this may be unpopular, but i think the series would have been a lot better if aaron had just stayed dead.
.
let me explain. it’s not that i don’t like aaron, it’s just that the whole resurrection arc ruins all the character development of the first three books.
for the first half of the series, there’s a lot of anxiety about whether or not call will turn into an Evil Overlord, and despite how much the characters worry about it, we as readers never truly doubt that call is a good person. he doesn’t want to be evil, and he has the chance to be better, and we trust that although he might screw up sometimes, he will ultimately make good choices.
throughout the first few books, we sort of know that constantine’s misdeeds were fueled by the death of his brother, and then in the bronze key, alma confirms this when she tells them that jericho died because joseph wanted constantine committed to the cause. constantine didn’t want to be evil at first either, but then jericho died, and it was enough to tip constantine over the edge.
then in the same book, aaron dies, and call loses his counterweight, and suddenly he has never been so close to constantine. they’ve both lost their closest friends, their counterweights, and they both feel like their grief will swallow them whole.
aaron dies, and call says he finally understands how constantine madden could have wanted to tear the world down.
and this is when we actually begin to worry. the idea that call will turn into an Evil Overlord isn’t so impossible now. it’s right there in front of him.
so this is the moment of truth, right? this is when we finally find out whether it actually makes any difference if call has constantine’s soul or not. but instead of an exploration of grief and a ponderous insight into the nature of good and evil, we get…the last two books.
it’s not that call tries to bring aaron back. that’s something that i think everyone who has lost someone contemplates, it’s understandable. it’s grief. it’s human. and it’s not like call is trying to be evil, he just wants his friend back.
it’s not even that call brings him back, but wrong. that was horrifying, but it was interesting. we know call makes mistakes, and that’s part of what makes him so compelling as a protagonist and narrator. how do you know what the right thing is when everything feels wrong.
and with call in particular, these actions open an interesting channel for discussion. how does he do this? how does he feel about this? he’s been insisting that he’s different from constantine, but this is dangerously familiar territory, so how does he justify this?
but after call brings back aaron in tsm, he has to confront what he’s done. jasper’s horrified, tamara’s horrified, and aaron is fundamentally off somehow. call has to face the fact that he has made a mistake, that it would be better for everyone - including aaron - especially aaron - if he had left it alone and let aaron remain dead.
and that sort of happens at the end of the silver mask, but then you have aaron in call’s head, and then you have the golden tower, and then you have aaron resurrected in alex’s body. and ignoring the inherent creepiness of aaron-in-alex’s-body, that is a terrible way to end your story about the nature of good and evil and the irreversibility of death.
like, i just. i can’t even begin to express how wrong it is.
for the entire series, call wants nothing more than to prove that he is not constantine madden. that he can make his own decisions, that he is his own person, that he is a good person. but the ultimate climax of the series shows call succeeding where constantine failed.
in the iron trial, call jokes that being the enemy of death doesn’t sound that bad because it’s not like death is so great. tamara immediately sets him straight, tells him that the enemy was evil because he tried to conquer death, and the message there is pretty clear: no human should be able to control death. for the final books to turn on the series’ thesis statement like that is…jarring, to say the least.
i think we were all hoping for a series that told us: evil is not inherent, good is a choice that anyone can make. but instead we got: you cannot escape what you are, all the atrocities that constantine committed were worth it because they allowed call to raise aaron from the dead.
so yeah. aaron should have stayed dead.
