If Not Boyfriends Then Why So Much Chemistry.

If not boyfriends then why so much chemistry.

I need a moment 🤚

I was listening to a Kate Herron interview earlier where she was saying that, to her, the payoff for the Lamentis nexus event was Loki and Sylvie joining forces to enchant Alioth, and besides the fact that this makes no goddamn sense, it just reinforces the fact no one in this show ever talked to anyone about anything (exaggerating obv, but the miscommunication issues are very obvious at this point). You would think that for such a major plot point, someone would have thought to ask the people who wrote it "Hey, what does this mean?"

And I'm wondering if maybe she was just trying to be diplomatic and reaching for some explanation that made some sense, instead of outright admitting that, you know what, it was simply bad writing.

Because it just was. There is absolutely no payoff to a scene that ends up being pivotal to the trajectory of the next three episodes.

Okay, you've stranded them on Lamentis. You need them to get back to the TVA to meet the Time Keepers and end up in the Void. By the rules previously established in the show, the TVA can't detect you in an apocalypse because nothing you do matters (flimsy reasoning, but let's roll with that). So, something big needs to happen to make them know where they are and keep the plot rolling.

The lazy option? Make them hold hands and pretend it's a seismic event that the TVA (which has existed for an uncountable amount of time) has never seen before. It has to mean something, right? It could bring the whole place down.

Joke's on us, it doesn't mean anything because it was just a plot device.

Let's try something else to see how the plot changes: the two embodiments of chaos don't just give up. They join forces and somehow manage to find a spaceship that can take them out of there (if that civilization was advanced enough to build an ark, surely they'd traveled to space before). It's broken? No problem, they are both powerful sorcerers, surely they can fix it. It can serve as a team building exercise. Their survival is not enough to create a nexus event? Okay, have them find an abandoned child that pleads with them to take them away from certain death. You remind the audience of both their childhood trauma (scared little boy / i was just a child), make them look heroic, make the TVA look even more like bastards when they eventually show up and prune the child.

Mission accomplished. You end up in the same place as you did without the touch. They're captured. The only difference? No one wonders about the nexus event. Let's assume the next steps are the same (you can have B-15 help them escape, shining more of a spotlight on her character, giving Sylvie a person to bond with that isn't a Loki).

They end up in the Void. As cringy as it may be, you've decided that these two adults will behave like awkward teenagers around each other. They don't know how they feel. They can't talk about it. No one has defined it for them, so they can't use that as an easy shortcut. Your audience is given no direction about what way their relationship is supposed to be headed. All interpretations are valid at this point, because your characters don't have the emotional maturity to talk about their feelings.

But you desperately wanted them to have a romance in the few hours they've known each other. It's edgy, it's clever, it's a metaphor. Sylvie kisses Loki to distract him. Your audience is confused. Where did that come from?

You have nothing.

Okay, go back. Have them touch and look into each other's eyes while the world ends. It's romantic. It's so powerful that it creates a branch these ageless beings in the TVA have never seen before. They must find out what it was, so they can't prune the variants on sight.

What new element have you added to your story? Absolutely nothing, except that godforsaken, insane interrogation scene. Someone needs to articulate how your two protagonists feel about each other. Because they are awkward teenagers and can't process their emotions themselves.

Someone needs to put it into words, make it real, make it a possibility for the audience watching at home.

So he says it. He literally speaks it into existence. (Your composer watches the scene. She writes an angsty tune and names it after the ship name, confirming very loudly that this scene has romantic connotations. Oops?)

So, what have you done? You have, by definition, made this relationship revolve around three people. You have forcefully inserted another person into that "edgy" relationship you've concocted and based your entire story on. Your love story simply does not exist if it's not a three people relationship.

Nothing works without that interrogation scene.

Is the relationship you are basing your entire story on healthy, beautiful, profound? It doesn't matter, because the relationship doesn't even exist without someone speaking it into existence. You give so much power to that character. You let them drive the story you want to tell. You have that character plant the thought in the couple's heads. Not just once, but twice.

And what do you rely on to make this story have meaning? That tried and trusted trope of a classic love triangle, where person A has feelings for person B, but for their own convoluted reasons, don't believe that person A can't love them back and they perceive any relationship with person C to be more valid.

You don't acknowledge it, because... you're in love with your own ideas? You think you've created something extremely edgy and thought provoking? While almost everyone that has access to the internet and a little bit of imagination can create stories so profound and original they'd literally blow your mind?

But the end result is the same.

The relationship cannot exist if an outsider doesn't acknowledge it. There are three people in it, always.

Not your intention? Tough luck, because the people directing, scoring and acting in the scene you based your love story on are all reading behind the lines and delivering an entirely different story.

But it's a fatherly relationship you say. You wrote it that way, right? Right?

I might be over my agent mobius phase. My brain after 2 seconds:

You guys I just want to meet owen Wilson . Give him a big hug and tell him how awesome he looks in that cowboy hat .