There isn't much discourse about how Mike went from saying that El was a weapon in s1, even encouraging the others to use El's powers when she was still recuperating after finding Will in the void, to then in s3 accusing the others of being reckless with her powers, saying she's risking her life for no reason.
Now, I want to make clear that I'm not bashing Mike here, this has less to do with what he's doing being right or wrong. What this is about is how Mike went from doing something himself, to calling out other people for doing it, without acknowledging that fact and why the writers chose to frame it all this way.
You might think it's insignificant, but these two following scenes are clearly being paralleled to each other. And so the fact that Mike himself is acknowledging this as something to be critical of, makes me wonder what exactly is going on in his mind...
I want to preface this scene from s1 by saying that Mike is giving very off vibes here. I know that I certainly viewed this scene as romantic the first time I saw it, but since rewatching it recently, I was getting completely different vibes.
They literally make a point to focus on Mike being distracted, on the verge of impatience. Then, the way El reacts upon Mike getting up abruptly, gives this feeling of uncertainty about Mike's consideration for her in this moment, as she's clearly not what's on the top of his mind right now. And it just makes you wonder, are we truly supposed to be feeling peak romance rn?
I never realized how out of place this scene was until now (or is it...). It's just such an odd choice to have El resting her head on Mike's shoulder for comfort, only for Mike to cut it short with him being distracted, and with Dustin and El looking awkwardly at Mike like "Okay?...", then followed by a scene where he's trying to convince the others to use El's powers to help.
Here we have s1 Mike displaying behavior that s3 Mike was calling out the others for displaying:
Here we have Lucas, who was very, very critical of El being dangerous ALL of s1, and yet now in complete contrast to that, he is showing more consideration and common sense for El's well being than Mike, the supposed love (at first sight) interest ...
'That's the most important thing, remember?'
A question, followed by Mike just standing there in silence, like he's only just now really thinking about El being safe as their main priority... This is something that combined with everything else unfolding over the course of this season and the seasons after, that makes Mike's behavior a whole lot easier to understand.
I'll have to make several other posts about this, because there are a lot of aspects to it, but for now I'm just going to focus on these two parallels.
Here we have what happens in s3, with Mike being critical of the others doing something he himself literally did in s1:
In fact, how careless all of you are.
THIS. When Mike makes it a big deal to call out everyone for doing something he himself has already done, he's outright admitting that it's something that he believes is wrong, and by not even slightly acknowledging his role in doing something similar in the past, it's very likely that he feels guilty about it.
This was probably his way of trying to make it right, by standing up for El in a way that he didn't before because he was treating her like some superhero and not a real person back then.
It's just that the word love slipped out, in the heat of the moment. And El, upon overhearing this, is seeing this development of Mike herself, with s1 Mike going from, yes being more kind and considerate than the other 2 boys in the beginning, but still sort of expecting stuff from her without her being able to verbally agree to it, to now having developed and changed to saying that one of his big priorities is her safety.
El is taking this as being evidence he went from not loving her, to loving her. Another reason why it's pretty obvious El didn't believe Mike's monologue, bc she herself witnessed Mike develop his apparent romantic feelings for her over time, and so him saying it was love at first sight, was probably the catalyst that made it abundantly clear to her that he wasn't being truthful, bc she knows it's not the truth. She's not stupid.
Again this isn't about Mike doing this back then or even the others doing it now as being bad vs. good, this is about the writers going about it this way, sending a message that Mike feels guilt, enough to try to make things right, but is apparently not ready to unpack the actual guilt that is beneath the surface which lead him to this point.
And then there's this scene, which... it's actually terrifying how obvious it is they instructed Sadie and Caleb to lean out of that shot with Will and Mike reacting to El entering the room... Like... It's SOO obvious when you watch it now what they're trying to hint at without saying it.
Not only are they hinting at Will's feelings, because that is part of it, they're also hinting at Mike's internal struggle. Will is always on the back of his mind whether he's willing to address it or not. And all while that is happening, he is feeling unaddressed guilt about how he treated El when they first met and spent that one week together helping her run away from the bad guys while also looking for Will, something Mike viewed as being worthy of El using her powers...
I'll have to make the other posts regarding this soon, because it all starts to click what's going on with Mike when you look at all of these things together.
While Mike is just a kid like pretty much everyone else in this story, and while he didn't mean any harm by asking El to help them find Will (none of them did), I think that's kind of the whole point?
I think that he got lucky superman landed on his doorstep, who just so happened to be in danger herself, giving him his own purpose to help her too, with her needing him as well, and so it became a situation where they both needed each other.
But because El could literally not speak, it's not like she could really voice her feelings about things they were doing, beyond yes and no. She had Lucas sort of being critical of her, with Mike encouraging El to do things that would make the others see her as being worthy of sticking around so they can find Will. It goes without saying she felt obligated to do these things, even if they didn't outright tell her she had to or else. We literally see almost all of these scenes with her doing stuff for the others being instantly juxtaposed with scenes of Brenner doing the same. It's not the same scale of severity, but it is an acknowledgment that although she is outside of the lab, she still feels like her powers are what define her and it's all people want from her.
I think what it comes down to, is that in that moment when she is sacrificing herself to the demogorgan at the end of s1, we are seeing in real time Mike realizing what he and the other's have been asking of her this whole time, without outright asking her.
And you can literally see the retaliation and devastation hit him all at once. The instant regret, where he's backtracking and El stops him from even trying.
'Goodbye Mike' singles him out, because while he was the one out of the three that showed her the most kindness from the start, he was also the one who at the end of it all, was still expecting her to risk her life for them...
And that just makes it hit so much harder when you think about how that made Mike feel in that moment.
And then in s2 how that impacts Mike and his journey going forward.
His breakdown at the end of s2 upon her return.
His behavior in s3-4, in relation to him juggling his relationship with Will and El, now that they are both in his life at the same time.
It all starts to make sense.
I won't go too much into it because those other posts are bound to be long with a bunch of pictures too!
But on that note, there's at least one thing Mike isn't acknowledging, and it's literally what led up to the unintentional love confession that then led us to 10 more episodes of miscommunication because of it...
It's going to be important for him to address this guilt for him to fulfill his arc and to also close off his expectations that he has to have a romantic relationship with El in order to keep her in his life at all.
The audience themselves seeing this and being forced to face it is also going to make it a lot easier for them understand why Mike did what he did, not only because he's a queer kid in the 80's who has every reason to doubt and repress, but also because he understandably feels sort of indebted to El after everything.
It's more complex than him just falling out of love with her and falling in love with Will because of XYZ.
I think there is a lot of guilt and shame and trauma connected to their meeting and the events that followed. And addressing that is going to give a lot of closure to the ending of the story and also the beginning.
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What could have been: sympathizing with Ed in season 2
I've talked before about how much I love Ed and all his complexity. I've written more fanfic about him and Izzy than any other characters, in my entire history of fandom. And unlike many people, I wasn't unprepared for the dark direction his arc took in season 2; I wanted him to commit MORE atrocities, and I happily made comparisons between him and another one of my favorite characters, Hannibal Lector.
But one of the key things I wanted after he committed atrocities was for him to feel bad about it. And I thought we'd see that! After all, S1 Ed was so tormented about killing his dad (who was abusive and violent towards) him that he never killed (directly) again! He was so broken up about trying to kill Stede in s1e6 that he ended up crying in a bathtub. Just like he cried in the window sill after committing all the kraken horrors in s1e10. It seemed like this was a guy scared of his own inner darkness, convinced he was a monster, who would go around saying things like "I'm not a good person" and "You were always going to realize who I am."
And so even when s2 went darker than anyone expected—when he cut off more of Izzy's toes, and shot him in the leg, and made crewmen fight to the death for experiencing love, and sailed the entire ship into a storm to murder-suicide his crew—I was still ready to accept all that moral ambiguity and give him a hug afterwards. Because of course, I figured that after Ed was brought out of that dark place and those suicidal urges, he would feel horrible remorse. How could he not?
I was looking forward to seeing him break down crying, convinced he was an irredeemable, unforgivable monster. (Which of course, would make it all the more touching when people inevitably did forgive him, and when he did redeem himself). Maybe Ed would even go too far with trying to atone, like in Mercy, one of my favorite post-s1 fics. Probably, I figured, Ed's quest for redemption would be one of the main themes in the second half of season 2.
So it was strange to watch e4, when Ed looked nothing but annoyed at everyone for chaining him up and banishing him, and then he went to hang out with his old friends like he'd done nothing wrong. When after the crew unanimously voted him out, Stede brought him back to the ship literally that same evening, and Ed saw no problem with that. Okay... maybe he's still processing?
Then e5 came, and that episode was about Ed's redemption. Yay! Except... Ed didn't seem to care? Other people made him wear the bag and the bell. He asked how long it'd take people to get over it, guessing "like a day." He gave an influencer-esque non-apology to the crew. He said "I took a man's leg" rather than calling Izzy by name. He literally doesn't remember the circumstances of pushing Lucius off the boat. He does ultimately give a real apology to Fang—for tormenting him years ago, rather than anything from his actual kraken era. I love e5 for the Izzy+Stede dynamic, but watching Ed be an unrepentant asshole here is painful. There is nothing about this that convinces me Ed wouldn't slide right back to being evil if Stede were to leave again.
And the thing is, it didn't have to be like this! We could have gotten Ed breaking down crying with guilt like in s1e6, and it would have made him much more sympathetic—not to mention the fact that Ed really is just an adorable cryer. Alternatively, we could have had some real deep diving about why Ed never apologizes (is he afraid of seeming weak?) or why he's so uncaring about others' pain (has he seen too many friends die over the years, to the point of going numb?)
By episode 6, it seems like most characters have moved on. Stede says something about Ed turning poison into positivity, which feels completely unearned. He pays for the party—but he'd previously tried to make the crew throw their cut of the loot into the ocean. He makes some attempts to best Ned and protect Stede, but Stede ends up saving the crew instead—from a pirate who only showed up in the first place because Ed was intentionally trying to piss him off. Ed is sad that Stede kills someone, and this would be a great time to again make Ed sympathetic! To have him talk about how he doesn't want that for Stede, because his own violence has weighed on him so deeply. But nope.
E6 does see Ed actually apologize to Izzy—and he's terrible at it. He's just like, "Sorry about your leg," makes no eye contact, and flees immediately afterwards. We do see some hints that this shitty apology isn't really indicative of Ed's true feelings, given how he has those flashbacks to the scenes of hurting Izzy seemingly haunting him; but it's very brief. It would be a great time to address Ed's horrific tendency towards conflict-aversion and avoiding awkward conversations in relationships—the same tendency that made s1 Ed never inform Izzy that the plan to kill Stede and the Revenge crew had changed. This would be another great opportunity to help us sympathize with Ed again—to have us see how it's not that he doesn't want to communicate these things, it's that these conversations are terribly stressful and anxiety-inducing for him. But nah, why would OFMD need to include those things for Ed?
E7 happens, and still nothing. If anything, there was a great opportunity for Ed to at least show himself to be a kind person to Stede—maybe nobly stepping in to save the day, even though he's annoyed that Stede's getting all this attention now. You know, like Stede did for him back in s1e5, when the situation was reversed. But nope, Ed runs off to be a fisherman, not having learned any of the earlier season's lessons about whims. He only stops being a fisherman because he's bad at it.
I was still hoping for something big in e8–some huge selfless, gesture that Ed would do to cover for all of his inability to do the little gestures. Ed is good at grand gestures! Swimming back to the ship after he left, then taking the Act of Grace in s1 was HUGE. Very selfless, very sweet! He could have done something like that for Izzy, Lucius, and the traumatized crew. Some kind of heroic gesture to help others more than himself. But nope. In some sense, Izzy dying is one of the greatest indications of Ed's wasted potential, because we narratively had a great opportunity for Ed to be able to save someone... but he didn't.
(Admittedly, Ed is not a complete dick here—he helps Izzy when he's limping, he says some genuinely apologetic stuff when Izzy's dying, and he finally gives Izzy his attention and care. But then after the funeral, he's still like "Well, that's that.")
It's so frustrating. It's not that I don't want to like Ed, or that I don't want to sympathize with him. I really, REALLY do! I don't even need Ed to successfully do anything to earn forgiveness! I'd take Ed trying and failing. I'd take him wanting to try, but being so convinced of his monstrousness that he never makes the attempt. But give me something. Anything other than the unexamined apathy that he has so much of the time.
The thing is, s2 lost the ability for Ed's mistreatment of people to be just another "of course he's violent, he's a pirate" quirk. They were pretty explicit about how abusive Ed was (Jim's comment in e1, the joke in e4 people assumed Ed had hit Stede) and how much he traumatized people (Lucius and the whole crew very clearly have PTSD in episodes 4 and 5). This is serious stuff, which he did to other main characters, which is going to make a lot of viewers look at him pretty harshly.
And that's manageable—Hannibal Lector managed to be most textbook-abusive asshole in the world, committing atrocities and generally being unrepentant left and right, and viewers STILL found him lovable and sympathetic. You can do that! But you need to:
a. make it clear that anyone with the relevant information calls them out for being awful, even multiple episodes later
b. make it clear that they care deeply and genuinely about their wronged loved ones
c. make them willing to actually make REAL sacrifices
I watched so many people start to dislike or outright hate Ed in season 2. It made me really sad. But I couldn't blame them for feeling that way. For all that Ed is supposedly one of the two protagonists in OFMD—a character whose mistakes should be the most understandable, whose mental state should be the most resonant—the show seemed to entirely drop the ball on writing him as such.
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S1 Keeley with a boyfriend she genuinely likes and has fun with (the first one in ages) and is maybe even starting to love, even though she hadn’t ever planned on falling in love with him, and this was only supposed to be PR, right (probably), and he isn’t even the right material for a longterm thing anyway (unless he could be?) only for him to go and break their carefully woven trust and demonstrate that he really is more the arsehole everyone else keeps telling her he is, rather than the person he's been to her (the one who, sure, has an ego through the roof, but who's also funny and kind and ambitious and brave) in one fell swoop. To have to wonder if she’s been blind this whole time to who he really is, and to be made to feel like a total idiot because of how he treated her, and then to decide firmly that no, he is good and he is trying, and then to make the choice to continue to be there for him and help him when he asks...
Late S1/S2 Keeley with a different boyfriend, and this one she's certain she loves, and he could most definitely be longterm material with only a little polishing, in fact she's pretty sure this is it, and she's going to see this man through to his shine, because he's worth it. Even as he spirals in retirement and even as they hurt each other in small ways that eventually start to add up into something bigger, she keeps believing things will get better and they both will do better, because the little life they've been building is worth it. Or it has been, up until he goes and breaks up with her and doesn't even give her the courtesy of presenting something passable as a reason, even as he's turned into a stranger before he's fully out the door. And then they're barely talking and she's heartbroken and she knows she probably went wrong somewhere in there, too, but he never told her how and she's too tired to pick apart all the whys, and she's mad at him but it's difficult to even hold space for that anger because she misses him....
S3 Keeley Jones who stumbles into another new thing, and it's not going to be anything serious (unless it could be), and she's still grieving the last one (maybe the last two?) (but this will be different, really) and Rebecca's telling her she isn't certain this is a good thing (but Rebecca never liked Jamie, either, and Jamie's turned out all right, hasn't he). Her new girlfriend flying her on extravagant dates and flooding her with extravagant gifts and making Keeley feel appreciated, like all the time she's put in is finally being recognized, makes her feel worthy of love (she only wants to be loved. she wants people to stop leaving.) Even as her new girlfriend announces their relationship to the entire office (and sure, it's a little sticky, being that her girlfriend is also her boss, and it makes Keeley feel a little uncomfortable, actually, having all those eyes on her, her employees, but she pushes it aside because Jack isn't afraid to acknowledge her, to make it known that she likes her, to stick with her, and that's something). It's something until it isn't, anyway. Until she only acknowledges Keeley where she wants to, to the people she wants to. Until she leaves, too, and takes Keeley's funding with her. And then Keeley is left to feel like the clueless one again, the idiot for not spotting it coming all along.
And she's making stupid decisions again (sleeping with exes just to get the chance to feel someone), and Jamie and Roy are weirdly close now, and isn't that just flipping great. somehow she missed that, too. And she's the one who made them both better!! they never would have turned out like this if she hadn't been pushing them towards it all along, and now they're there without her, which really doesn't seem fucking fair and definitely sucks. And she's maybe still a little (a lot) in love with both of them, but then they're demanding she choose between them like quarreling stupid schoolboys, and she doesn't even want to choose and she wants both of them at the same time she wants neither of them and then there's still the sticky business of rebuilding her firm with what Jack did still sitting so raw in her chest (and it was never that serious anyway, so why does it bother her so much? why does everything bother her so much?)
(im gnawing at my enclosure)
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