Recap / Final Space S 2 E 4 The Other Side

Little Cato drives the Crimson Light through a time shard that leaves him and part of the group stranded in a Bad Future scenario without Gary.

Tropes

• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Zig-zagged; Little Cato, Tribore and Fox really get into Footloose blasting over the speakers while Clarence is angrily trapped in the bathroom and Ash just kinda depressedly shuffles in place.
• Bittersweet Ending: Gary and the rest of the crew rescue Little Cato from the time anomaly. However, Little Cato still remembers every moment he spent alone and is emotionally scarred by the experience.
• Blind Mistake: Old!Nightfall is blind and tries to comfort Avocato but goes to Tribore instead, along with several other errors including running down the wrong hallway.
• Bottle Episode: Most of the episode takes place inside the Crimson Light.
• The Bus Came Back: Avocato makes an unexpected appearance via hologram despite having died in Season 1. It's actually a machine that projects an Avocato hologram and says whatever Little Cato types into it, either for him to reassure himself that he's doing the right thing or to validate his own self-loathing.
• Closed Circle: Little Cato, KVN, Clarence, Nightfall, Hue, AVA, Mooncake, and Tribore are marooned on the ship for sixty years due to a time shard cutting the ship in half. However, it's later revealed that Little Cato was the only one marooned; the rest were nothing but figments of his imagination.
• Dance Party Ending: Inverted; the episode begins with Gary and the crew still excited from their victory in the previous episode and dancing to "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins. Their impromptu dance party quickly comes to an end though when the ship crashes into a space-time breach, setting off the main plot of the episode.
• A Day in the Limelight: For Little Cato.
• Dead Person Conversation: Little Cato has a Text-To-Speech style device that projects a hologram of his dad, Avocato, and anything he types in the hologram will say. He uses this device to simulate conversations with his dad, where Avocato will encourage him to keep trying and to stop blaming himself, or chew him out for his failures. The ending reveals that Little Cato really does have a device like this, and has presumably been using it as a coping mechanism ever since Avocato died, until he has one last conversation when he decides to put it away for awhile.
• Foreshadowing: There were early hints that Little Cato was insane and alone in the ship:
  • Little Cato actually mentions to have gone insane while talking to his father's hologram.
  • Nightfall says that what HUE was offering killed Ash and Fox, but the first flash to the other side shows Fox and Ash weren't even on Little Cato's side of the Crimson Light.
  • Mooncake uses his powers on the approaching Titan, but back in Chapter Ten, Lord Commander had already depowered him of his abilities. Little Cato, having been stranded long before that, had had no knowledge of that happening.
  • KVN is one of the members to have gone insane (though nowhere near the levels of Tribore) in spite of being an insanity avoidance companion ^note Though this one becomes more likely after "The Set Up" reveals insanity avoidance companions can go insane if their falanger is removed
• Go Mad from the Isolation: What happens to Little Cato.
• Happily Married: In Little Cato's side of the Crimson Light, HUE and AVA marry each other after spending so much time together in the ship.
• Hook Hand: On Little Cato's side of the Crimson Light, KVN has lost his arms at some point in the past 60 years, and replaced them with a fork and a spatula.
• Killed Offscreen: Ash and Fox have apparently died years ago in Little Cato's side of the timeline.
• Mood Whiplash: The episode opens with a pumped-up post-victory Gary blaring "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins over the ship's speakers while the rest of the crew react with everything between horror and joining his impromptu dance party in the hallway. The song is interrupted by the ship crashing into a space-time breach trapping Little Cato for sixty years.
• Real After All: While Little Cato using a text to speech hologram to pretend to talk with his dad could be assumed to be another thing he dreamed up in his insanity; the episode ends with the reveal that said device was the only real thing in his time alone. He decides to put it away.
• Reset Button: Zigzagged; destroying the Time Shard and freeing the Crimson Light reverses the physical effects (Little Cato becomes a kid again, and the damage to the ship caused by 60 years of neglect is undone), but Little Cato retains his memories of the entire 60 years he spend alone.
• The Reveal: Little Cato is alone on the other side of the ship, having gone insane in the 60 years on the ship. When the others embrace his wounded, older self, they fade to reveal that he was hallucinating the whole time.
• Sanity Slippage: Tribore (actually Little Cato) becomes demented due to being trapped in the ship for so long.
• Scooby-Dooby Doors: A variation; during the Loggins dance sequence, Gary and Mooncake are dancing in a hallway with doors on both sides, and Little Cato keeps popping out of different doors to briefly join them.
• Suddenly Voiced: In Little Cato's timeline, Mooncake speaks for the first time while using a translator.
• Wham Shot: A mortally-wounded Little Cato lays on the floor, surrounded by his crew, and he smiles at them and remarks, "I don't know what I would've done without you all. Probably gone..." (the entire rest of the crew fades away, along with Little Cato's injury, finally revealing the truth of his situation) "...crazy."
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: For Gary and the rest of crew, not much time has passed when the time shard collides the ship, but on the other side of the shard, Little Cato spends sixty years all alone.