i was raised catholic, had loved ones who believed that my faith (or lack thereof) was in direct correlation to my goodness. have had to reckon with what it means for those relationships that i don't believe. i spent a long time feeling really bitter and judgemental about catholicism because it was a tool of abuse, in a sense. so i resonate really deeply with what eddie went through in this episode. i have gone on an incredibly similar journey.

eddie doesn't believe in the supernatural; that has been a defining character trait of him for a long time. he has a strained relationship with religion; we know he stopped going to confession quite young, and we know from this ep ("i was forced to go to church and i hated it") that his parents pressured him into attending mass. he also says he's not going to do the same thing to chris—he understands that he needs to protect him from the experiences he had.

when abuela finds out eddie's gone back to church, she says "you're reconnecting with your faith, with your community." i think what folks who have never been religious don't understand is that it's not just a belief system; it's something that permeates your home, your family, your social circle. of course eddie is conflicted about not going to church, and then hesitant to share that he's tried it again; it's not just church he's grappling with, it's his relationship with every member of his family we know he's close to. and then when he does go to mass, and abuela starts to get excited, he checks her—tells her he went for her, but that he still doesn't feel "whatever you're supposed to feel" at church.

and what's abuela's reaction? to say "what is love if not a sign of god's presence?" and then when eddie asks "so when i was looking for him in church...?", she tells him: "niño, you were looking in the wrong place." abuela is making the distinction that a lot of folks raised in organized religion spend a lot of time trying to get to—your relationship to spirituality/your relationship to god does not have to be the same as your relationship to religion.

and then, immediately after that conversation (the literal next scene), we see a girl who's 'possessed' who, in fact, is only ill because her parents tortured her when they started to fear they/their religion was losing its grasp on her. eddie's clearly very upset by this, and we see he hasn't internalized what abuela said yet: when buck brings up the supernatural again, he blows up. "she put her faith into everything she was supposed to, and what does she get? tetanus. lockjaw. maybe thirty years of therapy." we're meant to understand that eddie feels a kinship with that girl, because he, too, feels like he's been slowly harmed his entire life by the weight of the church, and his family's/parents' expectations for his commitment to it.

when abuela passes, we see him put into practice what she meant when she said love is a sign of god's presence. he asks pepa to pray, not because he needs it, but because he knows she does, and that abuela would have appreciated it. what eddie gets from that is spiritual, not religious; while she's comforted by prayer, he's comforted by being present with pepa in that moment. the same thing happens when pepa takes eddie's hand at the día de los muertos parade; they're connecting with each other, in a very spiritual, very culturally-grounded moment.

and then we get to eddie's final voice-over. he says "maybe there are no spectres, no spirits. just us, celebrating, dancing, remembering—alive, together. and maybe... that's enough," as he and chris build their ofrenda. eddie is finding a way to be in community without the church, by connecting with his heritage and by surrounding himself with love.

the eddie we get at the beginning of the episode is an eddie who feels like he has to conform to a humorless, rigid, punitive church in order to have a connection with bobby and his family. he's burdened by catholic guilt, the nagging feeling instilled in him since birth that he's doing something wrong. the eddie we get at the end has come to understand that he was, like abuela said, looking in the wrong place for god. he's in a much healthier mindset, one that allows him to grow forward instead of being weighed down by the past.

now, who's to say how they use all this; it could easily never be brought up again (as is... often the case with this show). but, at the very least, it's certainly not an indicator that they're not doing buddie canon. if anything, i'd say it's a positive sign that we're seeing eddie confront the things—his parents' expectations, catholic guilt, his lost love—that have been barriers to successful relationships in the past.