La Vie En Rose

Gloreth told her to go back to the shadows from whence she came, but she didn't. She stayed. Inside of this literal fortress that was literally built to keep her out.

The movie hits the "sometimes all you need is one person to see/accept/believe in you" theme so poignantly, but I really hope this part isn't overlooked, because I think a lot of us can relate to living in a family or a community or a country that's structured to keep you out or keep you down.

So here it goes. 

We begin with Lilith. By the end of the season she's effectively burned all of her bridges in service of a master who was eviscerated in front of her, and in the immediate aftermath she seems to be experiencing some capital R Remorse about that - helping Bea to save Ava, watching Avatrice say goodbye, hoping when she and Bea meet next they'll be back on the same side, etc. Where does she go from there? I like to imagine she goes full Angel (in the Buffyverse way, not in the religious way) and takes her penance to the streets. In a cruelly ironic twist, she's now effectively performing the duties of the halo-bearer - utilizing her truesight along with her OCS training to track down the remaining wraith demons and punch them out of the possessed and straight back to hell - except of course that it doesn't feel remotely like fulfilling a lifelong destiny. There's no honor in it, she's just flailing desperately to try and make up for some of what she's done, and to finally do right by Ava. So there she is, out punching the shit out of some wraith demons, when who should wander into her path all full of wraith demon in need of punching?

Bitch, you know it's ya girl SHOTGUN MOTHAFUCKIN MARYYYY!

(Come on, y'all, duh she's alive. Vincent told Lilith Mary's dead like 10 whole minutes after telling her she was alive to save his ass and manipulate her into a trap, and now we're gonna take the fucker at his word? Sure, Jan.) (Yes, I'm aware of the BTS stuff at play, and maybe Toya never wants to go back, I'm just saying, the WN team could not have left that door open wider for her in case she ever does. No body, no proof, no details, just the word of one lying, manipulative sack o' dicks? Be serious now.)

So Lilith frees Mary of her demon and then takes care of her while she recovers. Mary's done some shit while she was possessed and has some guilt of her own to work through, so they trauma-bond, and now it’s really on because we’ve got us a kick-ass demon-fighting duo. Neither of them feels right about returning to the church - especially not with Father Sack-o-Dicks back wandering the Cradle like he didn’t fully murder Shannon, spend the entire first season gaslighting them about it, and then proceed to spend the whole next season attacking, endangering and otherwise fucking with them - but they're sure as shit not gonna stop fighting.

Smash!Cut to that final shot in the epilogue of the finale. Beatrice smiles as she walks away from the OCS, presumably to do what Ava told her and go live her life. I've seen a lot of different theories on what flavor of fluffy lil Eat Pray Love travel/adventure/vacation she's headed off on, and those are all super fun, but for me, man... I feel like that's what Ava would do, not what Beatrice would do. Ava’s loosened her up at bit, sure, but she's still Bea, or at least I still want her to 😏 Bea. (I'm SO sorry about that, I swear it just snuck up on me) We clearly see Beatrice struggling internally all season, and I actually don't think that has anything to do with her feelings for Ava. I think Adriel and Vincent took a fucking wrecking ball to the whole foundation of this mission Beatrice had dedicated her life to. If anything, Ava coming along when she does makes things easier, because it gives Bea something clear and tangible to fight for, but now with her gone, she has to finally reckon with what it is she's doing with her life. Again, there are good arguments to be made for any number of directions that reckoning could take, but I'd like to believe that when the dust settles she's going to find that she hasn't actually lost any of her faith, or her dedication to the fight. She’s still our Bea. She just needs to break from the constraints of these institutions she's at best begun to question and perhaps even become disillusioned with. She needs autonomy, and a new path. And I mean, you’re starting to see where I'm going with this, right? Beatrice can't contain her smile as she exits the Cradle, not because of what she's leaving, but because of what she's running toward - freedom, and her sisters.

TL;DR - in the aftermath of season two, an elite team of tactical former-nuns comes together to fight against evil and for each other.

Lilith

Mary

Beatrice

They are

Birds of Pray

Please please please somebody write it I'm so serious about this!

PS How psyched is Ava gonna be to join them when she gets back?

PPS Obviously I want Camila in here too. But also I’m kind of into the potential for conflict with her taking on more responsibility within the OCS but also feeling hurt/abandoned when she find out everyone’s hanging out without her?

So the prevailing wisdom says that tarasks can only exist in this realm for very short spurts of time because of the effort it takes to slip their demonic bonds or whatever, yeah? But thanks to Lilith and Jillian, we now believe that time moves about 823x slower in Reya's realm than it does here (Lilith is only gone 7.8 seconds but captures 107 minutes of footage).

Is it at all possible that the demonic bonds are not the issue, but rather we've just failed to give proper consideration to the practical implications of that time differential from the tarasks' perspective?

Please just imagine for one moment that you're a tarask. Rawr. You sense the halo, you've gotta go hunt that bitch down, but for every 35 seconds you spend off hunting in this realm, eight hours will have passed back home. 1 minute 45 seconds in and you've already lost an entire fucking day on this. Can you even fathom the havoc that would wreak on your life? On your relationships? Oh, I'm sorry, did you have a hot date tonight? Big game on Friday? Were you in charge of getting the cake for your sister's birthday next week? Stick around for 20 more minutes and whoops, ya missed Thanksgiving again. Another hour and there goes New Years and Valentine's Day too. How long before your tarask wife up and leaves you? How long must your poor little tarask babies grow up without their mommy? Do they even miss you anymore? Will you even recognize them by the time you get back from this godforsaken hunt?

Think about it for a sec. After Vincent got outed at the end of last season it makes sense that he and Adriel would want a new mole inside the OCS, and since we know Vincent communicated with Adriel via his divinium tattoos it makes sense that they would utilize that again. But the whole "ohhhhh, ya know, there was that one random nun who brushed against my neck one time, and I didn't think anything of it at the time but now, yep, that for sure explains how I got this here invisible divinium neck tattoo, and also for some reason headaches" thing? 

Consider instead: Mary gets possessed during the fight at the catacombs. (This also explains how everyone could've just left her behind and then not known what happened to her in the aftermath) The OCS recaptures and frees her, but neither she nor they are aware that she has this hidden tattoo that she got back when her mind was not her own. At first she feels like she's just going crazy; is she really seeing/hearing Adriel, or is it just PTSD? Will she ever be rid of him? By the time she figures out what he’s doing and how he's been using her to spy on her sisters she's equal parts devastated and PISSED. Just imagine all of that "I'm in your head too motherfucker" stuff coming from Mary? I mean, come on, it just fits so much better. Am I crazy?

(To be clear, I'm not mad at how it played out, and I think Olivia's a BAMF whose performance is all the more impressive if the material wasn't actually written for her. I'm just Forever Sad that Mary was MIA this season, and I wish my love Camila got her own, more coherent storyline.)

Boys Day 33: Marcus gets decked in the face by Seth

Girls Day 2: Marcus has a scar from being decked in the face (which he didn't have one day prior on the plane)

Girls Day 12: Gretchen recruits Doc Farber for work that she says will begin *in two months*

Bunker Day from S2ep1: Having already finished processing the girls, Farber begins processing the boys, starting with Raf, whose knuckles are still bloody from the events of Boys Day 34.

First off, am I crazy or is that objectively not what happened? She literally did save her sister as herself. She saw that Alex's plane was crashing on the news, immediately ran out into an alley and then leapt into the fucking sky to save her. THEN after getting chewed out by Alex for potentially endangering herself by exposing herself as an alien she came out to Winn the next day and he made her a suit, and then Cat named her Supergirl. There was even that whole thing in season 3 where Cult Leader Chad Lowe knew who she was because he was on the plane, which she didn't save as Supergirl, but rather as Kara. Hello? Is it too much to ask for the writers to watch the pilot episode of their own goddamn show before referencing it in their series finale?

And pedantry aside, why are we even back here? How many fucking times have we gone over (and over and over and over and oooovvvveeeerrrr) why secret identities are necessary for them to do what they do and be a symbol and protect the people they love. The 100th episode, when James came out as Guardian, when Marsdin got outed, the DEO hunt for Supergirl and Alex getting fucking memory wiped to keep her identity secret, Every Time she agonized over lying to Lena and then all throughout the Lena fallout. If Kara needs to reveal her secret identity to the world to feel like she can live a whole, authentic life good on her, you do you, but to frame it as this personal failing, this thing that separates her from all the whole, integrated people in her life living their best full, authentic lives... like, who the fuck are you even talking about? Alex aka Sentinel and Kelly aka Guardian whose wedding you're currently at? Clark? Nia? Brainy? Andrea? Just about every other important person in Kara's life and also oh, ya know, every other fucking superhero in the Arrowverse? 😩