Hey I’m the non-tumblr killjoys anon from before. Yes, I’ve watched the series finale. holy IT WAS SO SATISFYING & AMAZING!! I love my green queens! And that they became green queens together as their final shot! It started from Aneela bathing in green & Delle Seyah kneeling to them being immortal green together! Like how does that?! Michelle Lovretta did! Oh and Dutch& Khlyen’s storyline (along w/Aneela’s comment) beautifully tied the knot on their abusive family dynamics.
Hi, anon! I’m so glad you came back, it gives me an excuse to keep talking about it.
Gah, wasn’t it, though? I’m still riding the high from it. Every day I think of it and smile and gush about it with my friend. And omg, I literally said the EXACT same thing to her!
Their first scene is set up as Aneela the queen granting Delle Seyah an audience. Delle Seyah is literally forced to kneel while Aneela is casually bathing in such an abundance of the green, something so precious it’s being killed for, a show of force and power and highlighting their different stations.
And then their final scene is Aneela GIVING DELLE SEYAH HER OWN GREEN. They even made sure to add that, to indicate what a serious gesture this is from her, that small a detail to add to its significance. This isn’t just Aneela using her pools of green to add to her army, this is risking herself so Delle Seyah can stay with her. And as opposed to Delle Seyah kneeling to her, surrounded by Aneela’s guards and handmaidens, they’re holding hands alone in THEIR bedroom.
I’m going to remember this for such a long time. Like, i don’t know if you watched Harlots? One of the other shows that I loved and talked so much about for being both good but also making compassionate decisions? We praised it so much after season 2, we were like, these writers GET IT, they get what they should and shouldn’t do, this is a story about hope, it’s about victims triumphing, this is women writing women. And then it turned out that WAS just coincidence, these writers had no such deeper intentions.
But KJ is the opposite! To have it confirmed that these are deliberate choices, with Michelle Lovretta going out in interview after interview and being asked by so many different entertainment journalists, why not a death? Everyone gets a happy ending? And she’s like yes! Giving a properly articulated philosophy, describing the effort and work that went into doing that, bringing back even Pip and how that wasn’t about Zeph needing him anymore but as a bonus, discussing ways to even bring Pawter back. I really needed to have that kind of faith in at least some professional creator.
Another thing I loved was that she said she specifically wanted to end it with some things left open, to show that these were their ongoing adventures and it all continued even after the camera stopped rolling. Just so much thought into making this the best experience for the characters and thus fans! And it worked. 🙂
[Michelle] Lovretta says Full Stop there was never any other option than to have a happy ending. “It was extremely important. I was determined to end with joy and I think that a large chunk of the recipe in anything that I write is hope. It is hope. It is kindness, it is joy. There may be monsters around you and there may be occasional crime and murder, and there’s going to be a lot of dick jokes, but there’s always got to be heart because I’m not in this for the grim and the gloom and the masturbatory rage,” she explains.
“There’s rage in the real world and I can’t write it. I can process rage, I can process trauma like a fucking champion. I can do that shit, but I can’t dwell in it. I can’t have a world be full of desperation and despair and cruelty. I don’t want to spend time there and so I’m never going to give that to you. If that is the metric by which I write, then it sort of presupposes that I need to end in a place that lives up to that.”
I’m a person who loves tropes and I love sort of spinning them and [there was a trope that I wanted] to spin on its ear. There’s always a feeling that for a story to have a mythic power —for us to feel that it mattered and that the people mattered — well, then they have to die, because life and death is that important. But if death is all that is important, then I think you’re selling life pretty damn short, and I don’t want to do that. Right now, given the state the world is in, I don’t want to be part of that negativity.
I believe in these characters. I love the journey they’ve been on. I’ve loved watching the villains become quasi-anti-heroes and the heroes be challenged. And I don’t see why they have to die just because a lot of conventions within storytelling tell us that we need death to feel that there’s weight. The weight on this show has always been about love, and it’s always been about hope and family and those things shouldn’t have to end.
Michelle Lovretta (Killjoys creator and executive producer)
(via banrions)
