#matherik

They introduced Olivia, who was okay at first. You think she’s gonna be an ally and someone who’s needed to make changes in the lives of these mostly close-minded, childish people, but she ends up being quite insufferable and hypocritical.

It shouldn’t be a problem considering that she’s meant to have flaws and other characters do point them out, but she hardly ever apologizes and just keeps doing questionable things until the end.

The most confusing part while judging her character was her relationship with Mathias: she crosses a line when she talks to Mathias’ mom, Mathias reasonably gets angry, they don’t seem to speak at all for a while, then they randomly talk again.

What were they doing before this talk? Unfortunately this is a pattern in the show: days and weeks go by after a fight and you’re supposed to believe that these characters don’t speak at all or see each other until they suddenly do, or you’re supposed to believe they’re kinda okay and that’s why they don’t bother showing more.

Olivia does worse than that though.

She knows Mathias feels something for Erik, but she decides to flirt with him and actually start a relationship with him anyway, hiding it completely from his friend Mathias, which means that when she kisses Mathias at the party and decides to have sex with him, Mathias has no idea that this is hurting Erik and that he is being used to spite him.

At the end of S4, when he finds out they have something going on, she wants to pretend her interest in Erik is new, but it’s an obvious lie. She wants to go after Mathias, but we don’t even know if they talked and what was said. Wow, what an ally, what a friend. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Paragraph dedicated to Sara: She acts like her co-worker and friend is dramatic and in the wrong for being mad at her, but the girl has every right to be pissed. It doesn’t matter if it was her ex who started it, Sara kissed back and then downplayed it all with the stupid excuse that they had broken up… shortly before that. Girl, you’re a mess, at least be sorry. Her friend is an idiot for getting back together with the dude, but that’s beside the point. Plus, she never really understood how shitty she acted with Synnøve.

Paragraph dedicated to Felix: He’s an asshole. He is the most irritating character, and yeah, it’s okay to be an asshole and have a redemption arc, but with him it’s been constant bullying and barely any consequence. It made sense for him to be jealous of Mathias, he felt like his childhood best friend was replacing him with another guy, so it’s normal to be sad and not everyone reacts to such things the same way. But what happened after makes little sense: he ends his friendship with Mathias, then he somehow becomes friends with Erik (whom he hated) off-screen after working with him all summer, but that doesn’t help him fix his friendship with Mathias, no, now he’s mad Mathias kissed his new friend Erik, so he just calls his childhood (ex) best friend slurs and tells him to stay away from his friends. Dude, you’re the friends stealer at this point.

There’s too much to say about odd and forgotten scenes, and I forgot a lot of them myself, so let’s just move on to Erik, since he’s probably the most disappointing character.

Erik was this overall nice kid with good morals who seemed to really care about his friends. He does care… sometimes. Selectively. Who knows.

Personally I thought he was gay-coded. He didn’t seem interested in girls, not even in Sara whom he’d grown close to, not even after getting kissed by her and Thea. Plus when we found out about his backstory he seemed respectful of women, which made me wonder if they thought he was gay and he ran away also from that. Obviously those things don’t mean much, he was probably supposed to be A Nice Guy, period.

But no, S4 proved he is not better than other men. He gave Olivia the false impression of being better, one who knows feminism and supports women, only to act like a coward who hides his relationship and treats the girl poorly.

This leads me to The Issue: his friendship with Felix. Which also correlates with his friendship with Mathias.

He says he got to know Felix and they ended up being friends. Okay, cool. But why the fuck would he be friends with someone who bullies people, even his former best friend Mathias (calling him slurs), who is supposed to be Erik’s best friend or something like that?

Mathias had chosen him because Felix crossed lines. Mathias had defended him and had been willing to go against his friends if he believed they were being assholes.

Mathias made a mistake when he “ended” his friendship with Erik at the beginning of S3, but Erik never actually bothered to talk to him, to be there, to understand what was going on with Mathias. He just accepted it and left, as if that friendship meant nothing.

Meanwhile he couldn’t let go of Felix, no matter how obnoxious he was, and that friend group negatively influenced him. He was toxic towards Olivia, he couldn’t stand up for anyone, he didn’t seem to think with his own head. He became quite shallow.

Only at the end he managed to publicly date her. Congratulations for being… straight and proud? That was your rushed development?

It does feel like they wanted to write at least another season, since there’s too much up in the air. But who knows, unless they talk about their intentions these 4 seasons are all we have, and with how the show ended Erik is straight, his friendship with Mathias is ruined and it was all for nothing.