My biggest concern with the ending is, in redeeming the annoying kid, they essentially robbed Quinlan of his victory.
This guy has spent 2000 years trying to destroy the Master, to save a human race that sees Quinlan himself as a monster. He went down that shaft knowing that he wouldn’t be coming out, and as he died, he thought he had won.
But it turns out he was wrong. Stupid kid was in a position to fuck things up just enough to give the Master an opening to win, and the Master only ended up losing because of the kid’s plot-induced heel/face turn. Quinlan’s sacrifice ends up being pointless, and the character deserved better than that.
Letting Eph get to the bomb to set it off would have been better, even after the Master tried to take him as his new host. One last Great Act of Defiance, even as the Master thought he had won, would have better honored the sacrifices everyone had made, but Quinlan’s in particular.
Quinlan badly injured The Master, and delayed him. Precisely what he was supposed to do, so that the humans could set off the nuke, which they did, killing The Master. The broad strokes of the plan worked, and Quinlan played the role he was supposed to in the death of The Master. If anything, Zach’s fuckery fucked up Eph’s plan, and he died trying to kill his own son (as acceptable collateral damage) to save the human race.
Still, one thing the internet has taught me is that people can look at the same events and get many different interpretations.
The whole Zach plot was the biggest off-putting thing about the series to me. What a dick. Eph’s character redeemed himself (to me) in season 4 as he accepted that his son might not be saved if they were going to save the human race. Too many movies/shows show the parent blindly trusting the kid despite all appearances, and all consequences.
Now that most have had time to watch, I can speak more about my earlier spoiler.
We knew the kid had to die. I think they were going for the scared and alone vibe with his final turn (love the wrestling terminology, Horatius), but the actor wasn’t up to selling it, and I wasn’t up to accepting it. He should have died a villain - not conflicted, not in daddy’s arms - he should have died gloating about how the master was going to win and how much he hated Dad and was proud of what he was becoming.
Then we get the happy-ever-after treatment. They glossed over the first nuke going off all season. The winds would have made Staten Island, downtown and midtown Manhattan (including the Empire State Building), and western Brooklyn dangerously radioactive (to humans, at least) for a very, very, very long time. Yet all they did was gloss over it with a few throwaway lines which also indicated it wasn’t the only nuke. Manhattan would be a ghost town as survivors would flee as best they could north and west to escape the fallout. At least the strigoi were providing rations, like how a farmer feeds his pigs before the holiday’s crown roast. Manhattan cannot provide it’s own drinking water nor food, and I’m sure supplies were running low before the bomb. I know this isn’t a show about surviving in a nuclear wasteland, nor should it be, but don’t blow one up and then all but ignore the after-effects.
Vasiliy was easily the best character the entire series. Setrakian and Gus were, imho, tied for second. Personally, I felt Quinlan was too “comic-booky” (and I love comic books). They went through several Masters, but Eichorst was the true villain for most of the series, and he played it well.
Agree with you there. An actual unrepentant Nazi, who went out his way to keep his favorite Holocaust survivor around, just so he could keep tormenting him, even though it would have been in his own best interest to have killed Setrakian decades ago. You’ve got to love someone so dedicated to his Evil.
I agree with D_Odds that the biggest problem with the kid is that he couldn’t pull off the role he was given. In better hands, and with a slightly better ending, this story line could have been an incredible story of loss and betrayal between a father and son, with the conflict being enhanced and exploited by The Master for his own ends. Instead all we got was a whiny emo kid who spent most of the season pining for his hot maid.
I knew the kid was going to be a problem with the series. How often are they used well? (WALT! WAAAALLT!!!) Still, there’s been worse endings to a series (WAAAALLLT!), and we got a little more Fet at the end. I wasn’t expecting a classic for the ages anyway, and I’m surprised it lasted long enough to have a conclusion.
It was clear that both parties wanted the book badly enough that they would eventually bid all they had to get it. So, cut to the chase: How much gold do you have? One had X, one had X+Y, so he sold it for X+$1, because that was the lowest bid the losing side couldn’t top.
Yeah, that. Plus, it acknowledges the importance of the item for sale.
The Lumen was the Uber Macguffin of the whole series, with the understanding that whoever controlled it would win everything, and the loser would lose everything. So let’s just show that, by making it clear that, no matter how much back-and-forth there was in the bidding process, it would ultimately cost one side everything they had.
I think they call that symbolism, in more serious literature.