So like- at first I thought that Five being the only one who wasn’t killed instantly by The Handler was just very convenient, but this is The Handler we’re dealing with. She’s good. She knows how to shoot someone fatally, she simply chose not to, she wanted him to be last one alive, for him to know what she had done. She knows him and his biggest fears, she wanted him to suffer.
Although the idea of the Handler wanting Five to suffer is very in character, I don’t think that’s what happened, or at least not that alone. Some thoughts on this from your local has-overthought-too-many-Five-scenes-person.
Five doesn’t die immediately because he is the only sibling with the trained reflexes to duck for cover. Bear with me, I made diagrams.
This is how the siblings are scattered around Lila before the Handler shows up, and red marks the door through which she enters:
So, when the Handler starts shooting, this is approximately the layout of where people are standing:
She shoots Diego first, because he is the one currently talking to Lila and trying to convince her to switch sides, but at this point in time, with the element of surprise, she cannot shoot Five without risking to harm Lila (as seen in red; Lila was probably not as clearly in the shooting line, but still close enough that the Handler would incur the risk):
Now, as she can’t go on and kill Five next, so she turns and starts with shooting Allison, and then moves on counter-clockwise firing off her salve:
This leads to the shot showing us Five (and Diego, again) being shot:
Diego falls to the left, in the direction of where the shot is going, but Five is not. Five is falling into the opposite direction, to the right, which means that he did not get shot frontally like Diego is. It’s because what he is doing is not falling, it’s crouching down. When under fire, the only thing you can do is make yourself the smallest target possible, which is exactly what Five is doing. The few moments that the Handler gifted him by going after Allison and Luther first gave him just enough time to minimise the areas of his body that she could hit. (Shout-out to Klaus in the background, who, despite his military training of three years ago, still has the reflex to look after his siblings first and protect himself later.) Five is the only sibling who doesn’t have a shot of getting hit by the Handler and blood gushing from the wound like with Diego in the gif above.
Another thing to note is that Lila is missing from the shot, despite having stood between Diego and Five before. Reminder that she has the same training as Five, and when the show cuts back to Lila after the Handler is done shooting, this is the position she’s in:
The exact same crouching position Five is going for. Five still got hit because there was only a limited amount of time for him to take cover, and he was still completely exposed, but he wasn’t shot frontally like everyone else, which lead to his wounds not being fatal on impact, which in turn bought him just enough time to reverse the flow of time and save his family. What eventually undid the Handler was Five being the competent assassin she made him become.
TL;DR: Five was still alive after the shootout in the barn because his training taught him to make himself the smallest target possible, and his reflexes were quick enough to act in the second he had to do so. Five’s competency as an assassin played just as much into saving his siblings as his ability to manipulate time and space.
I’ve been looking for this goddam post for an hour and THIS THE DETAIL, NOTICING KLAUS RUNNING TO FIVE
OP YOU BEAUTIFUL HUMAN BEING
