Going to say a few things about Dreamer and The Gifted, specifically.
First, I maintain that if I discover in some way that Dreamer will turn out to not be dead or be revived in the season finale, AND that character death will be handled much better on the show going forward, then I’ll watch the finale and promote it. That hasn’t changed.
Second, some people think this is purely about a character I liked dying, period. That’s not it. The way it was handled is the problem.
I didn’t complain about Pulse’s death or how it was handled. Why? Because he had very little presence on the show. I was disappointed in his death, I thought it was a pointless waste of potential too, but the very minimal screen time meant I kept it at simply saying I was disappointed that he died.
Dreamer, however, had a big presence on the show. She was part of the love triangle for Blink and Thunderbird, yes, but she was also there as Polaris’ best friend and provided support and dynamics in many scenes with her. Furthermore, she had an accidentally hostile dynamic with Jace. To put it simply: she had extensive roots in the show’s story.
A good show doesn’t casually rip a character out with such deep roots, throw them in the trash and move on like nothing happened. Gifted did that. They did it and didn’t seem to care one bit that they did it. They acted like the character had zero worth and rushed forward like nobody else should have felt she had any worth either.
It’s not the death that makes the problem. It’s not giving a damn about the death that’s the problem. A single short funeral scene and a handful of tweets that the show’s social media account only thought to make when people started really complaining are not sufficient. The show should have written and presented the character’s death with more tact and empathy.
And before anyone says something, I’ve considered the possibility that the writers meant for Dr. Campbell saying mutants helped him get out of the hospital quicker to be a hint that Dreamer would be alive. If that’s meant to be a hint, it’s not enough. It’s too easy to assume the writers meant that purely as a throwaway line for world-building and to further establish Campbell’s power over mutants.
This also isn’t like when people complained about Polaris not having green hair on the show, where people should have looked at her comic book history before rushing to judgment. We had something to go on there. IF Dreamer is coming back, we have nothing to go on except at best a throwaway line we have to bend over backwards to trust means something more.
But even if Dreamer comes back, and even if the Campbell line wasn’t a throwaway, neither of those things changes any of my complaints. Planning to bring her back doesn’t make doing a horrible job with her death somehow fine. If I have a girlfriend and I’m planning to propose to her, does that mean it’s fine for me to suddenly break up with her by text message, throw away everything she ever gave me, and ignore her any time she wants to talk to me until the proposal?
That comparison felt awkward, but it’s the best one I can think to use for the simple reason that show and fandom is a relationship too, and to me, how the show handled Dreamer’s death was toxic verging on abusive. I trusted the show to care enough to not pull what they did with their handling of Dreamer’s death, and I can’t root for a show that’s going to have that kind of disdain and disrespect for the emotional investment they get me to put into the show.
salarta 