Lovecraft Country

I got busy and watched the last two episodes back to back. I thought about spoiler tagging but it's really only been us two in this thread for a bit so I think it'll be fine.

I... I still hate Montrose and really cannot find a fuck to give. Episode 9 is trying its hardest to make me care and I sympathize with what he lived through, but all these speeches about what he gave up and that he chose to be Atticus' father... all I can find myself wondering is if he wanted to bad to be Tic's dad and gave up so much, why the every living fuck was he such a monster? No amount of context really excuses his behavior. In fact, to me, it kinda makes negative sense since Montrose is clearly able to articulate that his beatings as a child were wrong in the first place, so him doing it to Tic feels...

I just hate him. I don't see any redeeming qualities and I feel like that's amplified as some of the only queer representation for me on the show.

I don't get why Ruby is still with Christina. Did I miss a scene? I remember Christina giving her whole tirade about how she doesn't care about or think Ruby actually cares about Emmitt Till or any of the other black people murdered and... we left on that note which felt like a relationship changer? And then I don't think we mentioned it again. Did we skip something or is my memory faulty?

As for Ruby herself, I like her... except that one shoe rape scene that we just never touch again. If they had cut that scene or given her revenge in some other way, I'd be fine. But she rapes a guy with a shoe and any character being a sex abuser just... no thanks. I can't get over that.

But, ignoring that one moment, I actually thought her story was really interesting but I wished we had some to some in-character conclusion about her desires; I feel like there are interesting ideas to this black woman who becomes white and gets what she wants but I didn't get the impression the show came to any end point on that notion; is it good? bad? Should we see Ruby as a woman in a toxic relationship? Or is she too empathetic to the white woman she's sleeping with? Is she a black woman who puts too high of a standard on other black people (which I thought was part of her lesson from her character episode) and kinda racist that way? I don't feel like the show quite settled on any one view.

I think she deserved better and her just being put in a coma off screen felt cheap.

Or Christina. Big Bad of the season but then we also have moments of her seeming to genuinely teach Ruby about magic which makes me wonder what Christina really sees in that relationship. Or what was with the scene of her dying like Emmitt Till? Was it to empathize with those black kids she'd said she didn't give a fuck about? Go through their deaths? Or was it a superiority thing of being able to survive what they couldn't? I don't know what that scene meant.

Ji-Ah felt kinda... there. I agree she had good build up and good character episode but then the show didn't know what to do with her. Her involvement in the climax was kinda just... sure? I guess? I don't quite understand what's happening at a certain point so, sure, go stand in the dark cloudy thing and use your eye-tails. Which was odd to me cuz my earlier idea was that Tic already consumed the flesh earlier so their bodies were 'united' and Christina just spilled all of Tic's blood on herself so I thought they were going for a Hoist By Their Own Pitard moment.

And here's my big question for the ending... Did COVID fuck up filming? Was there supposed to be more? Cuz the show felt like it kinda just ended tbh. We didn't get much to tie up the rest of the character's stories. And during the curse, we got ALL of those flashbacks to a lot of REALLY important things that I felt like were supposed to explain things but it was so much that... I don't think I understood everything the show was trying to tell me and I really wish I had seen those moments so... did COVID fuck something up here? Did we originally have a lot more scenes that we just didn't finish filming cuz everything got shut down? Cuz I kinda felt like the 'We need to rebaptize Tic thing suddenly became a lot more important and was a shocking 'Power of Christ' swerve?

Or that last scene with D? I felt... I didn't know what the show was telling me. D controls the big Lovecraft Dog, sure, but... why? What was everyone's plan that SHE needed to control it and couldn't be there for the fight earlier? And why give her the kill on Christina? They revealed her cool robo arm but I felt like everything was making such a large moment of it; D revealing the arm, D confronting Christina, Christina "not learning anything", D killing Christina and then the dog howling in triumph against the moon... I didn't understand what it furthered on these characters? Christina was already left for dead by the anyway so... what did we accomplish with this scene?

I feel like Christina is a fairly easy character to get but a lot of people don't for some reason, perhaps because they already see her in some other role. She's a genderfluid person in a time before that's accepted or acknowledged and use magic to express herself. She bonds with Ruby and falls in love with her because they're both people who cannot live the life they want.

Then Christina has to choose between Ruby and power. She chooses power.