Review: Final Space “Forgiveness”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The crew has a funeral for Fox and tries to keep things civil, but KVN fails to read the room and Ash continues to blame Gary for Fox’s death (something that he had no control over and could not possibly have prevented), so she flies off and bonds with a fun shapeshifting energy being who names itself Evra. The crew also gets word that the hyperspace gate to get them out of Final Space is almost complete, but with Gary still down, Quinn asks Avocato to cheer him up. However, since the last major death that shook the crew up this much was…well, HIM, Avocato is not great at the cheering up part. Somehow he manages to steer the conversation into a sudden confession of killing Little Cato’s real parents, which devolves into a fist fight that just ends with them recommitting to taking care of him as his two dads. Ash returns soon after, apparently now with no interest in killing, and Gary decides to ask more about Fox. Everything’s going to be FIIIIIIIIIIIIINE.

OUR TAKE
Oh wow, such a nice and sweet ending! We all thought that Ash would be so overcome with grief that she would turn on them and go back to Invictus, but instead she got to have a romantic side adventure with a (genderless?) new potential flame! It looks like things will be totally smooth from here on. They even show the next episode preview as being pretty uneventful! AHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I know this game, Olan. I know the signs of a calm before the storm and a seemingly humdrum episode that is covering up major plot revelations that make everything go to dramatic shit! You can’t fool meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. And even then it’s not going to make this whole subplot about Ash hating Gary about Fox any less forced. Just because she can’t understand somehow that he FORCED Gary’s arm into Fox’s body against Gary’s wishes, or that Gary somehow can’t realize that either, doesn’t make it not the case. There’s no moral dilemma to wrestle with, there are no choices here that a character made or didn’t make that they have to live with or develop from. Bad things happened TO them, but for some reason one character is being blamed for being a victim of one of those bad things. Kinda makes it hard to be on the same emotional wavelength here when it these characters are just being angsty for no reason. And you can make plenty of understandable drama out of being used to kill a friend, as seen in Marvel’s Jessica Jones when the title character went through a similar experience, but this is not the way.

Avocato’s dark past ultimately just added an emotional cul-de-sac, so that’s not worth getting into again, but what IS worth getting into is Ash’s neat little Meet Cute with Evra! We had gotten word that there would be more LGBT characters added to the show, which is more than welcome, but I do have to question the execution a bit here. For one, placing it at this time seems odd. I understand if it’s supposed to be a little bright spot for Ash when things are feeling darkest, but…I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem to mesh with everything else going on right now. I half expected Evra to just be another form of Invictus at this point. Maybe if we met Evra earlier in the season she could be a recurring presence that could reassure Ash about things. It did feel like a genuinely sweet and romantic first meeting, even if the connection seemed a LITTLE too spontaneous (something this show has done before with Gary and Quinn), but it’s something. I think it also depends on how Evra is used in the future. If the crew is leaving Final Space soon, I wonder how or even why they would bother bringing Evra along, but weirder things have happened. And with only five episodes left in the season, I’m sure weirder things are definitely about to start.