slept on the release of the creel house on legos website and its all bye bye for now, already saw one pop up on Facebook marketplace for 600 lol
Really glad I picked this up on a whim at Target the other day…”Rockin’ Robin’s WSQK compilation” that comes with a lot of cool goodies (stickers, poster, and postcard)
Duffer Brothers on happy, sad, confused. Diving in, hoping for some good insights. it was pretty pedestrian. They seemed very tired from release week.
I hope we can all agree that Delightful Derek was one of the standouts of the season. I'm also really partial to Rambo Nancy; her whole getup at the end was so badass
Saw a few posts saying the Duffer bros said that the only person they told El’s true fate to was MBB. Seems pretty obvious if that’s the case.
Nancy isn’t least favorite of the main cast I think. I think objectively her arch is great I just never connected with the character.
After thinking about it over the weekend, El's ending still really doesn't sit right with me. I just can't see it any other way than "abuse survivor has to remove herself from all of her loved ones' lives to ensure they can live peacefully and happily", and that just feels like it runs counter to the whole "the love of your friends and family can overcome insurmountable odds" idea that's been a consistent through line to the whole show
I think part of the problem is you're ascribing a real world scenario, the cycle of abuse, to a heavily specialized fictional sci-fi scenario of "child gets experimented on growing up and gets psychic powers that the military wants to use as a weapon", and I personally can't think of a scenario that cleanly resolves the plotline that isn't wildly unrealistic, like the military just giving up or the small town of Hawkins somehow defeating the entire U.S. military. I also think that when people consume media they start ascribing things to the show that the creators never intended, which I do agree the creators should recognize and compensate for, but Eleven was supposed to die from Season 1, and this feels like just coming back to that same ending the long way around, but with a more hopeful resolution since she's clearly not dead, just not able to be with her friends because of said military. She at least is free now to live out her life on her own terms. I don't want this to imply that I'm happy with the resolution, because I agree it sucks, but I just don't know how it resolves unless you don't resolve it. And maybe that's the best solution, having an "and the adventure continues" scenario where they recognize they'll always be in danger from all sides and they'll just confront it together. That's also not a happy ending since they will always be in danger and the likely end result is they all die or get arrested.
its so so so so so so so so much more than that though. you gotta understand that. she literally explained it, like a few times lol
This just makes me think of the How I Met Your Mother ending where they had decided on something from the outset and stuck with it without accounting for the fact that the story and characters have evolved greatly from that point. It's a messy, unrealistic ending anyway cause the military just letting them go is still wishful thinking even with El being gone. May as well full send it I can get behind it a bit with the framing of "she has to leave her abusive environment to try and start fresh, even if it means leaving the couple good things behind". Still feels a bit wonky to me within the context of what the show usually says and how it's generally portrayed El's story, but it starts to fit better in my own interpretation
"we decided on this ending a decade ago and never changed it" is truly always a recipe for disaster especially if you're just making up the stuff inbetween
I feel like it is a pretty simple solution to write around: the Mind Flayer is dead. It was the source of everyone's powers, so El no longer has any. Everyone sees this because the military's "kryptonite" speakers end up not working on her when they get back. The military doesn't want someone who has no powers. The end. I mean, hell, that's what they did for Will, right? Sure, you can argue the excuse that Will didn't have the powers in his blood or whatever, but the writers don't *have to* write it that way lol
I think the military in general was pretty easily one of the weakest parts of the last couple seasons and not much of value would be lost if they were written out entirely. The "government" angle of the series should've ended with Papa and Owens
I agree that this is a solution, but as I said earlier, we're not just talking about a happy ending for the show, but a happy ending for the meta context the viewer is watching it in. If "problem gets solved by abused leaving their loved ones" is a bad look, then "persecuted solves problem by losing what makes them different" is an equally bad message.
Maybe, but that's not realistic. I know, realism in a fantasy series, but sometimes that's the hook in taking a fantastic scenario and exploring the real world ramifications.
Also, this same branch of the military was established in season 4 as wanting to "clean up" what Brenner did, thinking El was evil and the cause of all this, and they fully planned on gunning her down from the helicopter. So, now them suddenly wanting to keep her alive for experimentation is a strange change. This is what made this branch differ from the branch of government Brenner and Owens came from.
I think that probably stems from Kay taking over the operation. Brenner wasn't military, he was a DOE scientist. Kay seems like the person in the military who got put in charge when a bunch of military folks ended up dead in the desert at a secret DOE facility and was very much a "this person can be a weapon" type of military mind, vs. the other dude who just saw her as a threat.
If her powers were gone than Kali's powers were gone and there are no illusions, no ability to talk to Mike there....
I had also guessed that the ending would be "Eleven gets de-powered", as predictable and sort of tacky as that is. My take on that was more that she never wanted nor asked for these powers that she has and has almost always wanted a "normal" life, to a degree. Removing her powers would be more or less the last step of her achieving a sense of normalcy and not losing something that she felt made her "special". Her "savior of humanity" role was more her just accepting the role she was somewhat forced into. It seems like the Duffers considered this as an option but pretty quickly threw it out, based on their comments.
Another route they could have gone - if you wanted to retain El’s powers while allowing her to go live her life - is introduce Kay as someone who has taken over the operation, but is on the fence about the morality of experimenting on kids. The more she sees, the worse it gets to the point that she turns on the military, kills anyone who opposes her, and then buries any further proof of Eleven’s existence. Still a lot of holes there, but it’s something.