#marielle sinclair

Season 1: Eric. Death by suicide. Notable fact: He had celiac disease and no longer bothered to avoid gluten, thus would often end up at the clinic dealing with the consequences. His friendly demeanor eased Kristi's initial transition into Fromville life.

Season 2: Kelly. Death by stake through the cranium. Notable fact: Less about Kelly, more a commentary on Kristi's kindness that Kristi offers Kelly the illusion of taking down a last message to Kelly's mother to give Kelly some comfort.

Season 3: Danny and Shay. Unknown cause of death. Notable fact: The owners of the truck upended in the drained pool. Kristi provides their names when Boyd fails to recall them.

Season 4: Roger. Death by assault from a doll monster. Notable fact: He always talked about the garden he had back home.

Deaths linger with Kristi. She doesn't forget names, circumstances, details. Kristi sees the health and the welfare of these residents as her responsibility--and it doesn't matter if someone has been around for weeks or a day. When Kelly from the bus starts to deteriorate, Kristi insists it's her job to ease Kelly's suffering, and when Boyd tells Kristi to leave the scene and he'll take care of it, Kristi refuses to go. These deaths reflect a shortcoming or failure on Kristi's part to heal and to help. As Kristi tells Marielle, she's seen things, she's had to do things in this place that she couldn't have imagined. And while Kristi tries to tell Marielle that Nikki's death was not Marielle's fault, it sounds very much like a pot and kettle situation--Kristi recognizes such guilt because she's acquainted with carrying and grappling with it.

These were people, however, that Kristi knew, at most, for months. In Kelly's case it was but moments, and yet the repetition of incidents and mentions cements the impression that Kristi isn't going to forget Kelly, either.

Within this framework, it's very difficult to construct a logic wherein Kristi would quickly or easily forget Marielle.

But will the writing assert that?

I was thinking about the endings of 2x10 and 4x10. How big Kristi's reaction to Marielle's death is in 4x10 as compared to how I get the impression that Kristi would have mourned more quietly had Marielle died in 2x10. Kristi was already in the process of mourning, bracing for what she suspected was coming, sitting by Marielle's side, having cried or on the verge of doing so, acclimating to the prospect that Marielle could die. Marielle slipping away in a mystery coma was a slower gradual process of losing Marielle, as opposed to the abruptness and carnage and the opportunity for a final, rushed, truncated interaction that was Marielle bleeding out within minutes. There's a greater shellshock in the scenario less anticipated and foreshadowed. (Not that Kristi could anticipate. Each time she assumed Marielle was in safe circumstances: restrained in bed, tucked away at the clinic--Marielle couldn't get up to shenanigans, so, unforeseeable, the shenanigans came to her.)

Grief needs time. In this case, narrative time. Either a slowed pace of narrative, where characters have time to think and reflect and feel (rather than scurrying around in panic for their lives, like Boyd taking the time to visit Abby's grave, or Henry and Victor doing the same for Miranda and Eloise, or Sara reconstructing a shattered snowman ornament and dropping mentions of Nathan, or Tabitha looking at Jim's clothes), or narrative attention (e.g. Boyd and Abby, where Boyd isn't constantly dwelling on Abby, but Abby repeatedly intrudes into the narrative, as hallucinations, when other characters berate Boyd about Abby, her presence always lurking around Boyd and his decisions).

I don't know if that happens for Kristi, partly because FROM's narrative is somewhat allergic to harking back to character histories from Before-Fromville. Characters don't talk much about their lives from Before and yet that's exactly why Marielle's death would hit harder for Kristi relative to all the other deaths recorded on her list. Kristi and Marielle had a life before that contained hopes and the sketches of a future together. Kristi would be mourning what they had and also the denied possibilities of what they could have been. Through Seasons 2-4, I kept thinking: I have no idea what Kristi and Marielle's lives were like in the beforetimes (but I hope it was far more substantive and dimensional than what we see in this place). Is it gonna take lamenting what existed to drop some lore and knowledge about their relationship in Season 5? If that sounds like asking for too much, it probably is.

Kristi and Kenny barely had interactions, much less a friendship, after the opening episodes of Season 3 and yet, given how busy Boyd is, Kenny would be the likeliest candidate in the cast to offer comfort and support to Kristi. (Kenny doesn't yet know Marielle is dead; Boyd did not share that information in 4x10, though there was an opportunity to do so. Marielle legitimately didn't interact with enough characters for Kristi to turn to anyone else using the avenue of mutual acquaintanceship, so any approach at Kristi would come purely from the direction of caring about Kristi and not about the person of Marielle. The only prospect with some tenuous connection to Marielle herself would be . . . Randall? Which, lol, I would take, because I think both Randall and Marielle had a chip on their shoulder about how people perceived them and they recognized that in one another. Too bad that wasn't explored. Ellis was the only other character seen interacting with Marielle on any basis and he spent a lot of that time doubting and skeptical of Marielle.)

(A thought I had when revisiting Kenny and Kristi's conversation about Eric in 1x09: Kristi extracts a promise from Kenny that he come talk to her "if it falls apart, if you fall apart." That's what Kristi wanted from Marielle, as well, and when Marielle did that . . . Kristi didn't do much. Marielle wasn't, actually, falling apart in the sense that she wasn't holding it together--Marielle was maintaining composure fairly well in her way, as I think evidenced by the fact that she didn't relapse again; that seems like a good barometer against which to measure the degree to which Marielle was spiraling; and in how Marielle tells Fatima that it is their job in a crisis to hold their shit together, which Marielle was resolutely attempting to do [and, in fact, echoes what Boyd told Kristi to do in 2x09]--but Kristi likely did perceive Marielle as falling apart or teetering on the edge. Kristi, girl, what was your mental health crisis management plan? Because I didn't see any course of action being enacted.)

Which I suppose is my way of saying: I don't trust the narrative to put time and attention into this or that. Kenny got to have an episode of really good cries over his mother's death; Kristi has had her cries over Marielle. Is that it? Buck up, do your job? To be fair, that is Kristi's lifeline and has been for months, that she has a job to do and she can focus on going about doing it. When Kristi is floundering, Boyd tells her, "Do your (damn) job" (depending on the appropriate tone required in the situation). It feels like Kristi might need a stern talking-to in the initial aftermath, but once that hump is scaled, maybe the narrative doesn't need to address it again. I would believe that Kristi would postpone processing Everything if there were present overwhelming threats and crises and/or there's an actionable plausible plan to get out. Mind the living now, remember the dead later. The other option would be to have Kristi descend into despair and nihilism. That would be . . . huh. Feels far less probable--but not implausible.

The devil's argument is that Kristi was tempted and willing to move on from Marielle not that long ago in Season 1. And not just in a "because I'm stuck in Fromville" way, but as explicitly entertained by Kristi herself "if we get out of here, I'm going to have to make a choice between Marielle or Kenny" way. This alterable focus is bolstered by the narrative keeping Kristi and Kenny separate for at least a season and a half, not having them have platonic hangs where they gossip about the goings on of Fromville and keep each other updated. Heck, at the clinic when Fatima is being examined, no one among Kristi, Marielle, Boyd, Fatiima, and Ellis mentions that the life that was saved by Fatima's intervention was Kenny! You'd think Kristi would be relieved and grateful that she wasn't burying another good friend, thus able to better recognize the potential usefulness and benefit of Fatima's connection.

I'm excluding Tabitha and Jim because their marriage had an extra internal dimension that they were grappling with that the others didn't. Relations between them were so fraught trying to navigate an additional, different grief--the death of a child--that their dynamics were about whether or not they wanted to repair or dissolve the romantic bond between them. When Fromville swept them in, Tabitha and Jim were on their way to a divorce, a decision in which Tabitha apparently felt more conviction than Jim, and that rift colors how they process Fromville as a unit and individually, especially with the added responsibility of being parents to two living children. Fromville captured them at a time when their relationship was on the verge of disintegrating but the stress of trying to stay alive in Fromville gave them an external problem and common goal to tackle together that created a possibility of mending the cracks the tragedy of Thomas rent.

Boyd and Abby, on the other hand, were on track to have what seems like a happy retirement together in the midst of a long, enduring, copacetic marriage. In the flashback to the day the Stevens family arrived in Fromville, we see how Boyd and Abby tease each other, and that Abby had secretly fulfilled Boyd's oft-stated wish for a boat as a gift to him. It's sweet. There's familiarity and ease in their rapport. Once in Fromville, though, Boyd became so focused on rallying the community and creating structure and infrastructure to ensure survival that he neglected Abby. His mistake wasn't that he didn't help Abby; it's that Boyd didn't notice she needed help in the first place. His priorities were, essentially, the job at hand that he had assigned himself, losing sight of the trees for the forest. Boyd didn't see that Abby was slipping, wasn't paying attention to her, wasn't listening to her. Ellis did. Ellis tried to tell him, practically begged Boyd to attend to Abby. Boyd didn't listen. For his negligence, Boyd paid an unthinkable price: he himself killed Abby to prevent her from killing Ellis.

That guilt follows Boyd throughout the entirety of the narrative, a point of grief and failure that the show returns to again and again internally and externally. Boyd hallucinates Abby multiple times as Fromville uses her as leverage against him. Other residents, Donna and Khatri, berate Boyd for the guilt he carries and letting it influence his decisions and actions. Abby's death serves as both a motivator and a torment to Boyd. You failed. Don't fail again.

Ellis saw his father fail Abby and the consequence was that Ellis lost his mother. In that period of grief--and loneliness, as Ellis distanced himself from his father--Ellis met Fatima and loving her and being loved by her provided something bright and worth living for in this desolate place. With his father's example serving as a lesson, Ellis clearly decided he would not ignore his own beloved's suffering, especially not with the shenanigans at play in this place. It's why Ellis continually makes so much effort to try to check in with Fatima, to find some way to understand what she's thinking and feeling, to stay mindful of her physical, mental, and emotional states. Ellis doesn't know what to do in the face of forces you can neither confront nor fight, or how to help process the trauma of supernatural horrors visited on Fatima, but he's determined to try something, anything, even seek aid from others if need be.

Is Fatima showing signs of losing hope? Some flowers and a pep talk might make her feel a little better. Are they all going to die when they fall asleep or from not sleeping in trying to avoid that fate? If it's the last thing he'll do, Ellis is gonna marry Fatima to express his love and devotion to her to the end. Did Fatima inadvertently murder someone? Ellis isn't going to watch her go in the Box; he'll run away with her and figure out how to live in the woods with her if he has to. Does Fatima need some outlet to express all the anger surely simmering inside her? Take her to go smash cars. Does Ellis understand why Fatima has undertaken a huge sculpting art project in the attic? No, but he'll listen to her explain why she's doing it and if she says it helps her feel in control, very well, let her be empowered, this doesn't seem to be hurting anyone. As long as she knows he's there for her, that she can talk to him, that he's going to do what she needs from him.

Ellis tells Fatima explicitly: "Home" is where Fatima is. Returning to the outside world isn't worthwhile if Fatima isn't there. Does Ellis lose all hope or will to live if Fatima can't be recovered? What kind of psychic and emotional damage will be inflicted seeing a being with Fatima's face, wielding knowledge of them, terrorize him and the other residents?

The cruelty is that Ellis did everything in his power to not repeat what he viewed as his father's mistakes and still ended up at a similar conclusion, perhaps one even more horrific and haunting. Boyd may be seeing visions of Abby but Ellis and the others will possibly see Fatima in the flesh roaming in the night, hunting them. What else could Ellis have done? He couldn't protect Fatima from whatever chose her to be a surrogate for a monster child or stop the further consequences of that process turning her into a monster herself. There was no known defense to take. Resistance was futile.

Ellis's response to this fresh tragedy could also have consequences for Boyd, whose driving motivation at this point is to get his son out of this place, if nothing else. And if Boyd's son doesn't give a shit about living anymore because he's deep in the pits of despair, feeling unmoored and with nothing to live for, where does that leave Boyd's efforts to "save" him? Of course, that doesn't stop one from trying because this place is a living hell but this place has broken Boyd's son with successive heartrending blows and who knows if Ellis can be reeled back or wants to recover from that. If there's a way to restore Fatima--great! And if not . . . she's not killable. Her suffering and the indignity forced upon her can't be ended in that manner. The solution would be to "solve" this place, to end all the cycles, but that would also require accepting losing her.

Meanwhile, Boyd's other child, his third child (along with Kenny), Kristi falls in between Boyd's situation and Ellis's circumstances. Boyd didn't comprehend that Abby was in distress to the extent that she was and so couldn't provide support where he didn't know it was needed; Ellis was all too aware Fatima was on the precipice of drowning in helplessness (as early as 2x02 when Fatima couldn't prevent those from the bus from getting slaughtered at nightfall) and tried every avenue he could think of with his limited resources to throw her a life saver--and I think he was succeeding in keeping her afloat--but Fromville still ripped Fatima away from him. Ellis didn't fail Fatima, so to speak, but he couldn't succeed by the rules of this game, either.

Kristi could see that Marielle was in a mentally bad place, "not okay," but Kristi both didn't know what do about it--her training pertains to physical ailments, not mental crises--and, I would argue, didn't try to address it. Throughout Season 3, Kristi keeps wanting to broach the subject of Marielle's mental state with Marielle but gets stonewalled by Marielle. By the end of the season, Kristi has finally outright asked if Marielle is okay. In Season 4, Kristi asks again. Each time Kristi eventually gets an answer, an honest answer, but there's no sense in what is shown on-screen that Kristi does anything about it except worry internally. Marielle tells Kristi explicltly what she is thinking--this place is making them suffer, this place will trap them forevermore in suffering even after death--and Kristi tries to talk Marielle down with the argument that this place gets in people's heads, the implication being that Marielle's worries are unfounded, it's not real, it's this place screwing with Marielle's thoughts as it has done to many others, putting malicious ideas in their heads. Kristi doesn't offer more than that and Marielle firmly refutes the assertion anyway. Kristi doesn't try to take Marielle's mind off of her traumatic experience. There's no sense of them spending time together to just . . . be together. To be like, "Hey, all of this sucks, but we've got each other, remember?"

(I don't think I'll ever get over not ever seeing them do something casual with one another after Season 2: play a board game or cards; some parallel activity like maybe reading in proximity or even cuddled on the couch [and could have used an excuse like force Kristi to rest!]; arts and crafts; a puzzle; take a day off, put a note on the door of the clinic, and check out the Brundles; anything. Anything that would be an indication of how they spent time together before.)

Kristi sees that she can't get through to Marielle and she sort of just . . . lets it run its course as it will? Kristi seems to quietly determine that Marielle is either losing her grip on reality or being manipulated by the psychosis-inducing forces of Fromville that drive people to murder or kidnap or suicide and that the best course of action is to remain silently observant and to try to prevent Marielle from doing any of the above. Kristi is not Boyd, blind to changes in her partner, nor Ellis, throwing every strategy at the wall to help her partner and hoping something sticks. Kristi is . . . biding time. I don't know if Kristi hoped this was a passing episode that Marielle would get through or if Kristi thought Marielle would eventually do something that Kristi would stop in the nick of time and get to be like, "I told you so." I'm sure Kristi's bigger fear was that Marielle would do something that Kristi couldn't prevent and then Kristi would have to re-evaluate how she felt about Marielle in the aftermath--because though Kristi's hard-line stance softened when she spoke to Elgin compared to how she reacted to Sara, I don't think Kristi was necessarily forgiving and accepting. It's more like Kristi saw further proof that this place was capable of corrupting the most well-meaning people--exactly the type of person Marielle was.

The more I thought about the coverage and the staging in Kristi and Marielle's scenes in Season 4, the more I wondered if Marielle even noticed that Kristi wasn't doing much? That is, it takes so long for Marielle to become voluntarily open, truly two and a half seasons, that I actually wondered if the act of being vulnerable to Kristi (without prompting) and not being berated or contradicted in those moments (when Marielle says they need to help recover the bones, Kristi says nothing even though the audience sees Kristi's skepticism) felt like Kristi was tacitly agreeing and also that Marielle was giving Kristi what Kristi wanted without the teeth-pulling: that giving Kristi upfront, straightforward, no-haggling forthcoming honesty to her most troubled thoughts meant that not only was everything okay between them, this was their relationship being strong/recovering its strength. Because Marielle was letting her walls down. But, whether Marielle was aware of it or not, Kristi wasn't taking the invitation to cross into that space.

And, honestly, if that actually is the angle the show was going for, that makes me sad. For that to be what the show gave them as an insight into how their relationship functioned low-key breaks my heart. They were not on the same page and it appears that one party was not privy to this awareness. Isn't that sad?

Kristi, cheer your girl up! Like did we ever see them make each other laugh? No inside jokes? Comparing these scenes from 4x05 and 4x10 side-by-side absolutely kills me:

???????????????????????

Kristi, I saw you put your hand, unprompted, on a crying Fatima's arm to comfort her in 2x06--

--you're telling me you aren't going to touch Marielle, your fiancée, a woman you surely know in the Biblical sense, in this moment when there are tears streaming down her face? WHY? Is it because Sophia is in the room? How does that make sense? Are you ashamed of displaying homosexual touches in front of this young Christian girl? Being solicitous of Sophia is the more generous reading, honestly, because another assumption is that Kristi thinks Marielle wouldn't want Kristi to touch her in this moment? In which case, why? Why would you think Marielle wouldn't want the comfort and weight of your touch? What is going on in your relationship, ladies? And if that's not the case, then why are you holding back, Kristi? I am confusion! Kristi, explain!

And it's not like Kristi doesn't know how to comfort Marielle with touch. We saw Kristi do it in Season 2! WE SAW HUGS AND KISSES IN SEASON 2!!

Anywho, back to comparison, Marielle didn't die on account of Kristi's neglect. Kristi will likely feel bad she wasn't present when Marielle was attacked--quite a parallel with Season 2 where Kristi stepped out of a room for five minutes and came back to Marielle falling into a coma, and I commended them once upon a time at being quite willing to be separated even though they were traumatically abruptly separated for six months and how that is not constantly at the back of one's mind given the dangers of Fromville, I don't know, for sure it seemed to be on Marielle's mind at least once and it doesn't surprise me that she'd be more preoccupied about it because she was the one "left behind" without knowledge of what happened to Kristi--but if there's guilt to be felt, it's that their final days together were filled with all this unresolved, unaddressed tension--that even if Marielle was unaware of it, Kristi was aware of it. Kristi knows what she was thinking and feeling in those moments Marielle was divulging her inside thoughts. It may be that Kristi is aware that she could have taken that time to comfort, console, and just to touch someone she's no longer going to be able to touch. They got an additional thirty days together--and did Kristi take advantage of that time to the extent that she could?

In their final goodbye, Marielle says "I love you so much" and in that moment Kristi doesn't say it back. It's a refusal on Kristi's part to acknowledge that what is unfolding is a goodbye, that to say "I love you, too" in reply to a sentiment delivered as a parting statement is to accept that it's a final declaration. Likewise it's why Kristi hesitates to kiss Marielle at Marielle's request; Kristi doesn't want it to be goodbye, but to kiss Marielle is to give her a "goodbye" kiss. But when Marielle has passed, Kristi realizes she lost her opportunity; it's why she says "I love you" over and over, because she didn't say it when she had the time, when she could and should have, and now Marielle can't hear it and Marielle doesn't get to receive it. It's too late.

If Season 4 were written in a deliberate way to foster that type of regret, a regret of not having taken the time to do what she could for and with Marielle is what I would write into Kristi's Season 5 story line. I don't think Kristi wanted to neglect Marielle, but I think in ways she did and that it was portrayed in an obvious manner to the audience--and so if you were demonstrating that, what's the pay off? Because the pay off of giving Kristi and Marielle that amount of scenes in Season 4 wasn't "Marielle does something unforgivable just as Kristi fears." Those scenes now very much boil down to "Marielle keeps talking like dying here is a terrible fate--and, guess what, she dies." And if nothing is done with that in some shape or form, whether that's having Marielle show up as a ghostly presence or to have Kristi reflect on Marielle's fear to some effect (Kristi coming to fear Marielle might have been right; Kristi still not believing but feeling bad she didn't make Marielle feel better about it while Marielle was still alive; something), what was the point? I say that, but that's in the case if they bother to give Kristi a personal story line in Season 5, what with this show fading characters into the background because there are too many characters and too much lore to excavate. (Randall and Julie had an argument about the seizures at the ruins and that was the end of that for the season, lol.) Maybe Kristi will just roll with the punches and continue to get shit done as is expected of her and she's assigned to herself and occassionally chirp at Boyd to stay in line and on course as the story needs her to. (It being the definitive final season, everyone's possible demise is on the table; even lore integral characters can bite the dust, so I don't think even Tabitha or Jade get plot armor.)

I don't think that Ellis needs to carry regret that he didn't do what he could; I think he'll always want to have had more time with Fatima, always want to have done more (though there wasn't more to do), but he didn't neglect Fatima. That's the torture for Ellis; that he gave it his all and he'll be confronted over and over with how it didn't matter--and can he make meaning of this? Is there meaning to be made? Ellis can be angry at everyone for not telling him what they knew was happening to Fatima--valid--but no one had the knowledge to stop it. There's more narrative drama here to spin, which is why I think Ellis and Fatima will be given space to explore this grief.

I wish the show were the type of narrative to ponder all the grief in its narrative because the instances are so contrasting in circumstances. Donna's abandonment of her sister inflecting how she sees her role as protecting everyone. Tabitha (and Jade) feeling responsible for Jim's death, Julie and Ethan barely getting to mourn their father because they're terrified for their lives and facing the prospect of being orphaned at any moment--and their mother dropping the information on them that she is the reincarnation of someone who's been in Fromville before. Kenny losing both parents--I thought about how Tian-Chen kept a little shrine to her husband's memory and how it doesn't seem like Kenny is keeping that tradition--and having to soldier on, especially since he's Boyd's appointed successor. The amount of times Sara mentions Nathan is heartbreaking but her grief--as complicated as it is given the murders she committed, including Nathan's--doesn't get to breathe because of the Terrors constantly Terrorizing and the way all of that feeds into fatalism, where Sara would lay her life down for the benefit of the community with probably something approaching relief.

It has not been explained in a clear, outright fashion why people end up in Fromville. Jade proposed that people were drawn to this place because they could hear the cry of help from the children, but that doesn't really explain how a whole damn bus ends up rolling through. Like did everyone else on that bus get screwed because one person was sensitive to the SOS of ghosts?

Kristi wondered if it was her fault that Marielle was there, which could be a possibility in the sense that if this place was looking for bespoke tortures for residents, that is pretty effective to cause Kristi suffering. In which case, everyone else on that bus were collateral victims on account of Marielle's connection to Kristi. If it was more random, say, that the bus was unfortunate enough to get plucked by Fromville's lottery, in a roundabout way, Kristi kind of would be in the causal chain that brought Marielle there? Kristi disappears. Marielle relapses. Marielle decides to go to a rehab center and gets on that particular bus to go there, winds up among the other unfortunates. Kristi actually verbalized this theory before she found out Marielle was on her way to rehab due to a relapse; if Kristi's gonna spiral into a guilt trip, there's a path of self-flagellating logic.

I was thinking and I wouldn't be surprised if on some level Kristi thought she was keeping Marielle safe by more or less making sure Marielle stayed in the clinic most of the time, where a talisman would do its job. Because Kristi survived here for 6 months; why couldn't Marielle? Victor lasted decades, Donna years, likewise Boyd and Ellis, Fatima has a year under her belt, even Kenny is coming up on a year. Kristi took it day-by-day and she and Marielle could take it day-by-day together. Kristi was generally terrified and scared but her fear in S4 had more to do with an anxiety that Marielle would harm herself or someone else inadvertently by being influenced to act in some disastrous way by the malicious forces in this place. It ended up being a red herring; Marielle does take an action that ends up harming her but it wasn't out of any coaxing by voices or visions. Marielle stood her ground in an act of defense.

The cruelty is that both times Marielle was targeted and harmed by this place, Kristi had stepped away from Marielle for a moment: Kristi went to go get some water at Colony House at the end of S2 and came back to the room to find Marielle in a coma; in S4 Kristi thinks she's putting herself in the more dangerous position by being the medic among the party to retrieve the bones and had no reason to think that Marielle was being left defenseless. Kristi wasn't there to prevent any threats (though she wouldn't have been able to do anything in either instance).

The tiniest consolation afforded to Kristi is that she didn't medically fail Marielle, that by the time Kristi arrived at Marielle's side, Marielle was too far gone for Kristi to do anything. Kristi wasn't put in a position where her skills and resources and knowledge were incapable of saving someone so important to her. That's no mercy but that's one less thing to spiral about for Kristi.

For me, the show's sin is not letting Kristi and Marielle enjoy what time they had together after being reunited following such a long, involuntary, mysterious separation. I simply cannot understand that choice. Putting aside that it's so puzzling that the writers/directors would think that two people separated so traumatically wouldn't be reassuring themselves, consciously and subconsciously, in myriad ways that the other exists in the flesh and blood, but they knew how they were ending the season; the actors didn't know but the writers had broken down the season well in advance. Why deprive the characters of that time together??? Why did Ellis and Fatima get to cling to each other but not Kristi and Marielle?

I wonder, I really do, if Chloe Van Landschoot and Kaelen Ohm would have made different choices or advocated for different ones in their performances in how Kristi and Marielle navigated physical space between them had they known at the beginning of the season that the relationship would end in the finale. (The FROM actors received scripts for an upcoming episode only about a week, week and a half before filming.) Because as a viewer, I really thought the show was establishing this distance in order to later bridge it. I thought S4 was going to give us that intimacy with how S3 ended, but since it wasn't doing that, I thought, They've got a whole additional season to make a reconciliation/coming back together really satisfying.

Nope. That was not the plan.

The day before the finale aired Van Landschoot mentioned in an interview that in the background work that she had done for Kristi, what she imagined for Kristi and thus nothing canonical, she believed Kristi and Marielle had discussed having children and that they wanted children, etc., and I think about that answer with the knowledge that Van Landschoot said that while knowing what would happen in the finale. She imagined a full world in the past and probably future for Kristi with Marielle and it probably feels bitter to see where the writing went. The actors had hopes for their characters and I imagine that they're just as disappointed as those of us who invested in their characters and the relationship.

I won't hold out hope for this, but the show can "save" Fatima if it chooses to. If some of the monsters were involuntarily made monstrous, why can't they also be freed of whatever curses govern this place? It's not likely but not impossible. Even half of what Fatima endured was cruel; all of it together has been one indignity after another. Ellis is probably going get some nighttime visits from Fatima . . . but if the other monsters are anything to judge by, Fatima will probably lose a sense of self over time. It could be they wanted to use her an example to expand and explain the lore, but I hope they do more with that story thread than that.