One Galaxy Away

NATHAN’S MEANING/FINAL BUSINESS: NOT SPAGHETTI

Tw: SPOILERS GALORE, suicide mentioned

WELCOME TO RANTING HOUR. BUCKLE UP AND NO BEACH MUSIC.

So we learn that there are two elements to the existence of ghosts in this world: Their final business, and their ‘meaning’. While these two are often intertwined, they are seperate. The meaning of their individual existence is what compels the ghost to want stay on Earth longer, while their final business is what would put them to rest. Now, for many ghosts, these two are corralated, for example; “My purpose that keeps me here is wanting to kill my enemy, my final business is killing my enemy”, however, those two are not always the same. For example, Nathan’s meaning was “spaghetti night” (I’ll delve into this in a bit), but it was not his final business (or he would’ve passed on), that is currently unknown and I hope to never know it.

So!

In episode 7, Nathan is searching not for his final business, but for what’s keeping him tethered to this plane. What drives him to stay on Earth, to stay alive through death. What he yearns for enough to not be ready to give up.

And the answer we get is “spaghetti night”, but it’s clearly not as simple as that. As Heather mentions “it’s more likely the ritual of a family dinner and how it reminds Nathan of what he cares about more than anything: all of you!”

Now I don’t necessarily think that’s incorrect, but in my theorizing I’ve found that it is only part of the bigger puzzle. See, the first peice of evidence debunking that as a plain answer is that Esther suggested this earlier in the episode (“What about me—I mean us—Me, Ben, Mom. We give you meaning, right?” and instead of that being the solution, Nathan sinks. So that theory is scratched.

This brings me back to the pasta, specifically what Nathan and Heather say in tandem. The ritual of a family dinner. Again, not the entire picture, but it got me thinking about how Nathan described it. He wasn’t talking about the pasta OR the family, but how they interacted and how he got to be a part of it.

But then that clicked.

Nathan’s entire character has a central story of wishing he could participate the way living people do and feeling like he’s missing out on being helpful in adventures. He wishes he could wander outside hotel boundaries, pick things up, and be like his family again.

As well, we know one of the potential main reasons he committed suicide was his isolation, alone far from the town without many friends and not talking often to his family.

So what do I think “gives his existence meaning” and keeps him tethered to the world simply by missing/needing it?

The feeling of being alive again.

The simple pleasures of enjoying a family dinner. The realization that people are there for him. The regular experience of being treated like a human and not a ghost.

All the way back in episode one, his line “they don’t have you. Without you, I’d be the one stuck in an eternal void” came back to me. He knows very seriously that the reason he’s seen as a person rather than another ghost is because of his preexisting relationships. In fact, upon this realization, he notes feeling guilty for having that privilege when his fellow ghosts don’t. The second he leans on that feeling that he’s more ghost than human, he allows the exorcist to send him away.

Because while he is positive and has embraced his new life, Nathan does not want to be a ghost. He wants to be alive. The feeling of getting to pretend he’s alive, to act like he can eat his pasta and talk to his niece and nephew, to be a co-owner, is what gives him purpose because if he’s alive, he has the responsibility to stay there. To not leave again.

Nathan, a man who killed himself, is staying as a ghost because of how much he yearns to feel alive and to have the duty to stay so he can do it this time. He subconsciously regrets that choice, despite not remembering the night he did it. He wishes he’d reached out to his sister and remembered all of the beauty of life that he can only experience from afar now. That’s some poetic shit if I’ve ever heard it.

“Spaghetti night” was one of the triggers because it brought him back to that. His childhood, before everything, and his afterlife, getting to see himself and Katherine reflected in Ben and Esther. It wasn’t the pasta or the family, it was the feeling of being there. Of being alive.

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