#also if you didn't hear 'oh the DUALITY' like i was yelling oh the HUMANITY

[knowlesian]

quick thoughts about the use of Wherever You Go, There You Are as an episode title because i really do think it ties in with the duality of the lighthouse (yes, i said the duality of the lighthouse. i will also be screaming about the goddamned lighthouse later believe you me) and the reason why this episode ended on stede’s hope and not ed’s despair and that really fucking matters.

okay so! ‘wherever you go, there you are’ is one of those litmus test statements where the meaning you pull from it depends on your own personal shit. 

on one hand, it’s an acknowledgment that we can never truly hide or run away from the things that are eating us alive and keeping us up at night. wherever you go, there you are. your past, your demons. your ex-almost who kissed you back and cracked you open when you exposed your soft underbelly then left you there to bleed out into the sand. you know! typical gay pirate stuff.

so that’s obviously where ed’s at when the series ends. he’s got his adorable trash panda facepaint instead of breakup bangs, he’s thrown away his delusions of deserving finer things along with the scrap of red silk. he’s removed everything that would remind him ed still lives inside blackbeard (save the lighthouse, oh the DUALITY) and he is gonna be the goddamned krakeny-est kraken the world has ever seen. just you fucking watch him stede!!! and so on. 

pretty fucking depressing, BUT WAIT.

Wherever You Go, There You Are is also a self-help book from the 90′s by jon kabat-zinn about mindfulness. the granular details aren’t super important here but given stede’s the character we end on and the rule of good writers care about scene placement, i think the overall message of the book matters and tells us where this story is going next for ed and stede.

honestly, let me just drop a quote from it here.

Guess what? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that’s what you’ve wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, “Now what?”

so yeah: now what? to answer that question, we have to look at stede. 

while ed’s hanging out in the belly of the whale because stede abandoning him is literal worst nightmare material, stede left because chauncey took his own worst fears out and put them on parade. (this writing team, man. fuck 'em all, what absolute monsters i love them but i just wanna talk, etc.) 

left to his own devices ed spiraled off into fuckin’ izzy’s waiting arms and that’s ten kinkmeme fills in a trenchcoat and i love it, but i digress. ed ran to his evil ex, but thank god stede ran straight to mary and tried to correct what he assumed was his original sin: leaving at all.

and since mary is not an evil ex, she’s a fucking baller, she sets stede right. of all the things he fucked up, leaving’s not on the list. leaving the way he did, yes, but leaving to become a pirate was the best choice he’s ever made in his life. i’ve got a lot of feelings about the way mary functions both as a guide out of the darkness and autonomous character who gets to point out how hard she got fucked over that are (sing it with me) for another post, but essentially the symbolism of the way stede’s honesty set him free and the whole family participating in the fuckery after that is killing me.

all that is to say: ed’s still lost in the dark but stede, who has vacated the belly of the beast and literally killed the man he used to be, is ready to fight to drag ed back out. we can spin the metaphor wheel: stede has shed his skin, left the cocoon to become his truest bizarre butterfly self, he has entered and exited the underworld, he is an ex-ex pirate. even better, with mary’s help and her blessing tucked in his back pocket when he left he didn’t look back.

so, having passed go and collected his 200 emotional literacy dollars, stede has followed Wherever You Go, There You Are’s advice. he asked himself “now what?” and his now what is ed, so he’s off to tell the man he loves about the life he’s found outside the cave.

stede is about to be this man’s flashlight AND his treasure map. it’s gonna be so, so good.