fandomobserver

[fandomobserver]

Agatha All Along + text posts pt. 43/?

[fandomobserver]

Agatha All Along + text posts pt. ∞

[fandomobserver]

also Reese talking to the machine always fucks severely he's always so matter of fact about it like Finch is dismissive and Root is reverent which are both fascinating in their own right but Reese looks at the face of god and is indifferent

[fandomobserver]

The whole storyline of Root and the Machine (and Finch's response to it) in season three is so much funnier if you look at it like "Finch's daughter is in a rebellious phase and Root is the bad boy she's picked up to piss him off"

[fandomobserver]

Shoot relationship timeline

Shaw's perspective

Following their first meeting, Shaw begins hunting down Root out of anger, but there is also a definite element of fascination. Root managed to trick her completely, which is not easy to do given what we've seen of Shaw's cold-reading skills, and shares her enjoyment of violence.

Later, Root gets the drop on her again by showing up in her bedroom to kidnap her. Shaw is furious and only agrees to work together once Root proves she's getting orders from the Machine. Throughout this mission, she witnesses Root's loyalty, considerable skills and the promised violence (as well as other things in the CIA safehouse) that prove their compatibility.

While Root is in the Faraday Cage, Shaw consistently advocates for letting her help them. She still doesn't trust Root, but understands her and knows she will do what she's offering. Sure enough, Root is let out of the cage and saves Reese, which is when she earns Shaw's respect and trust.

Shaw now views her as part of the team, demonstrated by the way she easily begins working with Root when she rescues them from Control and is reluctant to leave her with Hersh, then goes to look for her at the end of the episode.

Shaw doesn't see Root again until she returns to New York in 3x17, at which point she displays concern for Root's welfare when she checks the dressings on her injuries. This could be because it weighed on her mind that the last she saw of Root was evidence she had been tortured, only to learn she had left the country with nothing but a brief message to Finch.

I headcanon that they began sleeping together again after this episode and it cements them as being on genuinely friendly terms. This is shown by Shaw enjoying the opportunity to do a relevant number with Root (including lots of violence), showing an interest in her life and suggesting a steak joint, implying that she wants to spend more time together, in 3x20.

I would also suggest it's around this point Shaw starts to realize Root has feelings for her, as Root's flirting progresses to adoring stares (3x17, 3x20), taking opportunities to touch her (3x22) and compliments ("She knows you can handle yourself." 3x22), in a way that seems genuine, rather than just trying to annoy her.

They continue as friends-with benefits, bantering and looking out for each other, until the turning point in 3x23. Upon learning Root is going into a Decima fortress alone and there's a good chance she'll be killed, Shaw stops in her tracks and decides to help her immediately. This is the moment she realizes Root means a lot to her, possibly in a different way than she's used to caring about people, and she can't stand the thought of her being in danger.

Although Shaw doesn't acknowledge this revelation in her interactions with Root, she clearly finds it difficult to walk away from her when they have to go their separate ways as Samaritan comes online.

In season 4, they don't get to spend much time together due to keeping up their cover identities. But Shaw still pays attention to and cares about Root, as she immediately knows something is wrong in 4x05.

In 4x07 Shaw meets Tomas, and is both attracted to him and intrigued by the life he's offering. But when the time comes to choose who she wants to be with, she picks Root. I would say this is the moment Shaw realizes she loves her, because although she sees the appeal of a glamorous life of crime abroad, what she really wants is to keep what she has with Root. She then goes to find Root, cites her reason for staying as "I guess there are things I care about here." and finds an excuse for them to spend time together. This is as close as Shaw gets to declaring her feelings.

Neither of them take the leap to change anything about their relationship, but their following interactions carry an undercurrent of intensity because they know what they mean to each other. Such as Root telling Shaw that "while you may not be scared about what could happen to you the next time, other people are. People who care for you." (4x09) and Shaw shoving grenades into her bag while saying, "She's going to meet an all-seeing, all-evil god by herself. That doesn't sound fine to me. That sounds like someone who needs backup." (4x10)

In 4x11, before sacrificing herself to save the team, Shaw kisses Root. Knowing it is her last opportunity to do so, she allows herself to embrace how much this brilliant, frustrating woman means to her.

Root's perspective

Root is already a fan of Shaw before their first meeting, having read her file and been impressed by her considerable skills. But, since misanthropy has been the driving force of her life, she is likely also intrigued by the idea of a heroic sociopath. And sure enough, once they meet it's a case of intense thirst at first sight, only furthered by Shaw's declaration that she "kind of enjoy[s] this sort of thing."

During their first mission together, Root clearly enjoys messing with Shaw ("Safety first." 3x06) and is thrilled to learn that she lives up to the reputation in her file. But Root also recognizes that Shaw actually listens to everything she says and acts accordingly. After a lifetime of being dismissed as crazy or a liar, that's significant.

In 3x12, when Root learns that Shaw came to look for her, she is genuinely touched and I would pinpoint this as the moment she realizes she has feelings for Shaw. She's been alone for nearly all her life, and now this incredible woman cares about her enough to come back.

When she returns to New York, her flirting is as blatant as ever but seems softer ("I love it when you play doctor." 3x17), as if she means it with more sincerity but also has something to lose. As mentioned above, this is around the time they start sleeping together again.

Root continues crushing on Shaw, but doesn't do anything to change the status quo. Until 3x23 when Shaw comes to save her at the Decima fortress, which is the first hint that Shaw likes her back. Root fully expected to die on that mission and sounds unusually serious when she says, "Admit it, you were worried about me." But when Shaw's reply doesn't reveal anything, she continues with their usual banter.

The next development happens in 4x05 when Root, again believing she's going to die, asks Finch to give Shaw a message. While unwilling to approach the subject with Shaw directly in case it violates her boundaries, she views her feelings as significant enough that she wants Shaw to know if the worst happens.

In 4x07 when Shaw chooses to stay with Root, she is clearly thrilled. Following Shaw's confession she teasingly asks, "and is that why you came to see me?", but the answer doesn't matter. She knows how Shaw feels, her actions say everything.

As stated above, neither take the plunge to change their relationship after this. When Shaw sacrifices herself, Root is devastated and willing to do anything to find her.

After they are reunited, they have both been holding onto their love for those nine months. Root never stopped looking for Shaw or believed she would betray them, Shaw viewed Root as her safe place. So I headcanon that shortly after their meeting in the park, they have a conversation about their relationship and are officially 'together'. This is shown in 5x10 by their easy, flirtatious banter ("You want to stick around, give 'em a proper welcome?" "Thought you'd never ask.") and tender, vulnerable conversation while holding hands ("This might be the first time I feel like I belong.").

[fandomobserver]

You know in Person of Interest whenever Root wanted to mess with people and she'd randomly bring up an incredibly obscure fact about them that immediately made the person she was talking to start sweating because wow you know the reason I'm named Lionel was because of a lion cub in a zoo the day they found out my mom was pregnant. I didn't even know that. Very not creepy at all.

Do we think she deliberately asked The Machine for random unsettling facts in preparation for meeting them? Or do we think The Machine followed along in conversations and picked the exact right time to feed Root the information?

Picturing The Machine with the same type of humour as Root seeing some guy insulting her and being like "Hey Root guess what this guy is making fun of you for being crazy but tell him his wife is about to divorce him for the mailman and see what happens." Like this is the intelligence who looked at all of humanity and picked the most unhinged killer for hire like hi yes you come be my chosen voice and superhero. Obviously Root gets a kick out of terrifying people but the thought of The Machine not just being happy to give her the information but also the one instigating sometimes? I love it.

(Bonus points if after the finale it changed it's sense of humour slightly to better mirror Shaw's. They're a new symphony after all, three instead of two. They can keep many parts of their old selves but they need to find a new rhythm for a new combination.)

[fandomobserver]

Person of Interest is my favorite show even this many years after it concluded

And the fans online have made the BEST EDITS

Here is one that I am obsessed with? The way that the scenes are spliced together with the song lyrics and the lines from the show?? Specifically Root on the building ledge almost falling right after a clip of Shaw saying “you know that thing that made you flinch?” Follows up with “I don’t get that”

ITS SO GOOD I CANT EVEN

I am just obsessed with the number of clips they had to splice together to make it so fluid—WHAT MAGIC GOD DID THEY HAVE TO SACRIFICE TO??

[fandomobserver]

most shows with biblical allusions: the protagonist is a good person, so we are going to make references that compare him to jesus

person of interest: our prophet is a genius lesbian hacker & killer-for-hire who hears the voice of god through her cochlear implant. her average day involves grifting, theft, torturing people and/or getting tortured, flirting with an assassin who has threatened to kill her, and preventing the AI apocalypse. btw she’s still a major antagonist when she gets metaphorically chosen by god for the whole apocalypse-prevention thing.

[fandomobserver]

Root POI truly is the character of all time. She's a lesbian. She's a robot fucker. She put a hit out on herself to flush out Finch and Reese and find the Machine. She fell in love with someone she tortured. She's a cyborg and symbiotic with a surveillance state AI she also fell in love with. She infodumps about metaphysical concepts of reality just to make a joke about her (human) girlfriend's ass. Her response to her (human) girlfriend's reality issues that led to her girlfriend whipping out a gun and being about to kill herself is to whip out her own to play a game of chicken. She saved a woman on horseback. She can't wink for shit

[fandomobserver]

Theory: Root is alive

The Machine faked Root's death, knowing it was the only way to protect Root and motivate Finch to do what was needed to defeat Samaritan.

5x10

The Machine is unable to see the sniper because Samaritan's operatives work in the shadows, but sees Root get shot and sends the police to their location, as it is the fastest way to get medical attention for Root and Finch into custody where Samaritan would be less likely to have another opportunity to target him.

Root is then taken to hospital where Dr Madeleine Enright performs surgery to save her. The Machine summoned her because She needed a skilled surgeon who was trustworthy and wouldn't ask too many questions, and it is mentioned in 4x13 that Dr Enright is among the past numbers who have been helping the team ("Dr. Enright is keeping an eye on Delia at the safe house.").

Once Root is stable, this is the point where the Machine decides to fake her death. As she is injured, Root wouldn't be able to defend herself when Samaritan comes to finish the job, so her only chance is for the Machine to make sure they aren't looking for her. Or rather, they aren't looking for her alive.

Dr Enright injects her with aconite (like Shaw in 2x16) to make her appear deceased long enough to be pronounced dead and for Fusco to identify her body as a Jane Doe, then revives her with atropine.

Meanwhile, the Machine had also summoned Dr Farouk Madani, another previous ally of the team who used to work in a morgue and still owes Finch a favor as mentioned in 3x05. He locates a body matching Root's description and handles the necessary paperwork. And Dr Carr, the otolaryngologist who gave Root her cochlear implant in 3x17, removes her implant and puts it in the new body (more on this later), which is then sent to be buried in Root's place.

During the chaos of inmates being freed at the prison, Daizo, Jason and Daniel are able to get Root out of the hospital and go into hiding. The Machine chose them for this task because they were shielded from Samaritan at the end of season 3, giving them more room to maneuver freely, and Root already knows and trusts them.

The reason the Machine doesn't tell the team about faking Root's death is because Samaritan has eyes everywhere and She can't risk them finding out. She also heard Finch and Root's conversations about him needing to take a more active role in the fight against Samaritan and all the people he's lost, and knows that having him believe he's lost another friend is the only way to push him into doing what it takes to win the war.

The Machine then chooses to use Root's voice for multiple reasons: 1) to sell the story that Root is really dead. 2) She needs to be able to communicate clearly and quickly so Her usual spliced-together recordings wouldn't work. 3) This is the first time She will have prolonged contact with someone other than Root and She is on her own, so using Root's voice is a way to have part of Her interface with Her still.

When the Machine calls Finch from the hospital, he asks, "Root?". The Machine replies, "No, Harold. I chose a voice." She does not tell him Root is dead, but rather allows him to come to that conclusion based on the state in which he last saw her and the fact that She is now using her voice.

5x11

When the Machine talks to Finch about Root being dead, this is the only time She uses a name Root no longer identifies with. Therefore, when She says "I watched her die 12,483 times in the seconds before she expired. I couldn't save her, but I kept trying.", She is actually talking about accessing old footage of young!Root, watching her become the Root we know and running simulations to see whether things could have happened differently ("You taught me to see everything, see everyone, and I do. But I see thousands of versions of them: what they were, what they are, what they could be."). The Machine couldn't save her because this happened before She was built.

Much like how She went behind the team's back to protect Root by faking her death with the help of past numbers, in this episode the Machine goes behind the team's back to protect Reese by giving his number to the DC Team made up of past numbers.

5x12

The Machine says, "You know I can't lie to you, Harold." As we've seen, She can withhold information or choose to phrase things a particular way, but can't say an outright lie. At no point does she ever explicitly say Root is dead.

The Machine also says that in a world where She didn't exist, Shaw "never would have met Root." Finch adds, "Or lost her." The Machine does not address this comment at all.

5x13

When Shaw visits Root's grave and discovers the soil disturbed, the Machine comments that it "looks like they dug her up. Guessing they got to her cochlear implant. I should have had her cremated, but I just didn't have the heart. My bad." The Machine is only stating what it 'looks like', not what actually happened. And it is very suspicious that the Machine, who was created to predict human behavior and watched Samaritan try to cut the cochlear implant out of Root's head while she was alive, would fail to predict them going grave robbing for it.

Unless, after deciding to fake Root's death, She knew they wouldn't stop until they found it so lets them have it on Her terms. (As previously mentioned, the cochlear implant had been inserted into a body matching Root's description that was buried in her place. Having her cremated, and by extension destroying the cochlear implant beyond use, would have prevented an innocent person's body from being desecrated, but She couldn't give up a chance to defeat Samaritan.) 

Once Samaritan scans the implant to access the location data, the Machine is also able to access more information on Samaritan which She then integrates into the copy of Her core code made by Shaw. This, along with the greater defensive capabilities created by Root and activated by Finch, allows her to beat Samaritan in the satellite, when She couldn't win any of the simulated fights.

The Machine knew that this would lead them to the team's frequent locations, so She arranges to protect them by stationing a sniper near the precinct ("It seems Thornhill Industries has been on a hiring spree.") and instructing Shaw to blow a hole in the wall of the subway station that allows them to escape.

Later, when Shaw asks "Is this the guy who killed you? Killed her, I mean.", the Machine changes the subject. This is because She can't lie and couldn't risk telling the truth when Samaritan might find out. Although they don't have much time, it wouldn't have taken long to confirm what Shaw already suspects and she has never been the type to let a desire for revenge interfere with completing the mission since "a good soldier does both" (2x16).

When the Machine directs Finch onto the rooftop, he asks, "Wait, are you sure this is the right place?" and She replies, "Yes. This is where you're supposed to be." It is then revealed that She secretly made a deal with Reese allowing him to sacrifice himself in Finch's place. This shows once again that She will go behind Her assets' backs to protect them and uses careful phrasing to misdirect them without lying.

After defeating Samaritan, the duplicate Machine downloads Herself to the subway station computers and declares 'mission unknown. Awaiting instructions…'. The message left by Her predecessor then begins playing and tells Her about Her assets ("let me tell you who we were") and Her mission ("let me tell you who you are").

As the next scene is Her calling the payphone by Shaw, She must have been given instructions to contact any surviving assets. Shaw answers and it is unlikely the Machine gives her a new number, because She had only just gotten back online and the last time She was reduced to Her core code in order to fit in the briefcase, it took Her a while to start operating normally. We also see that She only begins to scan the crowd after Shaw hangs up.

It can't be Her signature 'can you hear me?' because Shaw doesn't reply. Instead, it must be a message Her predecessor told Her to relay - that She survived, Samaritan is gone for good and it's time to get back to work, followed by a set of coordinates that lead to Root's location as she is both a surviving asset and someone who can help Her get back up and running.

It is doubtful the Machine tells Shaw Root is alive in that moment, because she would have reacted with more shock and betrayal than we saw, and likely demanded an explanation immediately. Instead, she is smiling because they won the war and she can continue saving people.

Shaw then goes to the location, which is a new safehouse where Daizo, Jason and Daniel have been looking after Root, who is still unconscious but recovering. The building has been set up as their new base of operations, since the subway was somewhat destroyed during the final battle.

When Root soon wakes up, she and Shaw are very happy to be reunited and promise never to leave each other again. The Machine moves Herself to the computer equipment in the new safehouse and Root helps Her get recalibrated, as we saw in 5x02 and the flashbacks in 4x05. "There we go. Now, can you see me? Excellent. Next question, who am I? That's my girl." Root becomes both Admin and Analog Interface and Shaw is the Primary Asset.

Together, Root, Shaw, the Machine and Bear get back to working the numbers, with help from their friends and allies.

[fandomobserver]

i was watching this gif (courtesy of doctoratomic) for a while because i like to torture myself and i noticed a few things. 

1. when shaw shoved root back, there was genuine surprise on root’s face, because while shaw talks the talk, she’s never acted so aggressively and genuinely dismissive with root. sure, in the devil you know she went to choke root because she stabbed her in the neck with a syringe, but here all root did was say she wouldn’t let shaw go. both actions to protect shaw. they’ve grown so comfortable with each other that shaw’s treatment of her, so brusque and terse, how she’d treat anyone else, is kind of hurtful and surprising. even if they’d never spoken about their relationship aloud, they both knew they didn’t treat each other like they treat everyone else.

2. shaw’s face as she stares at root. it goes immediately from annoyance to “oh shit.” her eyes soften. she sees root intensely gazing at her, willing her not to go, but she knows she has to to ensure root’s safety, as well as john’s, harold’s, and fusco’s. by distracting her with the kiss, shaw could save them, and she knows it will hurt root to use an emotional action to manipulate her. she’s thinking, “oh shit, this nerd really loves me and i’m going to have to hurt her so badly.”

3. root’s face. it’s clear she has no idea what shaw is going to do. what could she have done? someone needed to go to the button, and the most sensible answer was shaw. john was injured, fusco has a kid, harold is the machine’s maker and crucial, and root is the machine’s interface. root knows all this, but she’d rather they all suffer than only shaw. her face is a plea, wordlessly (because she knows shaw doesn’t do words well) begging shaw to stay with her and they could all go down together. 

4. this is less significant, but fusco’s face, too. it’s unclear what everyone specifically thinks about root and shaw together, but he’s not looking at them like “wtf they care about each other???”, but as more of a “these two nut jobs are trying to figure out a plan to get us out of this but i have no idea what that plan is.” team machine has known for a while something was going on between the two, and the subtle acceptance has been wonderful.

5. all of the blue imagery. the elevator is blue, and the walls behind shaw, even though they’re actually white; hell, even fusco’s tie is blue. maybe to signify the loss; i’m not too sure what else it could stand for. but i found the whole episode incredibly well shot. every single color and shot and angle had a purpose.

basically this is a long post about how much root and shaw love each other and convey it without words, and you could probably analyze every interaction they have with each other but now i’m kinda sad so i probably won’t do that haha. also person of interest (and its writers and crew etc) is so freaking brilliant i can’t believe it and amy acker and sarah shahi are goddesses among mortals

[fandomobserver]

So I was watching Bad Code and thinking about this post and I’m always struck by the librarian saying Hanna “looked out for” Root.  She was a “funny kid” and her mom “wasn’t well” and it’s easy to gather that Hanna was maybe the one bit of good in Root’s world (her disappearance and the aftermath solidifying the idea that the world is cold and people are bad code).  She was the only person who made Root feel like someone cared enough about her to be protective.

And I kinda like the idea that the feeling - being protected, being looked out for - is Root’s primary association with feeling loved.  It’s something she always takes note of, and points out:  first with The Machine (”she looks out for me”/”she cares about us”/”Miss Groves believes The Machine will protect her”) and then many times with Shaw: “Admit it, you were worried about me.”  “I knew you’d come back for me.”  “Tell Shaw I was touched she came to look for me.”  That’s what makes Root feel more cared about than she’s been in so long. 

So how great is it that the person she falls for is Sameen “I do the protecting!” Shaw.  Because Shaw is someone who shows she cares through action, through her willingness to drop everything (and bike to another state) to stand beside you in a fight.  And Root completely gets that: “The thing about Shaw is, she does care.  Enough to save my life.”  She would never want Shaw to change, would never demand more from her, because what she already gives is so much to Root.  It’s good enough for her.  Because for Root feeling loved just feels like being looked out for and protected, to know someone actually gives a shit about her not getting hurt.

And for the record that’s also probably why I have millions of feelings about John going back for Root and Harold refusing to leave her in the subway.  This whole family looks out for her now and I just?????

[fandomobserver]

POI Analysis/Meta: Root

It’s incredibly tragic, actually, how everything has turned out for Root. From mid season 3, she’s talked about the greater struggle ahead, Samaritan. She spent all of season 3 preparing the seven servers for their cover identities in case Samaritan went online (Jason Greenfield, Daizo, Daniel Casey, the cargo ship where she found the servers) and almost died every day doing so. Mors Praematura and Root Path exemplify that. So, she spends all this time on a backup plan, while trying to prevent Samaritan from coming online, and while being retasked to relevant numbers. Root is doing everything at once, because she has to. Otherwise, she and the people she loves will die. She tells Harold she’s sacrificing her already shaky moral code in Root Path, doing all of this, to save him and Team Machine. That conversation was very telling, because while Root somewhat sarcastically says that “it’s all her fault”, I do believe that she actually thinks that, at least partly. She has so much self-hatred for the things she’s done in the past. The Machine knew that and wanted to help “redeem” her with Cyrus Wells, but she doesn’t want to. She would rather save the people she cares about; they are the priority over the whole world.

Now, season 4, with Samaritan online, Root does all she can again. She gives Harold a shadow map, she constantly saves Team Machine from Decima agents, she changes personas every few days to do whatever the Machine needs without knowing what the goal is. Earlier, she was content with that, but now the future looks darker and more hopeless. She can’t see anything ahead other than death and pain. And the Machine can’t even speak to her. Her god is on the run. Her conversations with Harold in Prophets show her true feelings, and she believes she will die for the Machine. It would be better that way, if she can die for Shaw and the others. The Machine still loves them all, it just can’t be as articulate or helpful as before. The darkness is looming, but she presses on.

Yet all the work, preparation, and countless near-death experiences in season 3 and 4 are worthless in the end, in two ways. Samaritan goes online, because one, Harold wouldn’t agree to killing the senator and John wouldn’t directly disobey him like that, two, she is unable to stop Greer in Allegiance, three, she decides to save Cyrus Wells instead of the super computer chip, and four, Harold kept her locked up in the library instead of allowing her to help him, which resulted in Greer getting the real Samaritan drives. Root knew that if they did exactly what she said, Samaritan would not have gone online, or at least not as soon as it did. She had to follow Harold’s and the Machine’s rules. Secondly, Shaw gets shot and taken. First, all of the cover identity work was thrown away and Root had to rescue her from the department store. The moment she heard about it from the Machine, Root must have been terrified. She would have dropped whatever she was doing, relevant number be damned, and sped over to Shaw. When she arrived, and Shaw was still alive, her mind was only on one thing: keeping her that way. When she heard Shaw say she wasn’t afraid, she forced her to realize other people were. Root was afraid all her work was for nothing. Eventually, she had to drug Shaw to keep her safe. Shaw had trusted her enough at this point to be completely surprised by this, and Root knew that, and did it anyway, knowing Shaw may not forgive her. Luckily, Shaw has common sense and understands why Root did it, but couldn’t stay underground for long. She swoops in and saves Team Machine in If-Then-Else, but gets shot twice as a result. You can see Root’s life being drained from her. It’s devastatingly painful to watch (Amy Acker is a goddess). She clutches onto the cage of the elevator, screaming things we cannot hear, and watches as the love of her life is gunned down. When Root collapses to the floor, I think it could represent all the plans she made, all the effort she put into keeping Shaw alive, come crashing down on her. It was pointless, worthless. All because she had to follow Harold and the Machine. She was the one who was supposed to die for the cause, not Shaw. Never Shaw.

And she still doesn’t give up. Her unwavering faith in Shaw, while her faith in the Machine dwindles, keeps her going through Control-Alt-Delete and M.I.A. She and John, a pairing Root never would have agreed to before, wreak havoc across five states just so they can get access to a Samaritan phone. Just so they have the chance of finding Shaw. When they hear about the refrigerated truck, Root’s spirits soar. In the beginning of M.I.A., she says Shaw will be furious they didn’t rescue her earlier, bringing back some of her usual snark. She lugs a body up some stairs with the cutest cheerful grin. But as more time passes, she becomes more desperate and needlessly drills into Ms. Thompson’s hand. When they find Shaw, and it’s not Shaw, she flies out of the room and guns down any agent in her way. Her anger gives way to desperation in the end of the episode, as she pleads with the Machine to give her something, anything on Shaw. Root is no longer content with not knowing. She needs to know. And the Machine tricks her into thinking She’s conceded, calling admin on the pay phone only to say STOP. This idea is unfathomable to Root. She cannot stop looking for what’s been the best part of her life. So she leaves Harold and her god to find her love.

Root has been morally regressing. She tells Control, “I’m not the monster I used to be. I’ve changed. Well, mostly changed.” Her character development has been remarkable over the show’s progression. She has changed from a killer for hire with no concern at all for other people, someone who kidnapped Finch (twice) and sedated him and would do anything to get the information she needed. Finch was terrified of her, and remained so until perhaps mid third season. In Prophets he finally accepts that she is part of the family now, calling her “a brilliant woman, comrade, and friend.” This never would have happened if she hadn’t changed her determined, yet psychopathic ways. The Machine, and Harold and Shaw, saved Root. She chose Cyrus Wells over the computer chip. She cares for others, when for most of her life after Hanna was taken away from her, she couldn’t give a damn. She’s a reformed killer for hire (the employer being the Machine). However, with Shaw’s demise, Root has spiraled into a violent rage, bulldozing (though not killing, evidenced by the injured security guard for the stock exchange, and at the Maple factory all the guards were kneecapped) anything in her path. She tortures Control, though it’s unclear in my opinion if she gets any joy from it. I think it was a way for her to express her grief on someone who has hurt her, and Shaw. In Maple, Root drills Ms. Thompson’s hand after she divulges the necessary information. It was completely unnecessary and Harold is aghast, but John doesn’t appear to care much. Root has to get her emotions out somehow, and is undoing her humanization in the process.

Now, here it gets a little questionable because Root reappears at the very end of Q&A to save Harold’s ass yet again. Something caused her to work with the Machine again. We may never find out (though I sincerely hope we do). She’s off doing the Machine’s errands again, without knowing the reason. I’d like to believe it’s a hesitant and begrudgingly-made partnership, which is a stark contrast to the devoted obsessed Root from seasons 1 and 2. In Blunt, it’s clear Harold had tried to talk to Root about Shaw, but she refused. She is bitter, upset, and angry. And she still has to follow the Machine’s rules, molded by Harold’s morals. The very morals that caused all of this to happen. That caused Shaw’s fate. She’s stuck following the Machine, because then, there’s a possibility she’ll see her little firecracker again.

[fandomobserver]

[fandomobserver]

The way this was my first thought and then I opened the comments

[fandomobserver]

I’m still mad about burying our gays >:(