Are you there God? It’s me, Pike
There are so many different perspectives on season 4. I’m seeing a lot of discourse on Pikes character arc this season. People seem to either really like it and really really hate it. Either way, lots of strong feels about this one.
I have watched the campaign and the show. I loved this season of Vox. I loved where they took her and it felt carefully planned but not forced. To me anyways. Quite a few people are disappointed, feeling that it’s too far out of character for her.
I’ve read somewhere that this arc playing out is what Ashley wanted to explore if she could’ve when the campaign was active, if only she wasn’t called away. I haven’t actually seen an interview where this is verified so I can’t attest to the truth of this. It does make sense to me that she’d wanna play and explore Pike going a bit dark for a little bit. It has to be fun to play with for starters, and it adds another layer onto her character. I wish her coming back was a little more fleshed out, since it took Grog turning on her to understand the magnitude of what she’d done. She’d not long finished complaining about Vox causing chaos and leaving those behind to suffer the consequences of their actions, while simultaneously helping to co-create a Lich. Grief can do funny things to a person. Pike had lost BOTH of her people within days of one another and she was disconnected from Scalan and the rest of the group. She was also just as at fault for not reaching out. Mostly because I think she was just stuck in her own head and it happens sometimes.
At the end of the day, this isn’t a bunch of writers writing these episodes who are unfamiliar with the source material. It is the actual creators. Ashley Johnson would have fleshed this out long before she jumped into the booth. It’s going where she wants it to go. Pike is growing the way she wants her to and it might not be comfortable at times. I just trust them that’s what it comes down to. I have faith in their story telling.
