#vanalysis

But I mean think about it. She gets left in a plane and the next joke she cracks is "You're on fire today Jackie- oh wait...that was supposed to be me, huh?" She's upset she got left in the plane, and reasonably so. But jokes are the only time we see her actually communicate that to anyone verbally. Tai is consistently the ONLY person we see her be genuinely vulnerable with. We see her soften for others a couple times, but rarely does she soften for herself.

I mean hell, she gets almost burnt alive after getting mauled by wolves and how does she talk about it? "Fire?? Really??" and "You killed a wolf for me, which is about the most attractive thing someone could do." neither of these statements are serious- they both have this overtone of humour.

And I mean you could also say that on top of Van writing "I love you" in blood being self sacrifice, its also a testament to her humour. Her Girlfriend just got possessed and drew blood by biting her lip and not only does she affirm that she loves her, she uses the blood from that injury to say that. She's taking the pain she has and making jokes about it in order to make others feel better- and the I love you is the most literal translation of that.

Van shows distaste through humour, its her more subtle way of communicating. Eg, Adult Van "sounds like your hands were really tied there- oh wait, those were her hands." its a joking sentence, but really, its also showing her disapproval. We can see that Van isn't happy with Misty for killing Jessica, but does she explicitly say that? No. Instead she cracks a joke about it.

Even in her arguement with Tai back in season 2, where Van gets annoyed at Tai for trying to walk away without letting her help because "she has to help her after seeing her like this", what does she do during that arguement? Start making references to movies. "I'm mixing up my pop culture metaphors cause I'm fucking upset!!!" Iconic line. But also. Really shows how she copes with bad situations.

Just surviving out of luck--out of chance-- isn't acceptable to her. It never was luck, she doesn't want to believe it was.

For her, knowing the wilderness had a reason to keep her alive is easier than actually believing she herself has any purpose.

Like she said in s3, Croak, "We never actually cheated death, it was always an even trade." Meaning even when she was teen, it was always her life in trade. It was never an escape. Death has always loomed over her, she never truly escaped it.

Van never escaped death.

It was only fulfilled by something (someone) else. It was not the wilderness giving her life--but time.

It was the wilderness giving her some form of purpose, some use decided by some higher power. 

I think we're starting to see how teen Van turns into adult Van. But I do mean starting. Something I've noticed, particularly from the hospital scene, is that adult Van is TERRIFIED of her past self. When she realises who she's seeing?

Tell me that isn't a look of defiance and apprehension. She's not surprised by the fact that it's her. Of course its her- but all the same you can see that she's scared. "Look at you...You're afraid." is the first line teen Van says. Yk how that reads to me? "Look how you've ended up. Weak. Alone. Defying the wilderness." Teen Van, the much more ruthless and wilderness oriented Van is looking down on her in that moment. (Interesting to note: "You're afraid." Van also very much thinks she's about to die here- as did i -and Teen Van knows this. I think what she's really saying is "you're afraid of death" which ties in very nicely to my previous passive suicidality ideas.) And I think this same episode is where we start to see Van going down that route of fearing herself.

There's also just something so poetic about Teen Van being the one Van sees nearly killing her (and the return of the fire motif). That shows, very very blatantly, Adult Van's absolute fear towards her. So basically what I'm putting down is Teen Van is going to do something absolutely insane and that contributes to why Adult Van is so scared. And I cannot wait to see it. For every single survivor, they are the end of themselves. Their teen selves are really just the same trauma they've been running from ever since they got back. Teen Van is everything Adult Van fears. Teen Van let others die for her. Teen Van was so into the wilderness, and following Lottie blindly, and letting all of this unfold. And now we see Adult Van hating all of those things. She's against the wilderness. She doesn't really like Lottie. She refuses to let anyone die for her. Teen Van represents her biggest fears so of course, hallucinating her teen self being the one to kill her would be her undoing.

What was Van's reaction to the frog scientists? "We're going home." She is in fact the only person who has an immediate reaction to this. And throughout the episode we see that again and again. We see Van finding the frog, immediately going soft, and freeing him. "You're free now" says a LOT. All she has on her mind this episode is survival. All she has on her mind is going home- something we haven't seen before because she never let herself even think that they were getting out of there. Van shut herself down from that idea very early on. But there is hope here. She literally see's that phone and immediately becomes terrified and hopeful. We see her break for just a second.

Look at her face. This is the first time we've seen her break since Wilderness baby died. She's been sad since, sure. But even Wilderness baby's death didn't see her as terrified as she is here. In this moment Van is literally just a kid again. She wants to go home. She wants her mum. Her alcoholic, neglectful mother. That is insane to me. Because we've seen Van have the tough girl act for MONTHS. But here she just wants to go home. This is where we see her get a glimmer of hope and a look into what she's really thinking that I think reflects how Van ends up the way she is as an adult. (I actually planned to analyse adult + teen van separately but they tie in too well this ep so its one HUGE ramble).

After this, Van discovers the communicator is broken, and we can immediately see her slip back into that tough state. "But we don't need any of it. We just need to find these people. So we can go home." REALLY interesting here is that is a very simillar tone to how she tells Travis "I'm glad I'm alive!" (When she's talking to him about eating Javi) which is something I noticed IMMEDIATELY on my first watch. Sure its the way Liv acts, but also - Van speaks in the same rough tone we see her talk in every time something bad happens and she's being strong. She's realising maybe there isn't a way out. Or so we think-

Cut to Shauna and Nat finding Hannah. Tai and Van walk in. Shauna immediately suggests killing Hannah- and honestly, my first thought was "Van's probably gonna get behind that. Shauna's right, they'll come looking either way." and yet- she doesn't. She actually looks a little horrified at the suggestion. And this, my friends, is my very longwinded story to get to that point. This is why I think we're seeing Teen Van start to turn into adult Van. I think the fact that there was a glimpse of escape there snapped her back to reality. She realised the outside world DOES still exist and she CAN go back to living a normal life. Suddenly killing people isn't "emotions off, its survival." suddenly its "no, thats not okay." which aligns a lot more with Adult Van than it has with Teen Van.