No. Nothing is forever, and The Outpost is no exception either. On Thursday the last episode of Talon's story was finally broadcast, between nerves, excitement and a certain sadness at having to say goodbye to these friendly characters who have been accompanying us for four years. No one was prepared to say goodbye, not even the actors, some of whom struggled to find a gap in their schedules to stay with the fans during the live tweeting that took place in parallel to the season finale.
The Outpost ended the Blackblood saga with an action-packed episode, much like the series, in which Talon, Garret and Zed went head-to-head with the Masters, putting them in a tight spot on more than one occasion. Golu gave us the odd scare when he began to manipulate the bodies of Garret and Zed as if they were mere dolls, and Luna came into action to suddenly help Talon and counterattack them with arrows. Beyond that, the rest of the episode seemed more predictable, with the victory of our friends and the coronation ceremony of Talon as the new queen of Gallwood, in which her union with Captain Spears was also celebrated.
The action permeated this latest episode was in stark contrast to the drama and pain the characters had experienced in previous episodes. If Season 4 of The Outpost has stood out or differentiated itself in anything from the previous ones, it's precisely because of the dark aura has colored the succession to the Gallwood throne, between the political conspiracies of The Three, the macabre resurrection of Tobin and the invasion of the Masters with their kinjs that seemed to prophesy the apocalypse. The season began with political ups and downs that later have given way to a more supernatural plot with several significant deaths that have allowed to address a more intimate and sentimental plane of the characters, who saw how their loved ones were murdered in cold blood by a race not of this world. That psychological dimension has not been perceived as intensely in Nothing Lasts Forever as in previous episodes, but it'a been slightly present.
Instead of choosing for a more realistic, pessimistic and bittersweet closure, in tune with the prevailing fashion in the TV series of this decade, scriptwriters have dared with a much more traditional and customary conclusion, heir to the nineties fictions, I mean, a happy ending. An entertaining and popcorn closing in its first half sweetened with a wedding between the protagonists as a final culmination. Yes, perhaps a little sweeter than you might expect, as most of us had our eyes fixed on Zed and his dubious future, given that the main ships were already fully defined and there were not two "black sheeps" in the herd.
Some more difficulty has also been missed when defeating the Masters, as the process was simpler than expected, and a fierce duel between Garret Spears and Tobin's murderer, especially for the symbolism the actor Jake Stormoen had impressed this dynamic between both characters in episode 411, which he himself was directing. The most tragic moment undoubtedly occurred when Talon had to deal the mortal blow to his great-great-grandfather Aster to obtain his kinj, given that there was no other alternative, and that this meant ending the life of the last member of his family, the direct ancestor of her parents and her people.
It's an ending more similar to that of a fairy tale and princesses stories, although no less deserving of praise, because if something has done well The Outpost has been not to leave fans with a bad taste in the mouth, something that rarely happens in series which are more commercial or expensive to produce, those which focus on surprising the viewers, sometimes even getting fed up, because they forget that what interests them are the stories of the characters and their evolution.
Surprise and fascinate is fine, but you still have to know when to back off. If you indiscriminately kill the characters with whom the public has empathized, you will lose that audience forever, and in that issue The Outpost can give many lessons to some of its juvenile television cousins, such as The 100, The Magicians or Teen Wolf - We'll see what happens to Motherland Fort Salem next year. Even the great hits, like Vikings or Game of Thrones, and their fanbase, would envy The Outpost. Unlike many of them, The Outpost has not tortured its audience with premature, absurd or unnecessary deaths, since all its fallen characters left with dignity, giving meaning and enriching the development of those who have survived until the last day on screen.
We must add to this that here they have even noticed the kind of ending that the series was asking for. It would have been inappropriate if Talon and Garret had not kissed, or if one of them had died on the way, because they have been the central couple of the series, the "head and the heart", from the beginning. Sometimes it's convenient to reduce bitterness so as not to spoil the trip, a pending issue that Game of Thrones, for example, suspended with the worst possible mark, since the end of a series should serve to culminate and honor the journey of the protagonists. And let's not mention The 100, which uselessly claimed the life of the second character of the main cast, almost as a revenge against the actor who played him just for having requested less screentime, or Teen Wolf, who ruined the natural closure of the series lengthening it to offer a conclusion that seemed more like another insipid chapter. The Outpost has offered an ending at the height of the series, a less surprising ending or with less plottwist than usual, something sweetened, but without going off the script or staying at half throttle. Just, ideal and necessary. It's a good idea to go for more traditional endings than to risk one that completely ruins the series experience, and that's the path The Outpost has walked on. Its epic conclusion breaks the mold with respect to what commercial tradition dictates in the series market.
The Outpost has given enough to satisfy the fans while also knowing how to close and put together the puzzle of plots spread throughout its four seasons, and without the typical inconsistencies of a series which has run out ideas. The Gallwood universe still had matter to extend at least one or two more seasons taking advantage of some other detail that was left in the pipeline, such as grayskins. However, and as we already know, the grayskins lived in a reddish rock environment located in Utah that was impossible to transfer to Serbia, which caused them to be dispensed with in the long run, not only because of this but also because of the criticism the CGI technique used to recreate them, and for the heavy costumes.
One can always stop to fantasize about how a hypothetical Season 5 would have continued, and it's true there would still be hot topics, but the question, at this point, would be whether, after seeing the lavish outcome -that image so diaphanous, memorable, and worthy to be framed as an oil picture- which boasts of incorporating the only flashback sequence in the series, an even better one could be proposed. And I think the answer would be no. The Outpost ended in a good time and thankfully it won't end up on the lists of the worst ending TV shows ever. It's a fiction that has not been characterized by a massive fanbase, although it's international, which in turn has resulted in a closer contact between actors and fans, an experience that I wish I could have enjoyed with other TV series.
If I think that we are facing the most appropriate ending for the epic of Talon, it is because, although she belongs to the blackblood race, by cutting her ears as a child, that transformed her into a kind of mixed breed, the perfect character to rule a fragmented and lawless world in which only a few scattered powers are glimpsed. Also, obviously, because she is the heroine of The Outpost, and her journey, in narrative terms, has always progressed from less to more. It's the narrative line imposed by the fantastic genre both in literature and on TV, from which it's difficult to unmark, although with nuances, since most of the time the story has been developed in Gallwood's outpost.
It's not a journey in the strictest and most literal sense, but an inner journey, of discovery, in which Talon has finally found out who she really is and what her destiny is. The same could be said considering the evolution of the rest of the characters: Garret was the knight of noble ideals, always devoted to the cause, but eager to take revenge on the Prime Order for the damage they had done to his family; and Janzo, the foolish brewer and adopted son of the Nightshade Tavern's Misstress Eleanor, whom no one took seriously. Talon defied Garret's mind and tested his vows as a loyal knight over and over, and thanks to her, Janzo stopped being the timid and shy guy in the neighborhood, unleashing his passion for science and medicine. Not only Talon, but also her friends, have taken an intimate journey in which they have discovered who they wanted to be.
Friendship has been a recurring sub-theme in the series, but not the most important. Unlike in other fictions, there hasn't been a single theme working as a common thread, but several that have been intertwined in a context of adventure, magic and discovery, such as plagues, survival, family and politics. Probably, and underlying all of them, we could point out the tolerance and racial difference, with the human-blackbloods conflict involved, a struggle that, unfortunately, I don't think has been well reflected in the series, because the consequences of that war and that exile were already the cover letter for the pilot episode. Talon's origins may be well explained, and the prophecy ("dragman is coming ...") linked to the Vex Rezicon has been resolved and completed with the addition of Luna's character, but one feels that there is a whole story behind we've still not heard about. We understood why the kingdom of Gallwood seems like a winter wasteland, anarchic and almost uninhabited, full of wizards, thugs who worship colored substances that grant supernatural powers or who worship terrifying demons, and of ancient books written in an immemorial language that almost no one can decrypt: the yindrium. We'd have liked to know how the Prime Order managed to prevail over other powers and how the reigning dynasty to which Gwynn belonged fell, which is just one of the many invisible brushstrokes on this canvas that could be the subject of a spin-off.
The series has found a perfect balance, without artifice, between pure fanservice and the commemoration of important characters who didn't survive to tell, and the dated proof of this is Talon's Gwynn protrait, which it's being drawn by her hands right before being crowned by Zed. Queen Rosemund's legacy is manifested through her best friend; It seems there's a symbolism between the very beginning of S4 and its end, since the most solid season of The Outpost began with Falista and Tobin walking up in the royal room stairs, and ends with Talon and Garret on the throne.
There's clearly an air of maturity in the series, parallel to the growth of the characters. Throughout S4 we have been able to see how Garret's hair grew, giving him an air of wisdom, maturity and responsibility that reflects the obstacles he has had to overcome to prove to himself that he deserved Tobin's realm. Garret kept his word and we have witnessed his redemption as a knight. He, Janzo and Munt are probably the most unrecognizable characters at the end of this stage, the ones who have grown and changed the most. At first neither of the two brothers knew how to take care of themselves, but little by little they have become independent and have formed their own family.
The Outpost has been a great fantasy, action and adventere series and, like its protagonist, the only survivor of a genre almost forgotten, but that will leave an important legacy for those who come behind. It's been a completely undervalued fiction and very unfairly criticized, but it's not what it seemed to be. Unlike its older cousin, Game of Thrones, The Outpost is not based on any famous novel, something that hardly happens nowadays, in a cinephile market where originality is conspicuous by its absence and in which scriptwriters solve any plot easily by turning to the pages of some recognized best-sellers. That's probably what hurt The Outpost the most: being born into the GoT empire. But not every epic fantasy is GoT, nor does it have to look like it. The fantasy and the science fiction genres are two of those that must be revisited and vindicated, and for which I predict better times after the defeat of the pandemic. Let's not focus just on it's limited budget and resources; Let's stay with its best, with its current message, with James Schafer's emotional soundtrack, with its charismatic characters and their storylines.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario