unpopular opinion: the defiance finale was perfect
strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree
Thanks, you really wanted to set me off, huh? Ok, I’ll take the bait.
I love Defiance. I do. I would not make this post if I did not love Defiance enough to be this disappointed in it, so here we go…
Ok, so, Defiance was a show about people coming together. Obviously it’s not going to be pretty if you take people from several different planets (the aliens weren’t even all from the same planet), have them fight a a brutal war against each other that nearly destroyed the only planet they have left, and then tell them that it’s now time to play nice and be friends. It’s going to be messy. And that’s ok. There is no story without conflict, and this puts us at the perfect starting point for a whole lot of character development. Love it.
The endgame of the show should have been people finally coming together, but was it that? No, it was about the small group of characters who actually survived this brutal show finding an entire race of aliens that had to be shot off into space because they can’t kill them all, but they’re too dangerous to actually live with. Aliens played by black actors (although they are painted purple and I think the writers actually had good intentions when they created the Omec, you can’t not notice how terrible this turned out…. unless, I guess, you’re the people who wrote this). They were purple people eating aliens.
Other than T’evgin and Kindzi, the Omec never even had a voice, but the entire finale hinges on them. We see in their faces that they probably wouldn’t want to kill everyone if they knew more about the people of Earth, but we never get to see resolution to that. We never see them revolt against Kindzi. They never get to speak for themselves or fight for themselves or learn about the people of Earth. They just start eating everyone because the show wanted the main characters seem justified in shooting them. They’re treated like props.
The show wants Doc and Amanda to be seen as heroes for shooting the evil aliens (it frames them heroically when they do it), while also having Irisa be the hero for saying they should try to save them without ever giving the Omec a proper voice. You can’t do this all in two episodes and call it good. Nolan and Amanda had even stood up for the Omec until the very last moment, until Kindzi raped Nolan, killed her father, caged the people of earth, turned doc yewll into a slave, and ordered her followers to eat their enemies. Nolan and Amanda truly just wanted to do what was right and got hammered into the ground until they didn’t know what else to do. I get where they’re coming from. I get where Irisa’s coming from, but why are we here?
By giving the Omec a voice, there’s an arc to be found in these two episodes, and I can see what the writers were probably going for. I could even pretend I loved this episode and write a meta about the interesting parts of this kind of conflict, but it’s not actually developed in these episodes. They’d need an entire season arc, and I don’t really want that arc. Look, down to the basics, do I think we needed to end Defiance on purple people eating aliens? No. Cut the people eating and rewrite the finale, and the Omec could have been good in the end instead of a pile of shock value tropes stacked on top of each other (I forgot bring up that they were also incestuous). Their power, their status, their history with the Votans can exist without the people eating.
And what really bugs me about this is that there was a far superior finale arc in front of the writers that they left in 3x11 when Kindzi killed T’evgin. The VC were a great villain that had already been established and fit the core narrative of the show. They were scary, they were powerful, and they were a complex threat. We that even everyone in the VC doesn’t all agree, but they’d all level defiance if they needed to. So many potential conflicts here.
Silora Voske. Great character who liked Amanda, and genuinely wanted to make peace with Defiance, but peace with the VC means playing nice with the VC, something Amanda has never wanted. Silora would have shot Amanda in the back of the head if she betrayed her, no matter how good of friends they became. So much potential.
There is no government above Amanda in Defiance. With the United States long gone and the E-Rep’s power being only lasting a season, Defiance is free from any larger government or country, and Amanda wants to keep it that way. Unfortunately for her, the VC wants more power, and Defiance is just this little town all on its own trying to swat away every fascist government that tries to take over.
And that’s where the Omec should have come into these last few episodes. We have all these Omec on a spaceship, why make them cannon fodder when you could bring them together with Defiance to fight against a common enemy - an enemy who wanted to divide humans and Votans. It would have made this a story about people coming together, exactly what the show wanted to be in the beginning.
Now for the characters, the reason I love this show, the reason this finale makes me emotionally mad at it on top of being frustrated by the plot.
Nolan and Irisa. They had been wondering around the country for 15 years with this vague goal that one day they’d get to Antarctica. They didn’t even know if it was paradise or not, and honestly, it didn’t really matter because they weren’t really trying to get there. In 15 years, they traveled from Denver to Defiance/St. Louis. That’s not very far. Truthfully, I doubt they ever really tried to get to Antarctica, but getting there wasn’t the point. Everyone needs something to live for, a dream, thoughts of a better future. Antarctica was just a fantasy that gave them a reason to live in a shitty world.
But then they get to Defiance, and Nolan instantly finds a purpose and meets people who give him hope that the world he actually lives in might not be entirely horrible. He tells Irisa that Antarctica’s not real, but Defiance is. They can make a difference here. They can be happy. There’s no more reason to chase after a fantasy. He becomes a better, more hopeful person by finding a reason to get up in the morning and finding people he can believe in.
But… then in the finale, he just gets shot into space and Irisa makes a joke that he’s going to be flirting with alien princesses and getting in trouble. What is this negative character development the show is trying to sell me as a good ending for Nolan? Why are we resetting him to back before he found a purpose? Can male writers really never let go of their Han Solo fantasy from when they were 13, and let these characters grow as they deserve, as they already had?
Nolan spent 3 seasons talking about how he’s a one woman guy, even breaking off a friends with benefits relationship when he realizes he’s in love with Amanda. He thinks Amanda’s into someone else at the time, but he still can’t be with someone else when he’s in love with her, even when his fuck buddy doesn’t care because it’s a meaningless sexual relationship. Nolan doesn’t deserve to be reduced to the guy who drives around and has funny sexual escapades (and although I’m sure he’s had a few funny one night stands in his life, he had sex with three women in three seasons, and all relationships lasted more than one episode, note: I will not count rape in this total, so why are they trying to sell me on the idea that funny sexual escapades are a defining characteristic of his?)
Nolan deserved to find actual, real, attainable happiness with Amanda and his daughter, not get tossed into space away from the people he loves on some writer’s dumbass teenage Han Solo fantasy.
And Amanda, the love of both Nolan’s life and mine, she has been emotionally destroyed by the show, and very nearly physically destroyed as well. The writers wanted her to die a martyr, and only backed out of it when they realized there was no one qualified to be mayor in season 4, and they finally realized that killing all your characters for shock value actually has consequences. She deserved better than that.
Before the end of the finale, she thought Nolan would come back because he always did. She had hope for herself and for him. And then in the final lines of the series, Irisa says Amanda thinks Nolan is dead. Where’s her hope? Why did the writers take that from her? Amanda is the person who made everyone want to be better. She gave people hope when they had none. Amanda represented the possibility that all these people could live together, and the writers wanted to die while she was shooting aliens. They wanted to kill the person who represented the hope that humans and aliens could live together, and yeah, that pretty much sums up the finale.
And they don’t kill her. Instead, they just leave her sad, alone in her office, and without hope.
Thanks.
I hate it.
This episode pieces together a bunch of action, drama, and emotional moments to make you feel a lot of things as you watch it, but it’s not good on any deeper level. It betrayed everything I loved about this show, so I hate this finale.
