meridian_rose

This is not going to be the same format as my previous reviews but then this is one whole big mess of an episode. If you thought it was "best episode ever" then you probably don't want to read this.


What I liked.

Let's do that first, because it's shorter.

Leo's hair in the hallucination.
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Clearly future!Leo had some amazing prodcut that lightened his hair a little and styled it until he looked like a shampoo commercial. I'm all about the hair kink and boy this delivered. (On the other hand ugh, the clothes. I preferred the leather jacket from season one and since then his clothes have been all over the place and the faux Robin Hood deal was not doing it for me.)

my edit, original pic (I'll post to Tumblr later)

Zo and Vanessa as badass resistance fighters. Hell, yes. I also liked Zo switching out the page for the sketch of Vanessa that we saw Leo drawing in the pilot, a nice nod to a time of innocence. Zo's loyalty to the very end (proving my previous point about Leo being a Whedonesque "hero…someone who gets other people killed").

Riario's obvious concern about Leo surviving, his affection coming through despite his own brainwashing. Leo is totally his lifeline

Riario pulling his blade before he knew it was the Architect. A tiny hint of the man he was and could be again.

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Things IDEK about:

Riario and the Architect: when the Architect asks "Who is your lifeline, brother?" it makes no sense for Riario to respond "I hope and pray it is you." Clearly Riario survived his inner turmoil and while my preference would be that Leo is his lifeline (I wrote fic about it) I'll accept other answers but not the Architect. Riario didn't know or have any reason to trust the Architect during his torture.
They talk about Daedalus who as I mentioned in the previous review, crafted the labyrinth from which no-one could escape without help. Riario thinks this means he's brought this situation on himself which is a bit harsh. He intended to die, and I don't know if the Enemies of Man would have kidnapped him otherwise, but let's say that was always their plan, to take him as a spy. He can't be held responsible for his capture and torture.
Side note that Riario was utterly broken when he was tortured and so he deserves some kudos for surviving at all. That Leo is Leo explains how he can survive and even seemingly avoid being brainwashed but Riario didn't do too badly considering the state he was in at the end of season two.

The whole Book of Leaves thing. The Labyrinth/Leo thinks it is so powerful that anyone reading from it can burn down a city? The Book of Leaves that last week Riario was forbidden to mention by name but now the Architect wants to talk about how dangerous it is? And I refuse to believe the bs about "Only those who've been prepared for the task from the moment of their birth." and that Riario is excluded (and he looks so upset about that, poor baby) and I have Reasons. Let's look at some of the evidence:

1. Leo's a genius so I'll buy that he is more likely than anyone else to be able to read the page. I've talked before about how he (and geniuses in general) see the world in a way different to others


2. But Leo received no training. His mother disappeared when he was young, and his next real brush with mysticism is when he meets Al-Rahim in the pilot. He certainly wasn't having Reading Magical Texts lessons throughout his life, and yet the Architect doesn't just say born but prepared


3. Who the hell is the Architect to say Riario doesn't have a destiny? Fuck him – fuck anyone who tells you that you are destined to have to do/become something or that you are destined never to achieve your dreams


4. In fact in season one (and I know the writers seem to think continuity is no longer important but fans tend to feel differently) we have Riario and Leo as the two sides of the same coin and in season two we have them as the two entering the Vault of Heaven as the sun and the moon, and Riario even says that he and Leo's destinies are intertwined. Don't just dismiss those things


5. If the goddamn labyrinth is so powerful it ought to be able to teach people to read the Book. But no, it's merely a brainwashing fundamentalist cult. At least the Mithrans seek knowledge rather than obedience. It's the old Leo/Riario debate about knowledge being so important that it is for everyone vs too dangerous for all. And if one side is capable of controlling the Book, why not the other?


6. I'll say it again, Riario entered the Vault, which I still hold partially responsible for his survival since. Why can this not have bestowed the power upon him to read the Book?


7. Maybe the Book isn't as powerful as Leo thinks but we did see the changing nature of the pages in season one. I don't know without rewatching if Riario could also see the changing pages? It's certainly an object of power but I don't think anyone knows what it truly is at this point or exactly how it works.

Poor Nico. That's not a plot criticism, just a Poor Nico upon seeing how brutally he was dispatched. In my ramblings below about the characters representing aspects of Leo, perhaps he is the loss of innocence. I'd just have like to see alternate!Nico.
On that note, the Nico/Vanessa ship which we only saw a hint of last episode has made it into the oblivious Leo's imaginings? Hmmmm.
And all the rest of the Medici family are dead? I still don't know what has happened to Lorenzo in any reality.
And the dream within a dream/hallucination? There's only so far you can stretch credulity.

Things I disliked for various reasons:

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Well somebody ought to be sorry

Yes, it was plot related, but I hated seeing Leo turn on Vanessa and Zo. He's likely to abandon you when he's in the middle of a personal quest or project, but he always come back and he's never mean about it. Future!Leo was not a nice man.

The third season is when you can do more outrageous things. You can have a musical episode. You can do AU in other time periods. Or if you're DvD you can have Leo shacked up with Lucrezia (yawn).
Okay the hallucination plot wasn't as bad as I feared. It wasn't a rosy alternate life of domestic bliss but a troubled future conjured up by the labyrinth. It ended with Florence destroyed and everyone Leo loved dead and when Leo wakes up he decides the cost of that life was too great.
That said, it still rubs me up the wrong way that bisexual Leo keeps being shoehorned into all sorts of fucked up hetero relationships and that this is the most creative thing the creative genius can imagine for his future. Married with a son named after his father figure mentor. Blergh. Done to death, saccharine overdose. I haven't recovered from the shitty Harry Potter epilogue. Do not need more of it elsewhere.


I'm going to talk briefly about the Buffy episode "Normal Again" as a comparison so there are spoilers for that if you've not seen it. Not only is the plot very similar I think it does wrong the same things this episode does.

In "Normal Again" , according to the wiki article:
"The Trio summon a demon whose hallucinogenic venom makes Buffy believe that her implausible and nightmarish life as vampire slayer has actually been her own elaborate hallucination as a mental patient, catatonic in a hospital for the past six years."

Buffy goes back and forth between the two worlds. In the institution world her parents are both still alive but none of her friends exist; to break the hallucination she's told she has to kill the friends who are keeping her trapped there. Buffy starts on this grim quest but finally decides to stay in Sunnydale and fight the demons rather than live in the "real world". The episode ends with Buffy's mother weeping as Buffy lies, permanently lost to her vision.

What's wrong with this? Two things and DvD does them both.

As a standalone, one off episode of an anthology show, or a movie, the chilling idea that maybe the world we think of as real is false works. However showing Joyce weeping over Buffy suggests all the episodes we've seen and will see are just delusions and it's hard to care about a delusional world.
DvD pulls the same trick with Leo finding the symbol drawn in his notebook at the end. DvD can, barely, get a pass, because as I keep saying, this whole show is starting to feel like a dream. Still, it seemed unnecessary to suggest that Leo is *still* trapped in the labyrinth.

Secondly, if the hallucination is a hallucination and not real, then we should not see the other characters' POVs. Seeing Buffy's mother talking with medical staff suggests this *is* the real world. Having Andrea hearing the voices in the cave, having Lucrezia take supplies to Zo and Vanessa and talk to them without Leo present for all of that conversation makes it seem like both Andrea and Lucrezia are also real and present. (And Andreas is completely imaginary) In dreams you often "know" something without seeing it, but you don't tend to see a lot of things happen which you are not "present" for.

I suppose it can be argued that all of the characters, with the possible exception of Carlos, are actually aspects of Leo. Carlos might represent the labyrinth or Leo's desire to give in to the labyrinth. But Lucrezia might represent Leo's fantasy about domesticity, Zo might represent Leo's conflicted loyalties, etc. It could explain why Vanessa gives Leo the clue that it's not real, for she represents some hopeful part of him; she is some ways his Ariadne. He gives himself the lifeline.
On that note, where the hell was Riario? Again, we've been told about their importance to each other but all he gets is Leo mentioning him in unsavoury terms.


I didn't buy Lucrezia covering her breasts in front of the husband she's regularly shagging. The woman who's been whore-cum-spy and has had a son via Leo doesn't strike me as needing to hide her boobs out of some sense of propriety. Maybe Haddock doesn't want to flash her assets but it just made the scene look out of place; network tv has an excuse for this sort of ridiculous wifely prudery (agh nipples on females!!) but this is a show that had Ima stark goddamn naked last year.
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The ending. Not just for the reason I mention above but the fact that we didn't get to see Riario rescue Leo. He gives the lamest excuse I've ever heard for their predicament: "We were tracking Carlo de' Medici when we were ambushed. Da Vinci was captured, I was left for dead." Riario hasn't got a scratch on him, no one should be believing this. And then Zo mentions the labyrinth which again as I mentioned above calls reality into question; Riario didn't say Leo was rescued from the labyrinth, just from Carlos. In fact he doesn't explain how he found and rescued Leo.

And Lucrezia doesn't question meek and mild Riario who is so fucking clearly not the man she knows. Maybe she's still high on opium.
To be honest I'm really starting to get pissed off with meek!Riario now. I don't want a return to smug!season1!Riario but season two was amazing for his character development. I wanted him to break his conditioning when he feared for Leo's life, kill the Architect, kill Carlos, rescue Leo and take care of him by himself. I want badass!Riario back and I don't think that's going to happen, not this season, and so not ever :(

In fact even if Leo has been rescued and it's as real as things ever get, is he still brainwashed? If not how did he survive the poison? (And didn't we do the hallucination by poison last season?) How/why did Riario rescue him, or has Leo been released to see what he'll do next? I found it all rather vague and irritating to be honest.

Oh and Lucrezia is going to make herself Worthy of Leo. Because the writers seem to ignore the Leario and the Leoaster or use it as queerbait before throwing Leo into bed with Lucrezia at every opportunity.


I know this episode was already filmed before the decision was made to cancel the show (comiccon videos show the cast talking about it/there are tweets about the episode, and there's a tweet from Tom Riley hoping it wouldn't be the last season) but as this is supposedly the final season it seems rather a waste of an episode. And of course we didn't even get any Laura Cereta.

Next episode is the halfway point of the season. It ought to be better than this.
Posting without further proof-reading because potential fanfic aside I'm so done with this episode right now.