FK Season 3 episode "Last Knight"

[switchbladeeyes]

Last night, I busted out the Lactaid and dished up some emotional support ice cream for Mr. SwitchbladeEyes and myself so we could knuckle down to watch this gut punch of a series finale.

I'm sure I have nothing to say about “Last Knight” (LK) that hasn't already been said by many other people. Nonetheless, I'm going to say my piece.

I just really don't understand why the show had to end on this note.

Even though Urs and Vachon died in "Ashes to Ashes" (A2A) and LaCroix had the trauma of everything related to Divia, that episode actually ended on a kind of hopeful note vis à vis Nick. Nick struck me as freer than ever to work on Project Humanity after his discussion with LaCroix at the end of the episode. LaCroix seemed as okay with Nick as he ever going to get by the end of A2A. ("For once, I'm glad of your incessant search for your humanity.")

So the only thing that made sense to me in LK was LaCroix preparing to move on. After everything that happened in A2A and that he, imo, has essentially made his peace with Nick's choices, I get it. What's he sticking around for? If Nick wants to come along, great, but if not, that's okay. ("I'm leaving with or without you.") This works for me for the final episode. Nothing else that happened does. Everything else is a fiery train wreck.

I forgot about all the weird camera angles in this episode that give parts of it a "dreamy" quality. So if you want this whole episode to have been a dream, it can be!

I just do not ultimately buy Natalie in this episode. Certainly, I buy her despair and grief over her friend, but not where it goes.

I wished they'd given us a hopeful and meaningful ending. This season really got away from the whole quest for humanity. This would have been a good opportunity to revive it. I'm not saying they needed to cure Nick, just that the hope is there.

Killing off Tracy = 100% unnecessary. (I mean, so was killing off Schanke. I'm still not over that. Stop killing off Nick's partners!) "You could have trusted me." Ugh, right in the feels. LET HER RECOVER FFS.

Nat's asked to be brought over before, but that was literally (as far as she knew) at the end of the world. Extreme, outlier circumstances, I can buy. Not this. How can she not be thinking about what happened to her brother and how dramatically he changed when Nick turned him? The scene where she finds Nick vamped out next to Tracy at the hospital was like the perfect context to bring this up. Not only does Nick not know what Tracy would want, he also doesn't know what turning her will do to her. The situation is a lot like Richard and turning Richard was a collassal error. It's so similar, it's inconceivable to me that that's not what's on Nat's mind and actually impacting her decisions about herself (in such a way that she wouldn’t be asking Nick to make her a vampire!) But instead she's harping about Nick being unwilling to turn her. Ugh.

In the original scripted version, there was a flashback to "I Will Repay," but I get why they cut it because if Natalie had been thinking about it (which she should have been!), I don't believe she'd be pressuring Nick to bring her across.

The final scene between Nick and Nat... ugh, ugh, ugh. Nat with a death wish like this just doesn't work for me. At all.

And Nick caves. Sigh. He immediately screws up. He has no self control, like he should have freaking seen coming. Disaster. Nat's dying. F THAT.

The final dialogue between Nick and LaCroix would almost be touching if it weren't so incredibly fucked up. For like a second there in A2A, they had a healthy relationship. But now Nick's got his own death wish and turns the emotional manipulation screws on LaCroix by telling him something he's probably really wanted to hear for a long time while simultaneously making it contingent on LaCroix doing something there's no way he wants to do. It's basically, "I love you and if you feel the same, you have to kill me. " UGH. WHYYYYYY.

Everything about this ending was so unnecessarily tragic. I don't get it.

While I would have vastly preferred a hopeful ending, I could have accepted a tragic ending if it had been satisfying in anyway (something evincing character growth and perhaps a kind of heroic tragedy... but this was not that. This was the characters wallowing in fatalistic despair.)

Here's a selection of quotes from Mr. SwitchbladeEyes (lots of cursing ahead!) as he watched this episode for the first time:

When Natalie is pressuring Nick and kind of giving him an ultimatum at the morgue:

- "Natalie, like what the fuck, bro?"

(Yes, he referred to Natalie as his bro lol.)

- "What the fuuuuck?"

- "This is like the second time she's made a stupid fucking rash decision."

When Tracy gets shot:

- "Oh this is some bullshit! Whaaaat!? What the fuck!"

During something LaCroix was saying about Nick along the way:

- "You don't have to fucking rub it in, asshole."

When Natalie reports that Tracy died:

- "Ahhhh what the fuck!? Really? This is some bullshit... this is some fucking bullshit."

(He also reiterated his disapproval of Schanke getting killed off.)

When Natalie proposes she and Nick try Janette's "cure":

- "Seriously? The fuck?"

When Nick agrees:

- "Yeah, smack that booty Nick!"

(To be fair, Mr. SwitchbladeEyes thought at this moment, because the show was Going There, that this was meant to actually work.)

When Nick, distraught, says he couldn't stop himself from taking to much:

- "Oh fucking really, Nick? What the fuck?

When Nick tells LaCroix that LaCroix is his closest friend:

- "Awwwwwwwwwwwww..."

When the show is over:

- "That's some seriously fucked up stuff."

I asked Mr. SwitchbladeEyes how he would have ended it. He wasn't sure other than he wouldn't have had Natalie "go into a dark, depressive fit" or given her "that level of dark energy."

I also asked Mr.SwitchbladeEyes if, in the context of this episode and what we saw in it, he believed LaCroix would actually comply with Nick's wishes and he said yes, he thought LaCroix would. He said something was "different" about them here versus the past that made this believable to him. It also made sense to him, if this is how it had to end, that LaCroix was "the last man standing." (I did point out to him that Reese was also still standing.)

I discovered the fandom a couple months after the show ended. I didn't know anyone else who watched the show until then. So it was lonely to try and make sense of the ending until then. It was such an awful bummmmmmmmmmer. I cried (and I'm not even usually a crier, or to use the English version of a lovely German phrase thefruitbat recently taught me, I'm not "built close to the water").

Even though there's just enough room here for Nick and Nat to have possibly lived, I sure didn't make that connection at the time I first saw it. Fandom discussions did that. Shout out to the old #foreverknight chat room on IRC (imagine something like the 90s version of Discord) where I first stumbled across the fandom and discovered there were many possibilities for the ending, including disregarding it.

As bad as that was, it could have been worse! Shocking, I know. The originally scripted ending clearly finished off Nick and Nat. Thank goodness someone at some point must have said, "You know, this season has been an absolute bloodbath (RIP Schanke, Cohen, Screed, Urs, Vachon, and Tracy... possibly Janette too), maybe we should leave the fans with just the TINIEST shred of hope that Nick and Nat made it through. Also, what are we going to do if the show gets revived?"

Here's the originally scripted ending (picking up just after Nick realizes he's damn near killed Nat):









So it could have been worse.

Comments

[thefruitbat]

Thanksy for sharing the scans. Oh hell, I thought it couldn't get worse than how they chose to end the show, but yeah, THIS would have been way worse. And, dafuq?! Nick kills Nat, then Lacroix just kills off Nick and goes on to recite effin' Shakespeare over his dead body? Yeah, nope. Nopety nope nope!

[switchbladeeyes]

Lacroix just kills off Nick and goes on to recite effin' Shakespeare over his dead body? Yeah, nope. Nopety nope nope!

Right?? This guy is not going to be waxing poetic here. I think he's going to be going straight off on a murder spree, which is probably his version of buying a pint of ice cream and eating it in one sitting.

[calliope24]

Apparently, it went down to the last minutes of filming that last scene before TPTB insisted on an ending that would keep that door open just a crack. Thank goodness for that, although I'm sure fanfic writers would have worked their way around the scripted ending as well.

They had clearly been building, or trying to build, to this point for a lot of the third season. The whole set up of Janette's 'cure' in HF. Natalie going off the rails emotionally at times (see Fallen Idol). Nick's despondency over Schanke's death throughout the 3rd season--he is just not the same as he was in seasons 1&2. Tracy's inability to see what Nick is beyond the point of believability. Nicholas Chevalier--she's Canadian, she speaks at least some French!

I too loved the place that they left Nick and LaCroix's relationship at the end of AtA. I hate that Nick would sink to the level of leveraging that relationship to get what he wanted from LC. Unlike Mr Switchbladeeyes, I don't think LC would have it in him to kill Nick. He would have wanted to honor the request, but I just don't think he would have been able to take that final action especially in the wake of Divia's death. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it!

It's truly unfortunate that they did not see fit to leave us with a more hopeful ending, whatever that might mean to you. Regardless, they were not able to convince me that these characters would have behaved this way.

I do remember packing up my car and driving 3 states away for an LK 'party' with a bunch of people whom I had never met in person. I do believe my husband thought I had lost my mind! I had read the spoiler list and knew what was coming, although I prayed that the information was wrong. What I did find were friends who I stayed in touch with for years, my first look at a season other than the 3rd, and a wonderful sense of camaraderie in our grief. I do feel badly for all those who faced it alone.

[switchbladeeyes]

Unlike Mr Switchbladeeyes, I don't think LC would have it in him to kill Nick. He would have wanted to honor the request, but I just don't think he would have been able to take that final action especially in the wake of Divia's death. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it!

I waffle on this issue, but I think you're probably right!

Regardless, they were not able to convince me that these characters would have behaved this way.

100%!!

That's awesome that you got to go to a viewing party and befriend and commiserate with other fans at the time. I wish I'd been online a little sooner than I was, but still grateful to have found it and made some pals that I also got to later meet in person. :-)

[greerwatson]

I've never released this before; but, just as I wrote an alternative version of "Ashes to Ashes", so I wrote an alternative series finale. It has echoes of the actual one; and this is quite deliberate. And it, too, is a clip show: lots of bits of flashbacks taken from previous episodes.

It's actually the first piece of Forever Knight fan fiction I wrote. Me and quite a few others: "Last Knight" was, in its own way, quite inspiring! For the next week after it aired, I was in shock; the week after, I began to think of better ways TPTB might have concluded the show; and, the week after that, I started to write it all down, if only because I couldn’t stop going over and over the lines in my head. Writing them down, fixing them on the page, meant that I wouldn’t forget them; and that in turn meant that I could begin to move on.

Okay, begin to move on to write other FK stories. In fact, an entire virtual fourth season. ;D

I was not on line at the time; and, as I conceived it as an alternative episode, I wrote it in script format. It was rewritten a couple of years later as I derived the transcription format that I used in FK4, with all the detail on camera angles and actor’s business. I learned how better to visualize what was going on as well as hearing what people said. So this story has been tweaked and polished quite a bit over the years.

That most fans write in prose I didn't realize until I joined FORKNI-L in 2004 (after I got a new computer). By that time, I'd pretty well finished FK4; and, realizing that the script format would translate badly to the text format of a mailing list, I taught myself how to write HTML in order to create my own website, where I uploaded FK4 as zipped Word .docs. However, I never linked in my alternative finale, since it was out of continuity.

Essentially (barring the polishing), this is what I wrote in the summer of 1996. It's entitled "Fall of Night".

[calliope24]

Thanks, Greer, now I have something else to be sad about!

Just kidding, I do like this! I think Nick leaving is the only way to reasonably resolve the N&N situation. I did really like Natalie's little experiment with her blood. It brought it from the abstract to the concrete for her. Finally, she can comprehend what he's talking about. I did like her fear of him at the hospital--very realistic. I'm on the fence about Nick wiping her memory. It is such a horrible violation to take all that away from her, but I'm not sure she would recover with her memories of Nick still intact.

I liked Nick's relationship with LaCroix here. Much less animosity and a genuine exchange between them. I can easily see them renewing their relationship after this on much better terms.

And I enjoyed the way Tracy finds out about Nick. She deserved to know, and I liked the scene with Vachon and Urs. Nicely done!

Thanks for sharing.

[switchbladeeyes]

Still so sad! I enjoyed. Not a bloodbath or the characters being totally outlandish.

I liked Tracy finding out and how she found out. I’m assuming he put in the letter that Natalie won’t remember the truth.

I have some Feelings about Nick making Nat forget. Not that I think it's something he wouldn't do, but I get mad at him when he uses hypnosis. And here he took so much from her.

the greatest consolation is the knowledge that our memory will continue to be cherished by those who loved us.

RIGHT IN THE FEELS!!

So lonely. But also, that loneliness is something he created. I want to shake him!

4th Season

[waltd]

And a very worthwhile project IMO. Well worth reading.

Re: 4th Season

[greerwatson]

Thank you!

Last Knight

[waltd]

I've always felt that this was the part one of a season cliff-hanger that would get resolved in part two, the first episode of the next season.

Oh, well . . . .

Re: Last Knight

[switchbladeeyes]

If only!

At least there’s fan fiction to fix it and/ or deal with the consequences of it.