#diegolila

as we enter 2026, shout-out to all the pairings and duos that simultaneously kept me sane and drove me insane this year

Stranger Things ended on season 4 with Max alive and well and Vecna defeated (and you know what, Eddie is also alive) the same way The Umbrella Academy ended on season 3 with all of them being happy and safe in the new timeline. idgaf what the showrunners say they clearly lost their minds

something something five survived in the apocalypse for 40 + years and never gave up on his family or finding a way home, but we’re supposed to believe he spent 7 years in the subway with lila and suddenly he dgaf?? wants to stay there with her?? leave his family to rot?? something something

Still thinking about how The Umbrella Academy gave us a couple that fully matched each other's freak, was fun but also had serious emotional stakes, and had so much genuine relationship conflict they could have easily explored that would have been interesting to watch them navigate and especially see them succeed at reconciling and instead of doing that in the last season they just tore that away for the sake of- I'm gonna coin a new term here- creating what might well be the world's first incidence of Cinematic Grooming. Yes, Aidan and Ritu aren't dating in real life, but they had to kiss on screen and act a whole romance arc. Yes, Five is "technically" much older than his body, but that is icky for the same reason "this 1000 yr old woman looks and acts like a toddler/8yr old" is icky in anime and I would argue considerably WORSE because those characters are fully animated pictures voiced by ADULTS. Aidan was like 15 when he started acting Five, maybe 16 when he met Ritu and started acting alongside her. She's in her 30s (and was at the start of TUA). The fact that they waited til the second he was 18 and then put him in a romantic pairing with an actress who worked with him directly as a minor is disgusting. We got to watch him be groomed via a fictional character and scenario that was fully dreamed up and forced by the twisted mind of Steve Blackman. Then you go back to season 2&3 and see the sexual references/implications they set up between him and The Handler and Lila which we all collectively were like, "okay, ew, but they're referencing things he did when he had a grown up body" (in the handler interactions case) or the extremely weird naked fight with Lila in season 3 where he makes it clear he has no interest in her (very much seems that is how Aidan and Ritu interpreted it by their acting) and you realize this absolutely was not a last minute decision. Steve PLANNED for this to happen since Aidan was a young teenager, they just weren't expecting David and Ritu to have so much chemistry and talent at acting that they would fully sell their relationship. It just drives me nuts. There was so much else they could have done with Diego and Lila's relationship even if they didn't end up together. Even if they wanted more angst of Five having feelings for Lila he knows she will never reciprocate due to his body and her love for Diego. They fully went OUT OF THEIR WAY to write that in. And the female writing just took such a nosedive overall that it really hurts looking back. It was such a good show with so much potential and they managed to MANGLE it in that last season so hard.