Thoughts before the final episode of s 4

 (By Ivy Blossom)

I’m feeling a little weird about the whole thing, what is that? Anxiety? Anticipation? Doubt? I don’t know. All the spoiler stuff and the theories and conspiracies, it’s making my head spin! Talk about a roller coaster!

I’m not holding out for any particular thing to happen. Except for this: I expect The Final Problem to be a consistent step beyond with what’s come before, because this show has always been internally consistent. For all the jiggery pokery that happens around it, both by the people involved in it and by us, its fans, the story itself, the stuff that makes it to the screen, the text, that’s always been a coherent through-line. We’ve always been going somewhere. No false starts, this is a consistent journey.

For a series full of episodes, this story has never been episodic. It’s been a series of chapters in a larger tale, each building on the last, bringing us to a place different from where we left. My only hope, and my only expectation, is that this last episode will be a further piece in that same journey. The characters will grow and change, they will make new, different, even surprising decisions, but everything will have its roots in what came before, just as it always has.

There is so much room for creativity and surprise within those boundaries; we can still be very much surprised. The Abominable Bride make it work against all odds. In spite of a Victorian detour, this story has still been one foot in front of the other.

I don’t want to be shown just what I can imagine, or what I think I want to see. I was to be surprised, shocked, frightened, dismayed, delighted. I’m here for an adventure, not just to be patted on the head. But I want to feel that click as the narrative fall into a place; no matter how surprising, I want to recognize it. When a character does something, says something, decides something, I need to feel its roots in what’s come before. I want it to feel right.

Twelve episodes in, everything in this narrative has always felt right to me. That’s an exceptionally good track record, and it seems disingenuous and unfair to disregard all that evidence now and assume, suddenly, that I know better than the people who have always given me the right story at the right time. So I will trust that this last piece will feel right as well., and the story is as it should be.

With my house metaphorically burning down around me, I can say: Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, I trust you.