Something that I find Fascinating is that the show reproduces John’s death from the book beat for beat EXCEPT for one very curious detail.
The lead up to John’s death goes like this:
Francesca, Michael and John spend time together exchanging conversation —> Francesca, Michaela and John spend time together doing their puzzle and give us the cute final piece foreshadowing
John has a headache and retires for a nap. Same in both.
Michael/Michaela and Francesca spend time alone together. In the book, they go for a walk and chat. In the show, they make another puzzle offscreen.
Francesca goes to wake John up. She screams.
Now here’s the difference: in both show and movie, Michael and Michaela hear the scream and react. But. BUT! We don’t see Michaela go up to Fran and John’s room like we see in the book. There, Michael sees Francesca sobbing and knows upon seeing John’s body that he is gone. We see that grief and that immense, unbearable loss through his eyes.
In the show, we see Michaela react to the scream. We see her walk off camera, stunned and even frightened… and the episode ends. The next time we see Michaela, she’s curled up and quiet and the stillest we’ve ever seen her on the floor of the sitting room, dressed for her dearest cousin’s funeral and completely unprepared.
And I just find that so odd because on every other aspect of the scene they recreated the beats even if not the exact circumstances (puzzle vs walk, for example), so it stands out that we didn’t get that Michaela scene equivalent. From a filmmaker standpoint, it’s a good point to end the episode on. It’s not their season. It’s good drama and good character work to get right to Fran’s processing grief, which is the centerpoing to ep7.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? We haven’t yet seen Michaela through her own lens yet, we haven’t had glimpses at her full interiority as a character. Almost all of her scenes are viewed through either Fran or John’s lens. The only time she’s Alone and Unobserved that we see is when she hears Fran’s argument with Violet. The bulk of her character work is definitely coming in season 5, which will center her as a proper lead.
So my theory is that they’re saving this scene. That we will see this in flashback during s5 as we explore Michaela’s character. This is Michaela’s greatest loss. It’s her dearest cousin. It’s looking at his body and knowing that’s not John anymore. It’s the crushing, sudden weight of losing him and her world going upside down as a result. Look, it’s material that could be right up there with Anthony’s flashbacks to his mother’s “Edmund should be here!” speech when Hyacinth was born.
It could be SUCH A PIVOTAL SCENE FOR THEM!! It would be DEVASTATING!! My bets would be on episode 2 since it tends to be the romantic lead flashback episode. And I could be wrong! But I would Love to be right on this
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