'Lost Girl' – Season 3 wrap up and finale: "The Wanderer"
It’s been quite a season on Canada’s Showcase hit show, Lost Girl. Now wrapping up its third season, we’ve seen the Succubus Bo evolve, both in terms of her powers and emotionally. We’ve also seen her devolve, discovering that she’s some sort of uber-powered Chosen One. Yeah, that made me think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, too, and the comparisons are obvious and have been identified before. But Lost Girl is more than just a sum of its supernatural parts, and even though it likes to throw in the occasional Monster of the Week episode and has a seasonal Big Bad emerging for Bo to fight, the show has gone from strength to strength with its strong core cast and writing that manages to amuse, horrify and endear all the characters to us. It’s a hard show to dislike, for me, and that’s not entirely due to the steamy hot lady lovin’ that, honestly, you probably wouldn’t see anywhere else.
This season has seen Bo undergo The Dawning – a rite of passage for all the Fae – and, as a result, come somewhat to terms with the powers that she’s struggled with her entire life. Along the way, her relationships with those close to her have strengthened while she remains resolutely unaligned to either Dark or Light Fae. Just like the comparisons with Buffy, Bo is an energetic, super-powered being who refuses to keep to the rules set out for all her kind and instead strikes out on her own. The Scooby Gang she draws around her are loyal, fallible, and most of them are in love with her – in different ways, sure, but still…it seems like everyone’s capable of falling for a Succubus. I don’t know if it’s the leather outfits or the naivete that Anna Silk brings to the role, but people LOVE her. Even the new character this season – Tamsin the Valkyrie – appears to have fallen under Bo’s spell. It’s kind of easy to do, however; Anna Silk’s interpretation of the character strives for nobility whilst being wholly human. Ironic, then, that Bo appeared more comfortable and accepting of her powers this season as opposed to the preceding two, and the finale saw her once again play the hero to save the people she loves.
Speaking of, the start of Season 3 showed Bo trying to have a full-blown relationship with Lauren, the human doctor. I don’t know about you, but when Lauren told Bo that she fell in love with her from the moment they met, I began to rue the day my fiancée ever told me to “watch this new Canadian show”. Because let me tell you, if my doctor looked like Lauren Lewis and turned those enigmatic and angst-ridden smiles on me, I’m pretty sure I’d be a committed hypochondriac. And, having rooted for Doccubus for two seasons and sighed, moaned and cursed Canada for giving me hot ladies in lab coats, I was ecstatic when Bo and Lauren were a couple at last. But…I have seen a television show before. In fact, I’ve seen a lot. So I know that the better it gets, the worse it’s going to hurt in the long run. And it did. When Lauren asked Bo for a break from their relationship, we successively found out that she’s wanted by Interpol for scientific espionage, or building the atom bomb, or something. I found it hard to focus on the screen through my veil of tears, you know? But that episode of Nikita that Zoie Palmer guest starred in suddenly made SO much more sense…
So the finale saw Franken!Lauren involved in a scientific endeavor that could merge Fae DNA with human. A hybrid, so to speak. And the mad scientist, Dr Taft, kidnapped our resident wolf, Dyson, with the intention of taking his powers. We’re supposed to think that Lauren, in a bid for freedom from the Fae, has agreed to work for Taft to “save” her own kind. And I have to admit, there were some tense moments in my living room when Lauren says goodbye to Bo in that sort of voice your girlfriend uses when you know she’s going to break up with you. The fallout in fandom was pretty special, I can tell you. Fingers crossed for the showrunners to fix it, okay? Maybe we should form a Doccubus prayer circle or something. Whatever helps.
But, you know, Lost Girl is essentially a show about heroes – whatever form they take. And Dyson, Tamsin, Kenzi, Lauren, Trick and Hale are heroes in their own right. They all love Bo far more than anyone ever has and do their best to protect her. I think at the heart of this show, there’s simply a lot of love, of all different kinds. So I don’t mind if things get a bit hokey because what the show gets right is the shifting relationships between all the characters and the way they put themselves on the line to help Bo. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether they’re human or Fae; what matters is that they’re able to do whatever’s necessary, even sacrificing themselves as they’ve all done at some point so far. Just, you know, don’t literally sacrifice yourself because that would be…well, bad.
Even characters like Tamsin, whose snark and bad attitude hid a whole host of troubled perceptions of self, came good in the end. And we saw the return of Vex, once Dark Fae but now working under the protection of Hale to entrap The Morrigan. And can I just say that Emmanuelle Vaugier is always such a delight to see onscreen: her classy, morally bankrupt Morrigan is a great – if consistently thwarted – villain. Plus, she ended up with her wrists bound AGAIN. This is becoming a bit of a theme. Not objecting here – just observing. Closely. With interest. You know how it is.
Lost Girl is a really optimistic show, in essence. And even if the finale ended on not just one cliffhanger, but a gazillion, it’s easy to put your sense of trust in the showrunners because they don’t let us down. We get what we want – we’re just not really aware that we want it. So even if Dyson WAS pining away for Bo all season and even if Doccubus WAS a brief, fleeting gay unicorn vomiting rainbows all over my screen, I can’t help feeling like things aren’t over. The love triangle between Bo, Dyson and Lauren used to irk me. But now I kind of want to see where it goes next season. Kris Holden-Reid spending the entire finale episode with his shirt off might have swayed me somewhat. Well, come on, I’m only human and I DO have eyes.
There’s a scene in the finale where Bo and Tamsin have a knock-down scrap and Tamsin is terrified, saying “I don’t know what to do.” Bo tells her to “fight”. And really, that’s what the show is about: how she never stops fighting. It’s interesting this season that almost every character who comes into contact with her has told her that she’s “not like anyone” they’ve ever met. She’s unique. One of a kind. The Chosen One. Her “special” nature always made her feel like an outcast but on this show, it’s Bo’s difference that makes her who she is, that draws people to her and encourages them to stay with her when everyone else has left.
And it’s keeping her character consistent from the start of Season 1 that makes this show so watchable, because Bo’s like that fifteen year-old kid who is impulsive and cheeky and thinks they’re invincible. Thing is, she sort of IS. I have to trust that next season will continue the individual and combined stories of the characters with the sort of respect that I’ve come to appreciate from this show. Like I said, there’s a lot of love going around and a whole heap of it comes from Emily Andras, the Executive Producer, who not only encourages fans to interact with her on twitter but also trolls the hell out of them with her teasing tweets.
In a way, this season was kind of a coming-of-age for the show. Bo grew up, becoming more powerful and more focused on her Fae heritage, seeking the truth about her family and encountering her father at the end of the episode. Lauren and Dyson reached something of a détente with some truly wonderful scenes between Kris Holden-Reid and Zoie Palmer. They might be rivals for Bo’s affections, but when Lauren called Dyson her “friend”, I may or may not have had something in my eye. Shush. It’s a bromance that pleases me, okay?
But what I liked most about this season was the delving into Fae history and mythology. The Fae essentially declare war on humans. The politics of their society is brought into question and leadership, loyalties and responsibility make an Ash out of Hale (pun intended). Even Trick, the benevolent Blood King, introduced the notion of “them and us” and it’s an allegory that I hope the show continues to explore, because I really like the idea of two societies living in one community and the conflicts that exist between them being more than religion, or race, or creed. If the show is about identity, then this is probably the heart of the matter and Bo’s search for self this season has been backed up by the wider issues of both worlds she tries to occupy. Human or Fae, but never both, it was really interesting to see Lauren be the one who engendered a new kind of evolution. An “ascension”, as Taft put it. And I can’t help wondering if there’ll be something of a new world order in Season 4.
By the end of the finale, the show was unapologetically trying to give me a coronary. Dyson and Tamsin’s truck flies over a bank and into a lake. Kenzi is on a mission with Bruce (oh, Bruce, I love you, please come back next season) to find Bo. Trick and Stella go off to Scotland (see the sights! Visit the castles!) in hiding. Hale wrests control of The Morrigan – and, I assume the Dark Fae – with Vex’s help. And Lauren disappears. I can only hope that she’s clutching her clipboard somewhere safe and wearing that lab coat like a boss. Anything except return to her former incarnation as Karen Beattie because…that hair. No. I wouldn’t be surprised if Interpol actually wanted her for crimes against coiffures.
And Bo? Well…Bo’s gone. Trapped inside the playing card that signifies her father, she’s been taken somewhere else. I hope that wherever she is, they’ve got leather outfits.
It’s going to be a long wait for Season 4. During that time, I’ll have to indulge in the myriad of gifsets on tumblr, the hilarity of the cast on twitter and the sort of taunting that makes Emily Andras a brilliant evil genius. This show might not be perfect but it’s head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to handing us a smorgasbord of supernatural and very human goodies, and I’m not just talking about Doccubus there. I’m sensing that my angst-o-meter will be set to high while waiting for the next episode. Faecon 1? Epic flail? Oh, you bet.