because Leverage is not a show where characters are going to die in mid-season episodes. that's WHY the finale's fakeout works so well; it's the finale, it's the one episode of the show where they genuinely could die and the plot would still work. easy to forget, but nate kicks it at the end of S2 as well - if the show hadn't gotten renewed he'd be canonically dead. but in general, physical danger isn't a huge threat to these characters because they still need to be functional in the next episode. and in a lot of shows, that kills the stakes outright.

so, this is why we have Eliot. bear with me a minute, this is going under a "read more" because it's long.

This show is so motherfucking funny.

Like in the Missing Heir Job the mark asks what Parker was doing in the other room and Nate just straight out his ass goes “ummmm stealing! she has a meth problem!” and Parker deadpanning harder than any human has ever deadpanned before goes “I do. I love meth.”

Note that this is after Nate conspicuously keeps trying to loudly work the word “safe” into his convo with the mark to get Parker to stop robbing the guy and come pretend to be the long lost heir of the dude whose inheritance they’re trying to get in the right hands– which the mark buys to such a degree that he immediately tries to have Parker killed.

FINAL SHOWDOWN OF ULTIMATE DESTINY:

Gaang (Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, Suki, Zuko) from Avatar: The Last Airbender

VS

Leverage Crew (Nate Ford, Sophie Devereaux, Eliot Spencer, Parker, Alec Hardison) from Leverage

But somewhere along the line they just… Disappeared. My mom says they’re not being paid and they’re not in collections. It’s almost as if someone out there did…exactly what Parker did.

They’re all wrong.

Look, I obviously adore the white knight/black king motif, and it works really well for that very specific discussion of Nate’s shift in morality and position at the opening of the series. But the show as well as I and other fans have then tried to take that equation and apply it to other jobs and to the crew as a whole. This is fun and awesome, but I believe you’re going to get it wrong every time if you start from the white knight/black king line. 

Because in all other situations, Nate is not the king.

Couple important things about kings in chess: 1. They don’t move much. They can only move one space at a time, and for most of the game they stay in their own little box, well guarded by other pieces. This is because 2. When the king is checkmated (threatened with capture and no possible escape), it’s game over. There is no more hope. This is the sole requirement for losing the game. No matter who else is in play, if the king is down, you lose.

This is NOT how Nate operates. Yeah, he makes the plans, but he doesn’t just hide in the office while everybody else carries them out. He’s almost always right up in there playing the most obnoxious guy you’ve ever met or smashing windows or something. And if Nate gets captured, it’s not game over, in fact, it often isn’t even a PROBLEM. Let’s look at a few times that happens, just for fun: - In The King George Job, Nate’s getting beat up and Eliot slightly panics and is about to run to help, when Sophie says “NOPE, don’t do that, I can fix this without blowing our cover” and saunters in at her leisure. The jig isn’t up and she’s not even particularly concerned about him getting punched. I love it. - In the Maltese Falcon Job, Nate sacrifices himself to save the team. This is a classic thing to do in chess and chess metaphors, but, I cannot stress this enough, you cannot sacrifice your king. That’s just called LOSING. -In The Long Goodbye Job of course the whole con is structured around Nate getting caught. I guess this one kind of makes sense because the whole point is to look like they HAVE completely lost, but then at the end it appears that Nate’s going to secret prison and everyone else is escaping WITH the black book, so they STILL would be losing Nate but winning the job. 

So if Nate isn’t the king, who is?

Hardison.

Let’s look at our points about kings again:

1. Doesn’t move as far or as quickly: Yes, Hardison ALSO gets out there and participates in the cons, everybody does. But Hardison does stay in the background more often, because that’s where his power is. He does the behind the scenes tech stuff and the remote stuff, he can wreck your shop without showing up through the power of the internet. He also does the forgeries of identities and objects, which are also done in his own space. At the same time, he has less physical power and less range – you don’t want him in a fistfight, or a gunfight, and his grifts are notorious for being a little… uh… interesting. So he has limited physical range and power but at the same time… .

2. The game is over if you lose him. That far-reaching behind the scenes power is absolutely vital for 90% of the jobs. He does the massive amounts of research and hacking legwork needed just to START a job, even before you get to actually completing the job. You are pretty much dead in the water without Hardison. But that’s just from a practical standpoint. Losing Hardison is also a crisis from an emotional standpoint. He’s our moral compass and our sweet baby brother and when Hardison gets in trouble there is no “well he’ll be fine for a few minutes” and no “well he kinda had it coming.” No, when Hardison is in trouble everything else grinds to a halt and everyone comes running. (See: The Experimental Job, The Grave Danger Job, The Long Goodbye Job.)

So like, yes Nate is in charge. But the king isn’t in charge on a chessboard, the king is just a piece with a very unique role, which Hardison fills much better than Nate does. So, now that we have our real king, who are our other pieces?

Queen: Parker. This has nothing to do with her dating Hardison. The thing about the queen is she can do a little bit of everything – she can move in any direction, making her the most dangerous piece on the board. Parker’s whole character arc is about learning all the different roles and how to access the whole playing field. She’s the only one who plans and executes an entire episode-length job by herself (okay, with a little help from her girlfriend). Plus, the other cool thing about a queen is she has a built-in transformation story – a pawn that crosses the board can become a queen, which Parker mimics by initially being dismissed as “the crazy one” and ultimately becoming the mastermind.

Knight: Sophie. I know, I wanted Eliot to be the horsie too, but this makes more sense. The knight’s deal is that it’s sneaky – it’s the only piece that can turn corners – and it can jump over obstacles. Sophie’s whole philosophy of grifting is that she shouldn’t need to know about safes or security systems, she should be able to bypass (jump over) all that by insinuating herself with the mark (being sneaky by playing a character to get behind enemy lines)

Rook: Eliot. This is the straightforward one – it goes in a straight line. It also literally represents the castle walls. It’s also so, so fucking helpful to have around, I fucking hate losing my rooks. It’s your solid right hand man, basically. Is this a little reductive of Eliot? Absolutely, but I’m jamming five complex characters into five predetermined boxes, it’s not all gonna be nuanced. And I think Mr. Punchy would like being seen as the fortress that everybody depends on, and to let all the nuance go under the radar. That’s where he likes it. 

Bishop: Finally, here’s where Nate is hiding. While the rook can only go straight (lol), the bishop can only go diagonally. Nothing can be straightforward for the bishop, he always has to come at things from an angle. Like, you know, constantly looking at all the different angles of a situation and finding the right angle to come at a mark from. Also, the bishops sit right in the middle right next to the king and queen. I don’t know that this is historically accurate, but when my dad taught me to play he told me that was because the bishops were important councilors to the rulers, they were the ones who had important wisdom that would tell them the best plan of attack. So the king here isn’t necessarily the one making the plans – that’s the bishop. And finally, apparently the bishop is called lots of different things in other languages, but we’re operating in English, which means it makes Nate a priest, and that makes me happy.

(even with the example early on of Eliot using this trick - anger as a performance, quickly switched off - to get Sophie to admit that she wasn’t apologising. I will never be over season one Eliot successfully tricking the team’s grifter that way. And for such a gentle reason.)

so we get Nate strolling casually up to the table to ask Sterling what he’s doing here - which, big mob boss vibes there, it’s gorgeous - and I’m just thinking about how Eliot ‘snapping’ and going after Sterling allows Nate to be civilised, because Nate doesn’t have to threaten Sterling or remind him not to mess with them; his man, working for him and under his control, has already done that. And Nate being civilised and calling the shots allows Eliot to safely lean into his don’t-mess-with-me angry hitter persona, probably to make a point, probably to have a little fun as well. (Really I don’t even stop to justify that scene. It just causes me so much joy as it is.)

the first time I saw the french connection job, the ‘call off your dog’ bit bugged me. Nate hearing that and (after a moment) doing so meant he was implicitly agreeing with the idea that Eliot was his dog, and that Eliot wasn’t capable of standing down by himself. Which goes entirely out the window if it’s a grift. Reading it as almost transactional, an agreement between the two to enable each other to lean into their respective roles in little plays for their marks’ benefits - and their own - makes it so much better. Nate gets to come across as reasonable and in control of powerful assets; Eliot gets to scare people into believing that he really would hurt them badly if they gave him a reason, and his reputation survives another day, and people don’t look too closely.

“You know, people underestimate you, Eliot.” “That’s kind of the point.”

actualmenacebuckybarnes: okay but can’t he be both though? Like, okay, I get the backstory, as it’s been given to us, but this is my number one pet peeve about the perception of Southerners, country people and of violent characters generally.

Eliot Spencer is incredibly smart and very cultured. When other characters talk about pink collar jobs, Eliot corrects them and is far more aware of that sort of thing than they are (Sophie says ‘stewardess’, Eliot immediately tells her ‘flight attendant,’ etc.). He has a great knowledge of not just knife technique, which, okay, but wines, distillery, flavor composition, etc. He routinely passes as professions deemed higher class than that which is perceived to be his own (doctor, lawyer, accountant), and he uses his means of accomplishing tasks, violence, with skill and discernment and not mere force.

He also reads Nate better than anyone, including Sophie, and calls him on his bullshit directly all the time.

When we see Eliot interacting with the rest of the team, it’s not that he’s uncultured or less of a hipster trope, it’s that it reads different coming from him than say, Hardison because he has a Southern twang, a gravelly voice, and a tendency to punctuate with the word “damn it.” Which is a local dialectical thing, honestly, I do it, my mom’s boyfriend does it, a lot of people around here do it.

Eliot with the Leverage crew is Eliot relaxed. He’s code switching. When he knows something, he tells them, ‘it’s a very distinctive,’ which is like our tumblr shorthand ‘for reasons.’ They come to trust that when Eliot says ‘it’s a very distinctive’ he means, ‘It’s complicated and I know it from experience, but it’s not important enough for you to know that I have to explain, so move on.’ He doesn’t have to turn on his charm or put forth any sort of airs, they know him, they know how he operates, they know how he thinks, so he can just grumble and swear and threaten and keep working, so he’s happy.

He doesn’t like talking. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like anything else, he just doesn’t like talking. Some people don’t. Doesn’t mean they don’t think, I mean, there’s that old proverb about removing all doubt, right?