This Is The End

Honestly, I’m still heated about that finale. They came so, so, sososo close to becoming legends. They came so, so, sososo close to giving queer women an iconic, groundbreaking, satisfying show to love for, well, ever. But then, in that final 2 minutes and 30 seconds, they fucked it all up. Period.

This isn’t to say they needed to give us a happy ending. Honestly, I was braced for both of them to die. But to reduce Villanelle to a plot device for Eve’s growth/”rebirth” to a normal life? I mean, how insulting. Talk about your complete misreads of a character and indeed the whole show.

When you create a series with queer women at its center, especially queer women like Eve who are finding themselves, its important to understand the community you are representing. And it’s important to understand the history of our representation. It’s been 20 years since “Your shirt.” Yet somehow writers keep giving queer people — especially queer women — fleeting moments of happiness before devastating us with its immediate complete destruction. At least Sandra and Jodie in no way played the scenes in question the way the writers supposedly wrote them, bless their endlessly talented hearts.

So forget that ending. It doesn’t exist. We make our own happy endings. We choose our own destinies. Luckily, there’s the internet to help. From the simple way they could have ended it all (seriously, just hit stop after, “Yeah, but mostly me” and then The Chuckle) to a plethora of other options that wouldn’t have betrayed its queer characters and its queer fans.