Shadows House S1E10: "The Final Pair"
Among the least of fairykind are the morphs. In their natural state, these small, sooty-black creatures are nearly shapeless, and also nearly mindless.
They instinctively observe and imitate other creatures, copying their shapes, movements, and sounds while still remaining identifiable because of their vanteblack coloration. After learning to immitate a creature, the morph can also latch onto it and parasitically control its movements.
We aren't yet told why they do this, in nature. As they are animalistic creatures, we can probably assume that this imitation and parasitism relates to their ecological niche, or life cycle, or whatever the fairy counterpart to those biological concerns are. However, an artificial process was discovered wherein a morph, after imitating a human subject and then being allowed to interact with that human in a particular type of controlled environment, can develop self-awareness.
The personality that the morph develops is an imitation of their human template, but not a perfect imitation. Some personal quirks and preferences from the morph's animalistic past may be preserved in more sophisticated forms. Likewise, small accidental events and disruptions to daily routine may effect the expression of the morph's copied personality.
These intelligent, humanoid postmorphs, or "shadows," can manipulate their own substance in a host of ways. However, this artificial state of being is also hard on them, causing them to give off parts of their mass as "soot" when stressed or uncomfortable. Complete mastery of self is required to control this, and even moreso is required in order to consciously emit and manipulate soot. Presumably, it all easier to hold together once the shadow has a host body to inhabit. And, the only hosts suitable for them after they've irreversibly remade themselves to such a degree are their original human templates.
The first shadows must have been created by someone else. However, the process has become self-sustaining. It's a difficult self-sustenance, though. The inherent brittleness and instability of shadowkind requires relentless scrutiny to be applied, weeding out unsuccessful or partially-successful juveniles before they can self-destruct catastrophically after joining the clan. Not to mention ideological purity; this social order depends on secrecy, vigilance, and constant unity of purpose. Traitors are thus considered defective to the exact same degree as failed uplifts are.
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I couldn't tell you why we're getting this infodump now, specifically, rather than earlier or later. It seems like it would have been more natural to reveal this all bit by bit over time. The interlude conversation that we do get it in is a "as you all know" scene between Edward and the Lord Grandfather that could have just as easily come two episodes previously. But, pacing aside, it's nice to know this stuff now, and the answers being provided are satisfying ones.
Seems I was wrong about the shadows and faces having been originally split off of the same kid, but right about most of the other stuff. I'll take it, heh.
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Patrick-Ricky and John-Shaun follow the Louise-Lou pair out of the maze. Kate-Emilico lag behind the others, just barely making it out before the deadline. With how difficult Edward made it for Kate to escape her predicament, the two of them needed to come up with some impressively clever ideas.
For instance, it turns out that Emilico - while still somewhat weirdly resistant to fall damage - isn't actually superhuman like the ending of the last episode implied. Instead, she had left the wheelbarrow under Kate's cage before running off to climb the crane. The wheelbarrow being full of flowers, and thus pretty effective at cushioning their fall.
Emilico did scratch her face in the fall, and Kate did emit a lot of soot. However, Kate has enough control over her own soot to clean herself of it almost effortlessly, and Emilico's cut is easily cleaned and hidden under her hair. It's also Kate, with her greater knowledge of the house and grounds' layout, who determines that a waterway running through the maze must eventually lead toward the manor house's reservoir near the entrance. They can't move fast enough to make it out of the maze before their time runs out, but the water is moving that fast.
Edward is dismayed that Kate was one of the successful debutants. However, he at least manages to keep some eugenics-cred on account of Shirley-Rum.
Rum had been showing some impressive resolve toward the end. The peanut gallery of adult Shadows were increasingly rooting for her and the motionless Shirley. However, after freeing her master and trying to drag her along behind her out of the maze, Rum found Shirley getting harder and harder to pull after herself. Shirley starts showing exhaustion, and then pain.
Then, after embracing Rum and saying her (self-given) name for the first and last time, Shirley disintegrates.
On one hand, she was finally - right at the end - beginning to come to life. On the other...whatever it was that prevented her from coming to life for the entire time until now, it must have been a serious problem. Whether her awakening caused her to deteriorate or the deterioration caused a last second surge of pseudo-nervous activity, her life as a Shadow ends as soon as it begins. Not all shadows are viable. Not all morphs survive the uplift. That's why these selective measures are neccessary.
The fact that she embraced Rum and seemed to love her, before she falls apart, suggests that she wasn't totally unaware during her silence. She understood that Rum was caring for her, worrying over her, trying to protect her. She might not have understood much else besides that, but she understood that.
Maybe part of this is what a morph always feels toward the creature it imitates. Or maybe it really is Rum's actions as a loving, attentive caretaker that taught the proto-shadow to love and care for her in return. In a weird way, the "Faces" really are parents for the shadows that will one day steal their bodies. Children forced into parenthood, and then zombiehood.
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Almost literally a fantasy version of Glyptapanteles spp. The host - itself a child of its species - is forced to give not only its body to the parasite, but its care and protection as well. Just with a combination of social pressure and magical memory-wiping playing the role of the wasp's symbiotic viruses.
Of course, there's a whole additional level of cruelty here as well, in that the parasites themselves are being forced into this. Morphs don't naturally live this way, and adapting to this lifestyle has a non-negligible chance of killing them along with the human child.
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It isn't until well after the fact that Kate and Emilico learn that one of the pairs didn't make it, and that Shirley is dead and Rum is fated to be mindwiped and turned into one of the "veiled dolls" that handles the heavy lifting. In the immediate term, their completion of the challenge is a joyful occasion. Not only for them, but also - thanks in large part to Emilico's behavior in the maze - for the other successful debutants.
The denouement of the maze has Kate revealing some new things about herself, as well. For instance, her true motivation in breaking with Shadows customs and giving Emilico a name so different from her own.
At first, I suspected that her choice to do this is related to her secret nature as a pre-bonded Shadow. But there's another reveal that's possibly even more important when you consider the implications. Part of the reward for the successful debutants is to be allowed a tiny glimpse of the Lord Grandfather's divine person as he leans out his third floor window to wave hello to them. The debutants and overseers all cheer and clap, but Kate is silently thinking this:
She knows a lot more than the other debutants do. A lot more than they're supposed to. She has some sort of outside context to judge the Lord Grandfather's system by, which is probably very, very related to her also being older and more developed than she pretends to be.
...is this some kind of infiltration op?
No, that doesn't seem quite right. Kate *does* seem genuinely naive and childlike in enough ways, even when there's nobody watching, that I doubt it could all just be acting. More likely, some outside party has interfered in Kate's development process and given her access to knowledge and training (and a host body around the same size and shape as Emilico) that she shouldn't have had yet. She didn't come as an infiltrator, but she's effectively been turned into one? Yeah, I think that's closer to the mark.
It might also be worth mentioning that Kate pulls some other soot-powered stunts during their final escape that suggest much greater familiarity with her own powers than she's been letting on. For instance, she uses streams of pressurized soot to repel the walls of the channel they boat down to keep themselves from getting stuck. And, when they get thrown off the top of a waterfall-ledge in the final exit, she does this:
Remember just one episode ago, when she was acting worried about a fall from a tree? Yeahhhhhh.
It seems pretty clear at this point that Kate wasn't keeping the *existence* of her soot powers a secret. She was keeping *the extent of her skill and experience with them* a secret. The Shadows Family wants to see the former. Letting them see the latter, though, would have given the game away.
The final scene of the episode - getting back to Edward in the Lord Grandfather's council chamber - has the former silently fuming over how oblivious the Lord Grandfather is to the conspiracy right in front of him. His inner circle are obviously plotting against him, and Kate is an agent in their schemes. That's why he and his similarly astute comrades within the lower court tried to get rid of her in the debut, but it looks like they'll need to try something else now.
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So. There's a whole side to the plot that's only apparent in retrospect. I kind of want to rewatch the early episodes now, and see if I can identify any subversive actions and subtle double-meanings in Kate's behaviour.
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Anyway, Edward's new program was successful enough that the Lord Grandfather grants him authority over the entire children's wing. Which is probably going to make things harder for Kate and Emilico, since he still wants the former eliminated. But that'll presumably be a problem to solve in the next couple of arcs.
The other important development to come late in the episode, and which will have to be addressed more immediately in the coming episodes, involves the preparation of the hosts for possession. During the post-debut celebration, the debutants and their faces are all given a special "coffee" and told to drink it. As you may recall, the human children were given a similar "coffee" in the pilot teaser, and after drinking it they did their creepy group chant about how eager they are to serve the illustrious Shadows Family.
It is now confirmed that this fluid is actually the Lord Grandfather's own, biologically produced...erm...coffee.
Drinking his coffee and getting his juice inside of you lets him wipe your memories, and even implant some new compulsions of his own. This second dose administered during the party seems to be more concentrated than the previous one. Kate had just told Emilico that after the celebration, she was going to come clean to her and tell her all the secrets she'd been keeping from her. Seeing the way Emilico acts after the party, though, she reconsiders. The real turning point being Emilico's reaction to hearing the news about Shirley and Rum, including the later's impending fate to become a mindless veiled doll for the rest of her mortal existence.
Well. I assume Kate is going to figure out how to reverse this soon enough. I can't imagine that the story is going to keep Emilico as a zombie herself for that long. Whether Kate ends up being able to save the other faces we've met, I'm less sure of.
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There are lots of other interesting little details that appear in the last few scenes. For instance, during the party we run into Emilico's cleaning crew buddy Rosemary, and get to meet her own master, Maryrose. Who is shaped like her, but whose voice and pronouns are very much masculine.
Interesting. Just a weird fluke of Maryrose's mimicry process, or was he actually acting on some latent transgenderism from his template? Rosemary is young enough that she might not have been aware of this even before however many creamy sips of the Lord Grandfather's coffee she's been fed.
...speaking of which, how long is it supposed to take for the parasitic fusion to happen, after a successful debut? I got the impression that Rosemary and the other cleanup buddies had been post-debut for at least a year or so, but I could be wrong.
Another interesting detail is this moment between Kate and John.
He's still the one who initiates it, but she's pretty receptive. Surprising, after how she reacted to his proposition in the maze. You know, John also seems like he might have some secrets, considering his unusual personality and powerset compared to the other young shadows. Hmmm.
I feel like the debut arc is a distinct "end of the beginning" for Shadows House. It terminates with Kate and Emilico given more freedom to move and act within the house, an antagonist being put in position to antagonize, and enough contextualizing information for the plot to kick off for real. It was a long intro, but with a premise and setting as weird and intricate as Shadows House's I think that was necessary.
So, intrigue, infiltration, and mind control in the court of an evil fairy king. I dig it. Especially with the way it subverts some of the expectations that come with that pitch. Like, the strong implication that said evil fairy king isn't an ancient primordial thing, but an artificial creature created relatively recently (probably) by meddling with fairy nature. And also with how the "Shadows Family" is really the exact opposite of a "family." They use captive humans and (presumably) captive morphs to create new individuals, and then grant them "family" status if they pass muster. The closest thing to either blood relation or even "adoption" that they have is the ingestion of Lord Grandfather's coffee straight from the pitcher.
I'm definitely interested to see where this ends up going. Especially as it pertains to the master-slave dialectic, which...the masters being dependent on the slaves for literally their entire identities pretty much has to be a conscious Hegel allusion.
