Nightmare Fuel / Final Space

Yeah...good luck with that.

In Final Space, no one can hear you scream.

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General

• The teaser poster for Season 3 is just horrifying. It looks more like something out of a horror film than the whimsical sci-fi/comedy fans know and love. Just one look at it and you can already tell that Season 3 will be the darkest season yet.
  • The icing on the cake is the horrified expressions of Gary, Sheryl, Little Cato, KVN and Fox. While Quinn, Ash, Avocato and Mooncake are fighting off the undead Garies, these guys are scared for their lives.

Season 1

• The very first episode has Gary straight up die for five minutes. Sure, it was obvious he was gonna make it, but it could've just been a 'you passed out' or 'you almost didn't make it', but nope, it's a blunt 'you were dead, for five minutes'. It's jarring, and a sign of how this show will pull absolutely no punches.
• The Lord Commander. He's WAY more terrifying than he was in the pilot. How? He brutally tortures a man with his psychic power (twisted his body in unnatural ways) and when the guy begged not to die, Lord Commander said he wouldn't do it since that would be rude even after snapping his neck... then he let one of his minions eat the guy.
  • In Episode 2, he does the same thing to Gary...with the added "bonus" of slooooowly disconnecting his left arm and tearing it off, a la Ermac. Gary's blood spurting everywhere, as well as his screams of agony, make things worse. Sure, he (barely) survives, and gets a new robotic arm attached with Avocato's help, but still.
  • In episode 3, Lord Commander goes to visit the Order of the 12, beings renown as the "eyes of the universe," on the whereabouts of Mooncake. When one of the members of the Order of the 12, Hula, fails at providing Lord Commander with the answers he was looking for, he uses his telepathic powers on Hula, using them to grossly destroy her eight eyes.
• In episode 6, Avocato reveals how his son was imprisoned. He was once a high-ranking general of Lord Commander who was forced to kill his firstborn to prove his loyalty. When he refused (for most likely the first time in his tenure), the Lord Commander decided to use Little Cato as a bargaining chip. Note that Avocato wasn't the only general the Lord Commander ordered to do so, he was just the only one to refuse. Every other general obediently and personally killed their terrified children. Who knows what some of them were even thinking as they did?
  Generals: (altogether) For eternity! For the Lord Commander!! [gunshots]
  Lord Commander: (as he separates Avocato and Little Cato) If I sense doubt in you EVER AGAIN, remember this: I own your son. And now, I OWN YOU.
  • Avocato getting blown out of the Galaxy One's airlock after jumping on a sticky grenade the Lord Commander snuck onto Little Cato's back, which is played as realistically as you could get. No one notices the bomb until the last few seconds before it detonates, and Avocato has no time to consider another option— only enough to entrust Gary with his son's care, put as much distance between himself and his friends as he can, and take one for the team for the last time. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
    • As the debris from the explosion clears, we're treated to an indiscreet shot of the chest wounds Avo sustained as he drifts out. If you've known someone in the military who suffered similar wounds in combat, this hits home hard.
    • Even without the confirmation from Word of God that Avocato was indeed Killed Off for Real, the comparison to be made if the same scenario happened on land is daunting— Avocato would have a marginally better chance of being found and saved in that. Out in space, though? If Avocato's injuries didn't kill him first, exposure to low pressure from the vacuum of space would do so in minutes without rescue. That is a horrifying way to go out.
• In episode 7, Nightfall reveals a bit about the future she's come from. In hundreds of past timelines, the Lord Commander succeeds in murdering Gary, which causes Mooncake to go crazy, destroy multiple planets and break open the rift to Final Space. Then it turns out Final Space is populated by the Titans, Eldritch Abominations that will proceed to ravage the universe in an inevitable bout of pure chaos should they escape. The Titans' designs alone are unsettling and alien enough to be disturbing, not even counting their raw destructive power and their unholy sizes - one of them is massive enough to grab Earth in one hand...
  • Though it's played for humor on KVN's part, the time fallout from Nightfall's ship came that close to wiping both him and particularly Little Cato from existence.
• Gary nearly getting consumed by black tar (which symbolizes his deeper fears about being a competent captain of his crew) can really hit a nerve with people suffering from crippling anxiety.
• Hearing about the Earth at risk of getting sucked into a breach in space and time is one thing. Actually seeing the absolute devastation as the ocean is pulled away, magma spills from the core, and the broken ruins of human civilization drift away into space is both incredible and terrifying.
• The battle to close the breach results in everyone on both sides getting wiped out. Lord Commander's forces get decimated by HUE detonating his Lightfold Engine in a terrifyingly huge blast, and what's left of them is still enough to rip apart the resistance and the Galaxy one. The heroes only 'win' because they succeeded in closing the breach, but they lost the Earth, all their allies, and each other. The worst part is that it wasn't a Curbstomp Battle, they weren't a Redshirt Army, and there was no Leeroy Jenkins that messed anything up; the armies just wiped each other out.

Season 2

• Despite the Lord Commander's death in the first episode of season 2, it is heavily implicated that he was actually working for one of the Titans named "Invictus." And his master isn't finished with him yet...
• In "The Happy Place," it is revealed that dozens of captives are drained of their life essences and left as hollow husks as a means of charging the galaxy.
• "The Grand Surrender" reveals that Ash's sister was sacrificed to a snake god where within, the snake god absorbed her wellness until she was a zombified husk of her former self. When Ash reunites with her, she is forced to leave her to burn upon discovering she was too far gone.
• "The Other Side": Half of the crew is trapped in a collision in space-time where half the Crimson Light had aged sixty years. To make matters worse, when the crew tried to fire a distress signal a Titan emerges from a portal.
  • The Reveal that none of the above actually happened. The only one trapped in the anomaly was Little Cato, completely alone for sixty years, and the rest was all in his head. Paranoia Fuel, anyone?
• In "Arachnitects" we see the reason why 99% of the Titans are as destructive and chaotic as they are is due solely to the action of an entity called Invictus corrupting them.
  • What makes this scarier is that Invictus wasn't even a Titan, but something else entirely. The end of the episode literally has this thing letting Mooncake off with a rather foreboding warning.
    Invictus: I'm coming... do you think because I can't be seen... I'm gone?
• The evil KVNs from "The First Times They Met", complete with glowing evil red eyes. They get worse when they merge to become a Mega-KVN.
• "The Closer You Get:"
  • Invictus escapes Final Space by using Gary as a vessel and he beats down Avocato and Little Cato effortlessly through him. Sensing that Avocato was a stronger vessel, Invictus possesses him, and seemingly mortally wounds Gary.
    • The way how the scene plays out is especially horrific, and probably marks one of the most chilling scenes in the whole show. First, Invictus possesses Gary, forcing him to fight Avocato and Little Cato. At first, it seems like they can beat him, until Invictus jumps into Avocato's body, corrupts him, and convinces him to kill his best friend in front of his child. He shoots Gary twice, showing how far gone he is, while his son begs him to show any semblance of mercy and is promptly ignored, forcing Little Cato to shoot him.
    • The way Invictus moves Gary's "vessel" is this also. It's chilling to see someone like Gary brutally and systematically fight against two of the people who are dearest to him; his best friend and his best friend's child. Outof Character Is Serious Business indeed.
    • A mix between Tear Jerker, but Avocato's last moments in the episode are this as well. Before he's pulled into the inky portal by Invictus, he's shouting at Little Cato, saying a myriad of incredibly hurtful things, including disowning his kid and belittling him for looking up to Gary, who lays dying nearby. The scene is already painful enough, but the Kick the Dog moment towards Little Cato twists the knife even deeper.
  • The fact that Final Space is littered with the dozens of corpses of alternate reality versions of Gary. Not to mention the implication that Invictus has killed all of them and is eager to add more Garys to the collection.
  • Just about everything in the dimension Gary ends up after drinking the Clearwater; a tree made of corpses (that Gary has to climb), pools filled with wailing souls, Phil (though he is, fortunately, a case of Dark Is Not Evil), Gary seeing Quinn's reflection in a glowing pool, only for it to erupt into black goo that pulls him into the pool. This episode is easily one of the scariest in the series.
• The final episode of season 2. Gary finally finds Quinn, rushes out to get her, and ends in a big hug... Long enough that the area starts to darken, and Invictus slowly appears...

  Invictus: Ah... look who it is...

Season 3

• "...And Into the Fire"
  • The crew is flying away from Invictus as fast as possible after saving Quinn. Sheryl asks Gary if Invictus is still after them. That question is answered with this line:
  Invictus: YOUR SOUL WILL FALL, SHACKLED TO THE HORROR OF AN INFINITE NIGHTMARE.
  • After Gary and Quinn have reached the ship, Mooncake, who is able to destroy planets, fires a powerful blast at Invictus. What does it do? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Invictus simply repels it and sends Mooncake flying.
  • All the dead Garys are revealed to be from alternate timelines and were destined to die in Final Space. When the Crimson Light arrives in Final Space, Invictus turns them all into zombies and siccs them on the team.
    • Worse, roughly a third of all Zombie Garys are wearing the Galaxy One prisoner uniform, and some still have both organic arms instead of a robotic arm. Assuming that certain events in these particular Gary's' alternate timelines of origin played out similarly to in the main cast's timeline, this could be construed as a sign that they died before the second episode's time frame, which would in turn imply that even if a Gary died outside of Final Space, their bodies still ended up there and they were ripped from death to serve Invictus without any knowledge of what was happening or why.
    • To end up in Final Space if they died outside of it, that would mean that Invictus successfully entered their universe. No matter how each Gary died, their efforts to protect what they loved was in vain and only delayed Invictus' coming.
    • This would also mean that Invictus wasn't just attacking the main universe, it was attacking all of them, and apparently it succeeded every single time before the current timeline. The Team Squad just lost their entire world, but to Invictus, it just gained a little more territory.
    • If these Season 1-design Gary's truly died before Earth was sucked into the breach, that would imply either that their universes got absorbed into Final Space as a result of the opened breach, meaning all life in that universe was doomed now matter where they ran or hid, or that Invictus hates Gary so much that it went to the trouble of dragging each of these "died early" Gary's into Final Space to be reanimated and enslaved, even if a Gary dies without ever knowing that Invictus even existed.
• "The Hidden Light":
  • Think Earth might be saved? Well, it might not be so. "The Hidden Light" shows that, just from looking at Paris alone, that the vast majority of Earthlings are probably dead. The only living inhabitants shown are a small number of KVNs, Kevin himself and a little cat alien named Biskit.
  • The Lord Commander is back, and it looks like Invictus may have fixed the life-draining drawback that using his powers once had. Just as it seemed as though Avocato and the rest of the crew were in good hands, the Lord Commander arrives and utterly butchers the three remaining Arachnitects. He then uses his telekinetic powers to once again take Little Cato as a hostage and asks him where Mooncake was.
• "The Ventrexian":
  • Lord Commander tries to compel Avocato into giving Mooncake's location by threatening to strangle Little Cato to death.
  • The Lord Commander appoints Avocato with assassinating the king and queen of Ventrexia before taking control over the planet. Who just so happen to be Little Cato's birth parents.
  • Invictus has shown itself to be very powerful, especially within Final Space. This episode reveals that it is imprisoned, meaning we likely haven’t seen what it’s really capable of yet. And what does it state it’s goal is going to be if it gets out? To feast on all dimensions. And the Lord Commander is working towards that goal.
• "One Of Us":
  • Several beings are trapped in chains and serve as a source of "food" for Invictus. This becomes Fox's fate in the end.
  • When Ash fights against the Lord Commander, the two seemed evenly matched until the Lord Commander got the upper hand resulting in Ash's fingers getting mangled.
  • The implication that Ash's powers came from Invictus.
  • The Lord Commander gets shot at by Gary, but rather than killing him, the black gunk making up his archenemy's body reassembles itself in grotesque fashion.
• "All the Moments Lost"
  • The pseudo-black hole tampers with the Galaxy II to the point where HUE's voice gets a real creepy distortion to it at one point, as Gary lampshades.
  • Quinn’s mom literally locking her in the Infinity Guard morgue just to make a point of how heavy the weight is of dealing with people’s lives and to hammer how horrific that is. She was a little girl at the time... Suddenly, a lot of Quinn's personality in season 1 makes more sense.
  • The horror and delirium of Quinn's poisoning reaches its apex here, causing her to hallucinate flashbacks with her sister and mother. Not that she nor the audience are spared the physical effects, either - the episode literally fades out on her Volcanic Veins covering her face and even her eyes having turned a glowing, soul-piercing yellow.
• "Change Is Gonna Come"
  • Final Space poisoning is revealed to be the result of spacetime itself stagnating when the dimension was sealed off from the rest of the universe. While some lifeforms developed ways to survive and build small civilizations, most organic life is poisoned just by being in Final Space. So even if you survive the rampaging Titans, reanimated corpse armies, other blood-thirsty survivors, and even Invictus itself, just existing inside Final Space absolutely will kill you if you don't find a solution.
  • In order to cure Quinn, a cybernetic implant has to be installed in her brain via a surgical drill. Due to the possibility of drugs killing her in her weakened state, she needs to be conscious and able to feel everything while it's being installed. Gary offers to take the pain of the surgery by having the pain receptors of his brain fused with hers. It comes very close to killing him, causing his nose and even his eyes to bleed as he cries out in pain.
• "The Chamber of Doubt":
  • The infection that Oreskis gave to Bolo worsens to the point he rips his arm off.
  • Fox is revealed to have already been long deceased and Invictus puppeteers his body to manipulate Ash. He even forces Gary to stab Fox so Ash would be convinced that he was telling the truth.
• "Until The Sky Falls":
  • The Lord Commander successfully merges with the Titan within the Earth's crust, becoming a hideous, gargantuan version of himself. The Slasher Smile he has, with a mouth that looks partially melted really doesn't help.
• "The Dead Speak":
  • The Lord Commander stabs Bolo through the stomach and rips his head off.
  • Invictus orders several Titans to kill The Lord Commander. The Lord Commander kills them all.
  • Remember all those Earths that got pulled into Final Space? And remember how each planet contains the fetus of a Titan inside? Well, that's apparently how Invictus is growing its army.
  • If the Zombie Gary the Team Squad exorcised and spoke to is anything to go by, all of the Zombie Garys still have their memories and personality, even after dying and being Invictus' puppets for who knows how long. It isn't clear juts how much awareness they have, but they're still there, not allowed to move on and be with their loved ones in the afterlife, assuming Invictus didn't consume them as well.
    • Doubling as Tear Jerker, the exorcised Gary is beyond traumatized, spasming and jittering and sounding almost like he escaped from Leatherface's dungeon after spending a year down there, in contrast to the Gary we know. Bare in mind, Gary himself has had a near-death experience in Season 1, slowly running out of oxygen in the vacuum of space after losing Quinn and the Earth, yet he was still able to bounce back and return to his normal attitude — what the alternate Gary has been through since entering Final Space and getting reanimated by Invictus was evidently much worse than the main Gary's Season 1 trauma.
• "The Leaving":
  • When Ash overhears Avocato confessing that he killed Little Cato's parents, she snaps and uses her powers to force choke both Avocato and Gary before forcing Little Cato to leave with her.
• "The Devil's Den":
  • Invictus is freed from its prison thanks to Ash, breaking out of Final Space, and its true form can best be described as a gigantic, shadowy monstrosity with a skeletal appearance.
  • After Invictus is freed, the first thing he does is imprison the Lord Commander. While the latter totally had it coming, what Invictus says to Lord Commander is still chilling:
  Invictus: I want you to rot away, FOR AN ETERNITY.
  • And let's not forget that all timelines flow into Final Space. In other words, an instance of Invictus may have escaped into every conceivable reality. Unless the Team Squad somehow manages to find a way to stop Invictus, the odds of all life surviving are slim. And with the confirmation that the show has been cancelled, chances are they won't.
  • "At Last", the song that plays as Invictus escapes Final Space, might be one amazing song that fits the atmosphere perfectly, but the lyrics fit as much, if not even more.
  I begged the gods, but they won't hear me
  Turning their heads to every ask
  So I ran faster than the comets
  Oh, I think, that fate caught up at last

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