent is downed, he drops them and moves on to the next one. The only time we see him linger over hurting someone, letting himself take a moment to gloat or savour it, is right at the very end, with Call me Halbrand, once all his opponents are already on the floor.

The energy in this scene is weird. The first time you watch it, it makes sense for it to be so visceral, because Halbrand would be in major danger here - he's seriously outnumbered. But rewatching it, knowing that he’s Sauron, there’s no subtle sign that this is actually an immensely powerful low-level deity toying with a few unwary Mannish thugs. It still feels like he’s fighting for his life. And the feeling that gave me was that...well, part of him thinks that he is. I think that being cornered, and smacked around, and laughed at while he’s sprawled out on the floor, actually triggered him.

In other words, he fights like someone who’s used to getting cornered into fighting either a group* or an opponent who’s bigger and stronger than he is. Sauron is, apparently, accustomed to fights where his best chance of surviving – or, at least, coming out with minimum injuries – is to down his opponent as quickly as possible and scarper before they get back up again.

*(Which, let’s face it. Morgoth’s mines were full of enslaved POWs who hated his guts and would’ve hated Sauron’s too. If he found himself chained up down there with them – a very obvious indicator that he’s lost Morgoth’s favour – the chances that those prisoners would band together to try and lynch him are, let’s face it, very high. And while there would undoubtedly be orcs on guard to keep the prisoners in line, Sauron hasn’t exactly been a good boss to them, and there are probably plenty who’d turn a blind eye unless explicitly ordered to break it up by a superior.)

Now obviously, Sauron is a Maia. He's strong, and he’s absolutely pulling his punches in the Númenor street fight – if he wasn’t, those smiths would probably be dead. Galadriel is aiming to kill when she tries to stab him, so she'd be putting a fair amount of force and weight behind that blow, and he stops her hand like it's nothing. Effortless. And he's powerful, in so many ways. There are very, very few things in Arda he would need to fear.

But he would be no match for Melkor.

As in the quote used somewhere up above:

“Though of immensely smaller native power than his Master, he remained less corrupt, cooler and more capable of calcultion.”

Melkor is bigger, stronger, tougher and more powerful than he is. Melkor is fully capable of hurting him. And if Melkor is the kind of person who’s not against using violence or humiliation to control his generals, he probably has hurt Sauron plenty in the past.

3) Fawn Response

Most English speakers will be familiar with the term “fight or flight” – a creature’s ingrained response to a situation they perceive as stressful, dangerous or frightening. In psychology, these are called acute stress responses, and there are actually four of them, with the other two being freeze and fawn. Every living thing has an acute stress response.

Of the four responses, three are purely instinctive: honey badgers will fight a curious lion; gazelles will flee from a hunting cheetah; rabbits freeze when caught in the headlights of an approaching car. The fourth response, fawn, is unique to people and a few other highly social species.

In people, each response can manifest as a variety of different behaviours.

Fight: Verbal or physical aggression, explosive outbursts, controlling or domineering behaviour, impulsivity, bullying, picking fights for no obvious reason, teeth grinding, urge to lash out

Flight: Workaholism, overthinking, obsessive or compulsive behaviours, feelings of anxiety or panic, fidgeting, feeling trapped

Freeze: Dissociation, self-isolation, emotional numbness, depressive episodes, numbing behaviours (i.e. self-medication via substance misuse), indecisiveness

Fawn: Codependency, conflict avoidance, approval-seeking, submissive or people-pleasing personality, emotional manipulation, weak or no sense of personal identity, lying to avoid confrontation

Most trauma survivors are hybrids, and will show aspects of more than one acute stress response, and this is true of Sauron. But one of the things I find really interesting about him in ROP is that he’s predominantly a fawner.

Unlike the three instinctive responses, fawning is learned – it’s one way the complex human brain adapts to long-term threatening situations where the fight, flight and freeze responses don’t work for us. The fawn response is very common in people who’ve suffered abuse – a violent marriage, a malignant narcissist parent, severe bullying – where their best chance of survival was to placate and appease a more powerful abuser they could not escape.

E03 - When Elendil presents Halbrand & Galadriel to Tar-Míriel, we see Halbrand quietly urge Galadriel not to antagonize the Númenoreans and prompt her to show proper courtly manners by kneeling. When she immediately antagonizes the Queen, he starts showing subtle signs of agitation, and he intervenes as soon as Míriel suggests she's losing her temper with Galadriel's impudence. When Galadriel tries to interrupt him again, he does a very clear leave this to me hand gesture. He flatters the Queen to settle her ruffled feathers, and subtly diffuses the situation by addressing Pharazon when he suggests taking time to consider "their" request. He's taken a hostile confrontation between Elf royalty and Mannish royalty (Galadriel & Míriel) and turned it into a diplomatic discussion between advisors (himself & Pharazon).

And we see, several times, that this is actually Sauron’s first reaction to stress and conflict.

E08 - When Galadriel confronts Halbrand about the broken Southlands royal line, he drops the act immediately, but his first inclination is to try and reason with her. As he approaches her, his body language is open and conciliatory - the big innocent eyes, the low-calm-and-soothing voice, the slow and telegraphed movement. He's trying to make himself seem like less of a threat. When she tries to stab him, all he does is stop her - there's no counter, no move to incapacitate or harm. This interaction goes south in the end, devolving into “fight” when he invades her mind, but his first instinct is to appease. To convince.

E03 - In the same episode, we see Halbrand plying the Númenorean smiths with drink and camaraderie after they start antagonizing him, because he thinks that’s going to give him the best shot of stealing a guild crest unnoticed. While he certainly considers multiple homicide - we can see it on his face - it's actually only after they start hitting him that he flares up in return.

While he’s certainly capable of immense violence, and he does go that route sometimes, it’s usually his backup option – force is what he relies on when fawning doesn’t work.

This makes so much more sense in the context of Melkor as someone who is not only infinitely stronger and more powerful than Sauron, but who also becomes increasingly temperamental and unpredictable over time, more likely to be cruel to his own loyal followers as retaliation for their failures.

For their relationship to begin with Mairon adores Melkor and end with Sauron is afraid of Morgoth, there would have been a deterioration in their relationship, and in Morgoth’s treatment of Sauron, at some point. The fact that the relationship never devolves to the point of Sauron abandoning Morgoth of his own free will suggests that this downturn in their relationship was a slow and crumbling thing, taking place over a long period of time. That tracks: abusers often present themselves as perfectly likeable at the start of a relationship, and reveal their true colours slowly, escalating as their victim adapts to their increasingly unacceptable behaviour.

As the second-in-command of what’s essentially a dictatorship, Sauron would be right in Morgoth’s inner circle, dependent on Morgoth’s favour for his status and authority, and isolated by rank from the rest of Morgoth’s forces. He’s not Melkor’s equal, even if Melkor listens to his advice, but nor is he One Of The Men, and he outranks even high-ranking Úmaiar like Gothmog. He has no equals, no one he can lean on or share camaraderie with, nobody who can side with him against Morgoth if necessary. This power structure actually leaves him really vulnerable to abuse from above. In Valinor or Aman, if a Vala was ever cruel to their Maiar, they could at least be kept in check by other Valar. In Arda, Melkor has no oversight. There’s no one Sauron can go to if he feels mistreated. So when Melkor begins to turn on him, Sauron would quickly find that he has limited means of protecting himself thanks to his actually-quite-precarious position in Melkor’s court. He can’t fight back, because Melkor is stronger than him. He can’t flee – where would he go? They’d hunt him down, and he can’t exactly turn to Aule for protection anymore. He can’t afford to freeze and go to pieces, because the safety he does have is reliant on the benefits of his place in the hierarchy, and to keep that place he needs to be capable and competent. In this situation, his best defence is keeping Morgoth happy – attuning himself to Morgoth’s moods and learning to manipulate them, stroking his ego, currying favour, giving Morgoth as little reason as possible to be displeased with him.

And so, he becomes a fawner.

4) Treatment Of Subordinates

“For my part…I had sacrificed enough of my children for his aspirations. I split him open. I killed Sauron.” – Adar, 1x06

The main exception to Sauron’s fawning tendencies is Adar, who provokes an immediate violent response.

This makes sense – Adar’s betrayal in Forodwaith, and his brutal murder of Sauron’s last fana, was a devastating blow to Sauron’s self-confidence, and he’s out for revenge. But his treatment of Adar, and the orcs Adar considers himself responsible for, does draw attention to the way Sauron has learned – or been taught – to treat his underlings in general.

Our very first look at Sauron, before we even see him in person, is through Galadriel’s eyes during her excursion into his Forodwaith fortress. And what we see is pretty monstrous. Sauron thinks nothing of torturing, mutilating and killing the orcs who follow him – his own soldiers – if he thinks it will advance his goals. According to Adar, Sauron killed many, many orcs in the course of his experiments with the Unseen World. Adar seems to have been his second-in-command at that point, and while they may not have been friends, there was some degree of trust between them – Adar was able to take Sauron by surprise, which means Sauron was comfortable enough with him to drop his guard. And yet, it never occurs to him that Adar cares about the welfare of the orcs. It never occurs to him that Adar might take issue with the orcs being used as test subjects. It never occurs to him that eventually, given enough dead loved ones, Adar might turn on him.

Now, we’ve established that Sauron is someone who claims he wants to be his own man, but actually tends to follow the example he’s been set by his current role model. And since this doesn’t seem like the kind of leadership he’d have learned from Aulë, it’s far more likely that his first foray into Dark Lord-ship saw him imitating Morgoth’s treatment of those who served him – placing a certain degree of trust and authority in his lieutenants, but simultaneously keeping his underlings in line through pain and humiliation. If he himself was cowed by harsh punishment, and emerged too afraid of Morgoth to have considered rebellion, why wouldn’t he assume Adar to be similarly afraid of him? Adar is, after all, an infinitely inferior being. A mutilated elf-orc against a Maia has to be a similar power differential to a Maia against a Vala: Adar should have had no hope in hell of ever taking on Sauron and winning.

Elendil’s pull in Armenelos is limited – at this point in his life, he’s just a sea captain whose family is known for causing trouble. There’s no reason for Sauron to think that Elendil would be a useful ally in the Númenorean court – he saves him purely because they’re on the same side. Quite a change, from the man who has, up to this point, thought nothing of throwing allied lives away for his own ends. Unfortunately, because the first season is so condensed, Halbrand is only the King of the Southlands for about five minutes, so we don’t get to see whether, given more time with Galadriel as his reference point, he would increasingly follow her example rather than Morgoth’s.

Later, we see him exposed to a different example. He stops working to watch Galadriel training her volunteers, leading with positive reinforcement and camaraderie. He would also have watched her interact with them on the ship during the journey to Middle Earth. She is a stubborn, demanding and unyielding commander, but she does care about her people, and she knows how to win loyalty. And what does Sauron do in their very first battle together? He saves Elendil, despite having absolutely no selfish reason to do so.

5) Dysfunctional Attachment & Sense Of Identity

Galadriel’s backstory is full of loving, positive relationships: in 1x01 we meet her brother Finrod, her friend Elrond, her long-suffering second-in-command Thondir, and (in a one-line mention by Finrod) her mother and father. In 1x07, she also mentions her long-lost husband, Celeborn. In contrast, the only relationships mentioned for Sauron are Morgoth and Adar, neither of which were positive or loving. Aulë, interestingly, isn’t mentioned at all.

One of the first things ROP establishes about Sauron as a character (once we actually meet him in person) is that hes a self-serving survivor with low empathy. He stops Galadriel climbing onto the raft while the humans bicker about whether to leave her adrift, and he doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice everyone else on the raft to cover his own escape.

The rest of the season reinforces that he is not someone who bonds easily with others:

Galadriel then goes on to form a number of new relationships over the course of the season: her mutual antagonism with Míriel becomes mutual respect, she befriends Elendil, she briefly serves as a mentor figure for Theo, she makes an enemy of Adar. But Halbrand doesn’t. We see him interact with other characters – the Númenorean smith who gives him a job, Míriel, Bronwyn briefly – but he doesn’t build anything with them. The interactions are very surface-level, very shallow – a means to an end.

So, while Sauron is clearly a charismatic charmer, someone who knows how to present himself as likeable, there doesn’t seem to be much drive in him to actually bond with others.

But he’s not a complete sociopath, and he's not completely devoid of empathy either. We know this from the one relationship he does build in S1, which is with Galadriel.

In 1x02, both characters are quite literally adrift, and for the same reason – their lives have fallen apart. Galadriel has been betrayed by her company, let down by her closest friend, exiled back to Valinor by her king – she’s lost all the resources and allies she’s relied upon to carry out her quest for vengeance. Sauron has lost a war, his master, his allies, and his life after Adar’s betrayal. They’re both floundering, desperate for something to give back some of the stability and purpose that they’ve lost.

And up until the identity reveal, they do find it. This is a relationship characterised, above all else, by understanding of and confidence in each other. They snark and bicker and annoy each other, but they also support and guide each other, challenge each other's worldviews, and restrain one another’s worst impulses.

But they react to the loss of this relationship differently.

So really, it’s no wonder that Sauron gets attached very quickly: this is probably the most positive relationship he’s had in thousands of years. And as we’ve already established, he’s a follower by nature – he’s drawn to strong, domineering personalities who give him purpose (ordering their chaos). Galadriel is exactly what he feels he needs at that point.

Galadriel is, if not an emotionally healthy individual, at least healthier than Sauron. She has been through some shit, but she has always had the support of people who love her, and as a result, she is self-assured and confident in her place in the world. While the loss of their friendship – and of “Halbrand” - will grieve her, it won't change her fundamental understanding of who she is and what purpose she serves.

But Sauron has been rewired over millennia to be incredibly dysfunctional. He doesn't bond easily with others, but when he does, he throws himself wholeheartedly into that relationship - and only that relationship. He invests his entire identity in that other person and how they see him, what he thinks they want him to be. He makes them the centre of his universe, and adjusts his values and identity to complement theirs.

But the problem with making other people your guiding light is that once they're no longer there to direct you, you lose your way. When Morgoth is vanquished, Sauron struggles (and ultimately fails) to keep what's left of his forces together – Adar implies that while a lot of the orcs did decide to follow Sauron, a lot of them also deserted and didn't come north at all.

With Morgoth as his guiding light, he turns to evil. What may have started out as low empathy in Mairon becomes active cruelty in Sauron. Desire for order becomes obsessive need for control. Intelligence and creativity becomes lust for power and sovereignty. With Galadriel at the helm, Halbrand veers back in the other direction, with his positive traits beginning to reassert themselves - bravery, humour, charm. He shows mercy to both the Numenorean smiths (of his own accord) and Adar (as a concession to Galadriel).

He's even selfless a few times - bringing the raft back for her even though he doesn't know who she is or what value she could have to him, and then saving her from drowning even though he does know who she is and how determined she is to see him dead.

“He bid as many as he could follow him north…” – Adar, 1x06

The ones that did go with him, as we know, ultimately turned on him in favour of Adar. Without Morgoth to keep pushing him to conquer and destroy, he can't keep up the momentum, because he doesn't actually want the same things as Morgoth. He wants to rule the world, not corrupt it.

The same thing happens when Galadriel casts him out. Without her prompting him to do good things - and his own desire to live up to her image of him leading him to do good things on his own - he stops doing them altogether, because it's hard to claw your way out of being a terrible person, and it's harder still if nobody notices or cares that you're doing it. He's realised he doesn't want what Morgoth gave him, but he also doesn't really want to be the hero. He’s got no bloody idea who he really is and he's torn about what he truly wants - and an underdeveloped, fragile or non-existent sense of self is very common in people who’ve spent their entire lives being controlled by someone else.

So, why play along with her in the first place?

"You've done far more than that for me. I'd all but given up, but you...you believed in me. You saw strength in me. You pushed me to heights that no one else could have. I will never forget that. And I'll see to it that no one else does either." – Halbrand, 1x08

On its most basic level: she's kind to him.

Victims of longterm abuse have a very skewed idea of what interpersonal relationships should look like, and what they can expect from other people. He's had his confidence badly knocked by Morgoth's mistreatment and Adar's betrayal; she gets him back in the saddle as a leader, and she does it with faith and encouragement rather than with cruelty. Of course he's a little bit obsessed with her. She's probably the first person to act as though she cares about him in millennia - it's overwhelming, it's addictive. And because she's making him feel good about himself, he's more inclined to play the part she's assigned him, because doing so is a shortcut to getting her approval, which, again, makes him feel good about himself, and so the cycle continues. Right up until it doesn't, and he loses that positive emotional feedback loop he's so eager for.

6) Rejection Sensitivity & Abandonment Issues

“You don’t know what I did before I ended up on that raft. You don’t know how I survived. How we all survived. And when these people discover it, they will cast me out. So will you.” – Halbrand, 1x05

Sauron’s fear of rejection comes up a few times throughout the first season of ROP. It’s the focus of one of his most openly vulnerable moments, when Galadriel confronts him in the forge – they’re both on the verge of tears in that scene, and when he’s staring into the fire he looks positively haunted.

1x08’s confrontation scene then shows us that not only does Sauron fear rejection, he also reacts to it really badly. Of course, this could be because he’s an entitled manchild who throws temper tantrums when he doesn’t get his own way, but we’re looking at him from a trauma perspective, and severe rejection sensitivity is a common aspect of CPTSD. For real people, it tends to be rooted in one of two things:

You’ve been taught that you are unworthy of love. Perhaps your abuser has taught you that they are the only one who will ever care about you, and their abuse is all you will ever deserve. Perhaps they’ve told you that nobody will ever care for you at all. Perhaps you’ve been taught that your true self is pathetic, shameful or not good enough. Over time, you internalise the belief that others are inherently disappointed or disgusted by you. In later life, when you try to bond with others and they reject you, it feels like they are confirming that belief, which is devastating, and you lash out instinctively.

You were loved conditionally. Your abuser was loving and affectionate to you sometimes, but when you displeased them, they would take their love away to punish you, leaving you perpetually insecure in the stability of your most vital relationships. You end up constantly anticipating the next time your closest bonds will be yanked out from underneath you, and as a result, you never learn how to feel safe and secure in another person's love or friendship. So when you feel like someone has taken their love away, all the old feelings of panic and abandonment come rushing back, and you lash out.

For Sauron, there's a distinct vibe of #2. We see Galadriel grant Halbrand absolution for the evil he claims to have done, and we see how much that seems to affect Sauron; that's a very emotionally raw scene for him. He's spent a very long time believing himself completely beyond redemption, and then his most bitter enemy tells him (albeit unwittingly) that he can be forgiven. That she, specifically, can forgive him. And he seems to bind her specific forgiveness up with the concept of redemption in general - he doesn't believe he can do it without her support, he thinks he needs her to show him how to be good. So when Galadriel takes back that forgiveness in the raft vision, because she didn't know who she was pardoning, it doesn't seem to occur to Sauron that he could, technically, keep trying to find his way back to the light without her. In his mind, she's not just taking away some words she said when she didn't really know who she was talking to - she's taking away the very possibility of redemption altogether.

So Sauron flips his shit. He goes, "Oh, you want me to be evil? Fine. Fine! I'll show you evil."

And honestly...this kind of self-sabotage is actually really common in traumatized people with serious rejection sensitivity issues. I have rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD), an especially severe kind of rejection sensitivity, and RSD support communities are littered with people who have destroyed their relationships, explosively quit their jobs on the spot, dropped out of classes, cut off friendships forever...all because they felt rejected and their own brain went nuclear on them. Hell, I’ve done some of those things myself. It’s like a red mist in the moment – half the time you don’t even realise what you’ve done until you’ve calmed down, and at that point, you’ve got no choice but to walk whatever stupid path you’ve built for yourself, whether that’s “find a new job before rent is due, you moron” or “take over the world because you’ve got nothing and no one else left”.

Anyway this got really long and disjointed because I’m pulling from so many different aspects of trauma here and it all ties in together so tightly but tl;dr, ROP!Sauron practically has CPTSD stamped on his forehead, and this meta explains why. What do you know of darkness, indeed.

(From Morgoth’s perspective, I’d imagine that starting out so much more powerful than even the greatest of his underlings would lend him a carelessness in his treatment of his servants that, for someone so proud and superior, would prove difficult to let go of even as he grew weaker over eons.

So like, while it’s true that certain forms of punishment – enslavement, torture, etc – would run the risk of alienating Sauron completely, why should Melkor care? He was, is, has always been, the greatest of the Valar. Even if Sauron does start hating him, what's a puny Maia going to do? He's not powerful enough to overthrow Melkor on his own, and while there are undoubtedly those among Morgoth's forces who think things would be better with Sauron in charge, the chances of that minority being brave and foolhardy enough to risk Morgoth's wrath by allying with him openly (or of Sauron being brave enough to call on them to do so) are very slim. Sauron won't turn to another high-ranking Úmaia with the suggestion of overthrowing Melkor together, because what if they promptly turn him in for treason? The first punishment would've instilled the fear of god Morgoth in him, so he's not going to risk another, worse one. No - alienated or no, he'll have virtually no choice but to keep his head down and just? Deal with it. Especially if Melkor keeps his punishments behind closed doors, as Sauron would have every reason to want to keep it that way - the rank-and-file gossiping about his humiliation could lose him the fear and respect of his subordinates, and that could make his life way more difficult. I can definitely see Morgoth as someone who’d stubbornly refuse to admit that, past a certain point, he’s disseminated so much of his power into corrupting Arda that he actually should be worried about alienating Sauron now, because Sauron could probably best him. I think he’d want to cling to his own image of himself as the most powerful Ainu beneath Ilúvatar – he wouldn’t want to see how far he’s fallen. And accepting that any of his underlings could threaten him would mean having to face that.)

Sauron Unchained

Remember when Sauron mentioned "THAT first sunrise," on the raft in the Vision? (Not THE first sunrise. The sun already existed. He's talking about THAT first sunrise, after Morgoth was defeated.)

"When Morgoth was defeated, it was as if a great, clenched fist had released its grasp from my neck. And in the stillness of that first sunrise, at last! I felt the light of The One again. And I knew, if ever I was to be forgiven, then I had to heal everything that I had helped ruin" (1x08).

That sunrise was a pretty big deal.

Let's review this moment Sauron describes from The Silmarillion.

(Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath.)

Before the rising of the sun Eärendil slew Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin. Then the sun rose, and the host of the Valar prevailed, and well-nigh all the dragons were destroyed; and all the pits of Morgoth were broken and unroofed, and the might of the Valar descended into the deeps of the earth. [...]

Then Morgoth was bound.

[...] Thus an end was made of the power of Angband in the North, and the evil realm was brought to naught; and out of the deep prisons a multitude of slaves came forth beyond all hope into the light of day, and they looked upon a world that was changed.

Those slaves who emerged were not the servants of Morgoth (like Orcs, Balrogs, etc.), but rather Elves, the likes of Gwindor, who were captured, imprisoned and enslaved, sent deep into the mines to dig.

But Sauron described his experience from their perspective.

Sooo... why?

"When Morgoth was defeated, it was as if a great, clenched fist had released its grasp from my neck. And in the stillness of THAT first sunrise, at last! I felt the light of The One again."

Some complain:

Why did the writers make it seem like Morgoth made Sauron evil, against his will?

-----They didn't.-----

Why did they change Sauron's character from liking Morgoth because of efficiency, to loathing him?

-----They didn't.-----

Why did they make it so Sauron only allied himself with Morgoth in order to survive?

-----They didn't.-----

They didn't change anything. They didn't even have to add anything. None of this came out of the clear blue just for fun. It's not even just for the sake of making the show.

Sauron manipulated Galadriel, but he did so with the TRUTH, making it easier for her to pity him than if he flat-out lied.

["And in the stillness of that first sunrise..."]

(Meanwhile, he talks about forgiveness.)

Galadriel: "No penance could ever erase the evil you have done."

Sauron: "That is not what you believe." [...] After our victory, you said that whatever I'd done before, I could be free of it now. [...] I told you the truth! I told you that I had done evil, and you did not care! Because you knew that our past meant nothing, weighed against our future. :D"

What is this 'trauma' he allegedly experienced? Sure, he was wary of the consequences of crossing Morgoth, but I mean ... he was the guy--Morgoth's #1--his right hand Maia--his most devoted servant. He would never do anything in disobedience or rebellion. Else how would he achieve such a status?

The implication of his tale is not that he was FORCED to Morgoth's allegiance, giving him this general fear that was finally lifted when Morgoth fell.

Something happened.

He made ONE mistake.

(And since Patrick said they're not in the business of pure Easter eggs, there's a REASON they showed this.)

In Sauron's most humiliating moment, being in the jaws of Huan, Lúthien told him "that he should be stripped of his raiment of flesh, and his ghost be sent quaking back to Morgoth; and she said: 'There everlastingly thy naked self shall endure the torment of his scorn, pierced by his eyes, unless thou yield to me the mastery of thy tower.' (The Silmarillion: Of Beren and Lúthien).

Before that, Sauron had it all. Unbeknownst to him at the time, he already had Beren (who had a price put on his head by Morgoth) IN HIS PRISON. But hearing Lúthien sing to Beren in the hour of Finrod's death, he sought great reward for bringing her to Morgoth. When his dying servant told him that Huan was there, he was like, Oh. I got this.

Things went sideways, and he had no choice but to yield to Huan, or face Morgoth's wrath... so he let them go.

As a result, Beren and Lúthien waltzed their way into Angband, stole a Silmaril and escaped.

So, um...?

Charlie referenced what Lúthien told Sauron, when speaking about the 'clenched fist' line. His paraphrasing is quite unnerving, given that he knows what backstory we are going to see next season... and I don't know... but I would like to... and it makes me wonder.

"You can go whimpering back to your master and tell him that you've let me in. You've failed. You haven’t defended your kingdom." [...] I read from that this thing that Morgoth is so powerful and so scary, that it would've meant consequences for Sauron. - Charlie Vickers

Where exactly was Sauron after his failure? He dwelt in Taur-nu-Fuin for a while, but a lot of time passed between then and the end of the War. So...WHERE DID HE GO? Wouldn't the most devoted and powerful of all the servants of Morgoth be actively involved in the defense against the host of the Valar?? One might say things were trending upward for him...

...until Finrod, Beren, Lúthien, and Huan came along.

How long would it have taken Morgoth to find out that everything was Sauron's fault? How long would it have taken to hunt Sauron down, as he fled?

Not very long, I reckon.

[...] there must have been an element to their relationship where Morgoth was someone he feared at times, or someone that would punish him when he failed. [...] there must have been some truth in [the clenched fist] line. - Charlie Vickers

No wonder he described the end of the War as if he had been among the slaves who emerged from the deep prisons..."beyond all hope into the light of day"...reminiscing the first sunrise after the overthrow of Thangorodrim, and the great, clenched fist that released its grasp from his neck as a result.

In the Great War, he wasn't just sitting in a tree, or even in a back-up tower, watching from the side-lines.

He failed Morgoth.

Miserably.

And was punished for it.

No wonder he was missing during the War of Wrath.

"What do you know of darkness?"

#tolkien #tolkien meta #lotr trop #trop meta #sauron #mairon #this was 14 pages in word i give up editing it to make it more cohesive I TRIED #ive been adding to it for weeks my ass is done #flings this into the tag. is this anything #halbrand

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raayllum · 2 years ago

Note

I know it’s a longer one, but I vote for Rayla’s Position In The Narrative as a Dual Antagonist!

*cracks knuckles with shania twain music* let's go girls

So I've talked about this very briefly before in the context of a much larger meta about something completely different, but 'Rayla is the only character who enters the show as an Antagonist for both the humans and the elves. She is the first character to be caught in the middle, opposing everything the human characters are currently all trying to save (King Harrow’s life), and also ruining whatever chance her mission has of success, angering and endangering her fellow assassins. Much of season one, then, is pushing her into a more positive role for the humans, and much of season three examines whether or not she is right to oppose the elves — and how to reverse it if she can. This is part of why she wrestles so intensely with the ‘failure’ of both her own mission and her parents’

After all, neither Viren nor Claudia are an antagonist in any way until 1x03. Soren doesn't arguably become an antagonist at all until S2. Part of this is because Soren and Claudia, while they face set backs in what they were trying to do (protect the royal family; keep the egg on their side), they don't 100% shit the bed, so to speak. Claudia would've had the upper hand if Callum hadn't blind sided her and even then they struggled to get rid of her smoke wolves and she got out of the chain herself. Soren did successfully protect Callum and reeled from the loss of Harrow, but was still confident in his ability to find the princes when he thought that was the mission Viren was giving him.

Which is to say: Soren and Claudia don't go looking for redemption until much, much later, if at all; Soren only reaches that precipice 2.5 seasons later in 3x05 and then finds in full in 3x09. And even when they are opposing the heroes, they are not opposing their father; they are still aligned with a certain side. Likewise, even though Callum and Ezran are working against some humans, they have confidence that they are making their mother proud with the mission they have taken up and are later reaffirmed in their choices by Harrow.

Rayla doesn’t have any of this reaffirmation. Even Ethari, with their brief reconciliation in S3, doesn’t offer her much, if any, hope or comfort beyond their initial hug.

Rayla enters the show, has one scene, and immediately shoots herself in the foot, because she fails at the one uttermost thing she was absolutely supposed to do on a mission we have every indication she begged/fought to be on within an inch of her life, and she chokes at the finish line.

R: I am pretty awesome at everything... right up until the moment when it really matters. I dunno. I hesitate. I think too much. Get confused about the right thing to do. Then the next thing I know, I've failed.

Then, to make matters worse, she covers up her failure and lies about it until it’s forced out by circumstance. Then, even after being removed from the mission, she resolves to make up for her mistake and heads to the castle in secret... and then defies and fights her mission leader. Thus, Rayla is squarely an antagonist for the first two episodes and it is only because we see her spare a human / struggle (both things our favourite princes are not privy to) that we root for her and trust her when she begins to turn in 1x03.

And in fact, much of 1x03 revolves around narratively ‘rehabilitating’ her as she follows Ezran’s lead, answers the boys’ questions, defends them, stands against Runaan to protect them, and is cinched by her vow to Callum: “Say the word and I’ll go back in that tower with you.” Say the word and I’ll fight against the rest of my troupe / people for you.

She goes from being both an antagonist to the humans and elves to switching right around and becoming an antagonist to her own people, the elves as well as her own family, with her and boys becoming their own side and their own team in many ways. Otherwise known as, in Rayla’s words:

But even once she’s switched sides, this double antagonism doesn’t just go away. Rayla is often directly opposed to whatever the boys want in S1-S2 - to go to the Banther Lodge, to take the boat, to take the easier path up the mountain, to trust Soren and Claudia at the Moon Nexus, to have Callum go out into the storm, or to try to save the dragon in forest. And in addition to this double antagonism, much of S1-S3 is Rayla’s reformation and redemption arc to both sides of the war, to both the humans she would have hurt and to the elves she left behind.

However, and this is where it gets somewhat tragic, is that it’s not like S1-S3 are smooth sailing for Rayla. She continues to consistently fuck up, often regardless of the support other characters’ offer in action or in word.

Which is to say: Rayla is also the most antagonist to herself. She gets in her own way, she trips herself up, and all of that just compounds and reaffirms her belief that the problem is her. She can switch sides, run away, get people to back off, take or learn every possible maneuver, and disaster will still follow, because the disaster is her.

Which is to also say: Rayla focuses so hard on redeeming herself to other people, to other causes, to other nations, she forgets that redemption is also supposed to be for herself, let alone that in so many cases she has nothing to forgive herself for. Not all, as we see in TTM and S4 and the way she blows her own life to pieces and Callum is caught in the crossfire most of all, but much of it. Even in the way she comes back into season four, knowing that she fucked up in some capacity, and that now she has to make up for it.

In many ways that what makes S4 so complicated for her, as Rayla is simultaneously at her best and her worst. On the one hand, she’s come home to try and let go (as far as we know). On the other hand, she still can’t let go, and she’s lost what made her Rayla in so many ways in her time away. Which just makes me think of this quote from a recent podcast interview with Head writer Devon Giehl and writer Iain Hendry on the show (reflecting on Rayla in 4x08 rather than 4x04, mind you):

You see her through seasons one through three like — just seems like any opportunity, she’ll be the one to make the big sacrifice. She’ll go out there to try and save the dragon, she’ll go and try and fight Viren and his army alone to protect everyone and so on. So the fact that once again she defaults to ‘I have to give up something painful to myself.’ [...] But I think you don’t do the — usually, you don’t do the greater whole any good by completely sacrificing yourself, and I do think that is often the lengths, like you said, a lot of the Moonshadow elf culture norms and mantras go to eventually is ‘You have to be willing to completely forget who you are’.

So now it seems, perhaps, that her heart is finally hard enough to do whatever it takes.

Or is it?

Rayla reminds Callum that destiny is a book he has written himself. That the pen and paper is in his hands. That the Narrative is his to control. And I think it’s particularly purposeful that Rayla says this in response to Callum pigeon-holing them both into the roles they initially started out in. Callum, feeling powerless and out of control as a ‘regular’ human or as a dark mage, submitting to the terror of doing horrible things. Rayla, being asked to be a proper assassin, and kill the accidental snag in her plans, her mistaken target, for another’s sins. He’s asking her to be his antagonist again, if he’s forced to be hers.

And, of course, this extends even further into the season finale, in which Rayla does the last thing the world that Callum wants, running after Viren again, highlighting what’s changed about their dynamic and what hasn’t, the ways they’ve grown to understand and accept each other, and the fundamental misunderstandings and clashes they’re still having. If you want to read more about this exchange and interplay of foils I’d recommend reading this meta here :)

Last but not least, I’d like to close this meta off by saying that there is one character who shares this dual antagonism from the start, and that’s Aaravos. He ‘helps’ people while really making them indebted or flat out pawns in his game. He offers gifts that leave the mages who take them dead shortly thereafter.

He opposes the elves and dragons, yes, but has no love for humanity left in his heart. He opposes and orchestrates the downfall of each effort of peace. He will use humans and discard/destroy elves and dragons alike with little recourse. He doesn’t care about anyone, and Rayla (used to at least, and still does, deep down) care about everyone.

And just one of the many ways they parallel each other across the seasons, but particularly in season four.

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