Epic Tomanoto Blog

I've seen a few takes since the latest episode came out stating that Sam is being an asshole for no reasons to Alice, that he should believe her when she says the things are real, etc.

Well I don't believe that's entirely true.

First, Sam and Alice are exes. Meaning they have a history together, and something that led to them breaking up. They are introduced to us as such, and while their dynamic had mostly been a s3 JonGeorgie friendly exes situation at the beginning, this has clearly changed.

Alice is friendly to Sam, yes, but at a certain point, she starts having an ulterior motive for her friendship. Not a completely bad or malevolent one, but clearly, it's an ulterior motive : she wants to keep Sam away from the Magnus Institute. She probably did not anticipate that this job would make his obsession with the place surge up, and now she tries to keep him out of it.

Alice coming with him to the ruins of the Institute in episode 10 is clearly about bringing an end to Sam's research; she hoped to find nothing, they did exactly that, and she also tried to steer him away from anything weird when it might have happened. When Sam finds the key, she tells him to try, yes, but when it doesn't work, she tells him to stop and get out, while Sam instead starts breaking planks of rotten wood to get in.

When Sam doesn't drop it, she confronts him about it, telling him it's nor healthy and doing her best to stop him, even going as far as deleting a case about the Institute from his computer in episode 21. I don't think she tries to steer him away from Celia entirely out of jealousy, I think she tries to steer him away from Celia because she knows Celia would encourage his tendencies to look for answers about the Institute -- which she does !

So yes, Sam is being an asshole to Alice. But clearly, Alice isn't innocent, and I suspect her doing things behind Sam's back in order to protect him isn't a first, and probably is the reason for their breakup.

Then, in the most recent episode, Sam denies Alice's concerns about the dangerousity of things. I think that's valid from him.

While we, listeners, know that this time, Alice is genuinly believing something is going on and trying to keep Sam safe, Sam doesn't have that context. He didn't overhear Alice trying to comfort Gwen, then admitting things are really dangerous. For Sam, the last bit of context there is is Alice deleting a case from his computer, one that contained important answers for him (he doesn't know which, but he is sure there are). And before that, Alice has basically been dismissive of the supernatural occurences the whole time. If I were in Sam's place, I'd just assume Alice is trying to manipulate me by saying things are dangerous in order to get me to listen to her. To him, she would say anything to convince him not to go to the Institute or seek answers.