Yeahhh. So you’ve arrived there. Yeah, she’s FULL evil. I totally understand what you mean about hating her, I very predictably tend to go for the nice, boring, responsible good characters, always. Superman, Cap, Amy Santiago, hell, Elizabeth was my favorite Wakefield twin! I was never the type of person who’d be like, oh, these queer-coded villains are my thing.
But I don’t know why, Delle Seyah somehow is my Exception. I’ve actually wondered about this for a while, what makes her different. It’s not because she’s queer or a WOC, that doesn’t sway me automatically. I’ve been discussing it with a like-minded friend and we have some theories:
First, I’m still easily led by the narrative, I’ll go where it wants me to. And it’s the show that seems to still like her. Dutch, the lead, never stopped being my actual fave and if Delle Seyah had seriously gone against her, I’d side with Dutch, but the show doesn’t ever really make me choose. Yeah, season 3 has a whole building war with them on opposite sides but the fact that they give us that much of Delle Seyah’s point of view and sympathetically, that’s not trying to get us to hate her.
Secondly, Delle Seyah’s actions are shown to be exactly as bad and hurtful as they are. She’s set up in contrast to the good guy leads who care about feelings and not hurting people and the greater good and helping strangers and all that. In a setting like this, I need that. OUAT always had a lot of trouble with this, they wanted the cartoon villain with no nuance and then also a sob story to justify them but ended up being so messy. A lot of other media does that too, like The 100 with that massacre in mid-season 3. In an effort to shock the audience with atrocities and then continue without dealing with the fallout, they minimize what happened. But we know what Delle Seyah did was bad and Johnny continues to remember it, as he should! Even when she’s included with the others because of aligned motives, we never forget who and what she is.
And then, you have to remember, watching this in real time, we had years to process all this. The wait between season 2 and 3, 10 months. And we never thought she’d survive. You’re watching now knowing she got her happy ending, imagine thinking at any point for three seasons that she could die. Possibly more likelihood of a death near the season finale because of how TV works, but you know how it is with f/f characters, and a villainous QWOC at that? Surviving every ep was a victory. We never thought she was getting away with anything in the long run.
And lastly, nobody on the show is perfect. Everyone’s done crappy things. It’s far more about trying to do better and be better and that’s kind of…enough? There’s no line crossed that people can’t come back from. People don’t have to suffer the same amount of pain they caused to continue to exist freely and do better from now on.
It’s not redemption through punishment.
It’s a little hard to talk about more than three seasons’ worth of plot without spoiling too much, but she does go through her growth. To the point of being an actual good person, well, not really. There is some suffering in there, she does go through some things, but nothing that’d make up for full on murdering a character. She just begins to care about more than herself. And that seems to be enough. The people who die in this show don’t do so because they deserved it, it isn’t to redeem themselves. As long as you’re alive you can do better and once the other characters are okay with that, we are too.