#travis301

[itchose]

travis thoughts in episodes 1-2. he makes me ill <3

now that we know what happened with javi, season 3 really is going to be the season where we finally get more context of who travis is as an adult and why / how he reached the fate that he did. and there's already so much in these two episodes that does that and it's already hurting.

kevin said that season 3 is likely travis's saddest season yet. and also when asked what travis wants most this season:

"he really wants to go home. you just know he does. he’s resigned. he’s so pulled back now, there’s a part of him that doesn’t feel connected to almost anyone anymore, and that’s scary to be in that place. i do believe almost every decision we see him make this year, it is in hope ditch effort that life's not over for him. his will to live is so commendable. with everything he’s gone through." [he's lost half his family.] "yeah, everyone. so that really sits with him all season and it never goes away."

he's also been pretty vocal about how travis feels like he's more on the outside than ever, which i find really fascinating after watching these first 2 episodes, because it reminds us everything is not as it seems. the intro has him with some of the girls laughing and whispering things to each other, tai + van tell him that he can join them looking for mari + van watches him closely clearly seeing that something is really going on with him, tai defends him against saying 'hasn't he been through enough?', akilah seeks him out to bring him the duck to make him feel better. there are people actively looking out for him right now, but that doesn't mean it's going to last or that he can really feel that. because even if these people are looking out for him, he doesn't feel like he has a real place amongst them. he's always felt like an outsider but at least before, he had nat, and he had his job out there, and he had his brother (even when he knows he wasn't the best brother to him). you can really feel that he's lost right now.

and lottie is making it worse, which i think was always inevitable, considering what we know about the way his life goes. we really are seeing so much of how travis dies (2 seasons after we find out he dies) - from how his addiction begins, to how he's felt manipulated by the wilderness / how he felt compelled to speak to it in his final moments.

kevin says this about lottie:

"the person he trusts the most is the one he becomes fearful of the most, which is lottie. he does trust her because he's trying to understand his feelings." [he gets to open up and be raw] "they're just kids for a second. and then he's not there anymore. his fear comes in really quick and i do believe that overall, he's fearful of the unit more than one person. the unit of everyone... he cannot compete. there is no competition there. he is on his own."

travis and lottie's dynamic really is just so interesting from the beginning because it starts with her really leading this charge to sacrifice him to the wilderness at doomcoming. in the adult arc, we're trying to figure out how he died and eventually discover that lottie played a role in that, too. his death scene with lottie is given so much context in these episodes alone, with her trying to force him to speak to + bargain with the wilderness (presumably this is how he finds out that lottie could speak to the wilderness when she was near death, as he mentions when he's about to die, since they're already sharing personal things with each other).

honestly all of his scenes with lottie are uncomfortable to me but it feels like it's supposed to be. on doomcoming, travis was drugged, assaulted, hunted, and nearly killed - and now he's being forced to take shrooms despite his discomfort / his history / and his hesitance, and i know it's tempting to want to just laugh at the two being kids and getting high and having fun, but it's actually really scary? how we go from the first time he's drugged and all the trauma he has from that night, to being forced to take the drugs, to now seeing how it leads to his addiction is just so fucking tragic. there's this push and pull with both lottie and the wilderness - he both trusts lottie to know how he's supposed to see the wilderness and he's more and more terrified it every time she gets him closer to it. and that literally never goes away in his life. all of this makes him being the only one to know lottie was out + lottie being the one to really know where he's at makes sense.

backtracking to van's presentation, travis leaves once she talks about all they survived (many people in travis's life did not, but he's not taking it out on her, he steps away to keep it to himself). lottie tells him it's okay to be angry about what happened to javi and his dad. which is something he needs to hear, but he doesn't know how to hear it. he immediately says, "well, what about shauna?" and lottie tells him something else he needs to hear: grieving's not a competition. and maybe travis does understand that, but he doesn't feel like he's allowed to hold any space for his own grief when everyone else has lost too, especially shauna. travis was very actively trying to take care of shauna during her labor, literally bleeding for her to try to save her life, so it's not surprising that he immediately looks to her and what she's lost and tells himself that he's not allowed to be loud in his own grief (honestly the contrasting way in which he and shauna are now coping with their grief is so fascinating - with shauna turning harsher and travis being more reserved).

really love him asking tai and van to go searching for mari. for a lot of reasons - he needs to do something other than getting high with lottie, because he already feels like he's been pushed too far and it's starting to make him uncomfortable. also, because it seems like it's been a while since he's actually gotten to just go out in the woods and i think part of him really misses that, feeling like he had a purpose. and because he does genuinely want to help find mari. and also he seems to trust tai and van. i have a lot of feelings about him and van specifically after all their little background moments in season 2 + their final conversation before they ate javi - i know some people think that makes him weary of van the most, but i disagree. she helped him even if he wasn't ready for it in that moment, and i hope to see more of that this season. his little smile when van and tai tell him he can join them is so sweet and so sad when it falls to something more forced as lottie insists he comes with him.

"you're connecting with it, we have to keep going." / "lottie, i don't know. shouldn't we help find mari?" he doesn't know how to say no because... he has not had much agency in the wilderness at all. in multiple cases it's literally been stolen from him. and now he's being drugged to be used as this conduit for lottie + the wilderness and he doesn't know what to do. the way the show plays with travis's gender explores how those typical gender roles are squandered in the wilderness is so fascinating, and over the first 2 seasons, we watch him constantly navigating what it means to be the only boy left amongst a bunch of girls and how, no matter how close he can get to anyone, he'll never really feel like he belongs (or is allowed to belong) with them. and in season 1, there's so much of him that feels like a performance, saying + doing things a typical teenage boy would do because he feels like that's how he's supposed to be (while making it very obvious that he doesn't even believe it in himself when he says certain things), and we gradually watch him lose that, especially after doomcoming when his agency's stolen, to now being more and more aware that he's outnumbered. and he's more careful with that. so much of what i've seen in the first 2 episodes really is a direct effect from doomcoming, especially.

his "one, two, three, eyes on me" chant when he's trying to calm down from whatever he's hearing and experiencing during his trip is something i will come back to later i think but. whew

his high leads him to violence and it makes him both sad and terrified. he cries and lets van hold him, and i like to think that if van brought him back to their camp, she might've tried talking to him then (given the way she looked at him before they left, how it seemed she was already concerned) - but i don't think travis felt like he should be around people after that. he doesn't like that he hurt someone, and he's upset, and he's exhausted from being pushed past his limit, and he's just so fucking sad he feels like he has to just sit with that himself. akilah seeks him out and he's silently crying to himself; she asks him if he's okay and he nods, trying not to look at her, until she offers mortimer to him. he never says anything directly to her - and akilah's perceptive enough to know that talking to someone else is not what he wants right now - but when he finally does speak, it's to the duck, with a repeated "it's okay" that really reflects both the way he comforts javi when javi pulls his card + the repeated "i'm sorry" under his breath after he eats javi's heart. and he holds the duck just like he probably held his baby brother and he lets himself cry + try to breathe. it's one of my favorite travis scenes.

and that peace doesn't last for long before lottie comes back. he has so much shame for hurting her and doesn't know how to look at her. "i hurt you." [i'm fine] "i tried to hurt you." and he's so scared of how much worse it can get if he has to keep going through with that. and then he kind of throws akilah under the bus but it's not with malicious intent - it's an act of desperation. he can't handle this from lottie anymore and he doesn't know how to tell her no, because he does not know how to do that, and it doesn't feel like she's accepting it when he tries, so he tells her akilah connects with the wilderness more. and he has so much shame for that too in the way that he sinks down in his seat and looks away again and i don't think he even believes that it's going to work to get lottie off his back but he's desperate at this point.

he's scared of lottie right now but i think that he's also scared of losing his trust in her, because right now, she's the person he trusts most. and if she completely pushes him past his limit, he might also lose the friend he has beyond the self-made therapist, and he doesn't want that. he doesn't know what to do without that.

really interested and terrified of what's next for him. i know a lot of people are laughing and having fun with him getting high but it's actually really scary and sad and i can't even hope that it's going to get better for him because we know, based on how he died, that it only ever gets worse.