I always knew it would end like this.

Maybe not as soon as this but it was always inevitable.

The divine spectators I share my company with are anticipating your return,

whenever that be in this world or the next, but I know that this is the true end for you.

No more blind luck,

No more resurrections,

Nothing.

Your mangled body will stay here forever,

It will soon return to the earth with the others that have been lost to the carnage of that false god,

leaving no trace of you here.

the music that accompanied your murder will soon fade out,

The desperate cries of your love will be lost to the wind in due time,

The blood that marks where you lay now will be washed away in the next rain.

Maybe then in the future that was meant to be yours,

They will find the parts of you that the bog decided were important,

And they will give you a new past.

Maybe you are a king,

Brought out to the bog to be executed and buried in a ritual,

Or maybe just a simple traveller, Who simply fell victim to the local beasts’ hunger.

No matter what they’ll believe you were,

I know two true things about you:

In life, you taught me how to hope,

And in death,

1. I believe Arthur is dead, For real this time. His arc is done. His plot amour is literally dead and gone. We have all his lore now and he’s learned the lessons in hope and regret set for him. There’s nowhere to go with his character anymore. He can finally be with Faroe again

Which leads me to

2. I believe that the deal made in intermezzo was technically fulfilled on both sides. More importantly Kayne’s side of it. The deal was that Arthur would get Faroe back and John would have his own body, but nothing was said Faroe being alive and John getting a functional body. Therefore the deal was fulfilled by both sides and I saw this coming from miles away.

And finally

3.Noel’s now going to become our protagonist in s6. Am I heavily biased and maybe delusional? Yes BUT I have reasons. First off, Noel’s arc was never completed. He had three episodes of screen time in s4, only development of his character was his lore and the fact that he could talk to John and he has so much potential as a character for it not to be thrown out. Secondly, out of all the people mentioned in part 52, he was mentioned for the longest. Kayne even made it a major part of the deal to reveal his location to Arthur and also confirmed he was alive. Lastly, in order to wake up and therefore kill azathoth, you need three stone: the black stone, the gray stone and the crimson stone. We only know that Kayne has two stone, the black stone and the gray stone. So Kayne would need someone who is already acquainted with the eldritch world to get it for him. Enter Noel, who has all of those qualities and is still alive

I just felt like it was the perfect way to represent everything that makes malevolent, malevolent.

From the message of doing something for the sake of a future you will never see to the little quotes that you know damn well will be important later to the scene at the end when Arthur and John are looking at the star filled sky with a new found hope for their lives even with lillith right beside them who they know will do whatever it takes to get the black stone from them.

It’s these little things that make malevolent the way it is for me at least.

So if this was the last episode of malevolent, I wouldn’t be that upset.

I mean not getting Noel back and not seeing Kayne again would suck but I could genuinely get past that.

Because both Arthur and John have learned the lessons set out for them at the start of the show. John has learned that he is his own person outside of Arthur, he has an identity known as John and no one else. While Arthur has learned to accept his past mistakes and to live on for the others in his life that can no longer do so.

AND, Alia got a somewhat good ending.