i’m still not sure i fully buy the idea she never said that before or they never talked about Them, anyways. i guess it’s meant to be that hera is fully committed to the rebellion, often to the detriment of Other Important things. that might make her hesitant to fully commit to the thing w kanan. but i don’t like it. it verges WAY too far into the obnoxious “woman split between love and career” trope that i just hate.
For me it just seemed like it was walking back the obvious level of comfort and intimacy their relationship already had, in order to have their big cliche Love Confession/Sudden Death mood whiplash Dramaz™. When the draw of the relationship in the first place was their casual comfort with each other and their basically already being lowkey married. I think most shippers were attracted to the unspoken subtext which seemed to heavily imply that they were clearly already A Thing, already together, and thought the show was just being subtle about them. It was just kind of assumed they were already together by… pretty much everyone.
So their sudden awkward, “Okay, what IS this relationship exactly?” come Season Four felt jarring to say the least. It was adding UST into a relationship where it seemed like the UST had already been resolved, if that makes any sense.
For me particularly, who enjoys established couples and found Kanan and Hera refreshing in that regard, it was just vaguely frustrating in a, “Okay show but… they’re clearly already A Thing, why are we doing this?”
And the answer is, for the predictable emotional manipulation and gut punch. XD
@tarisilmarwen Yeaaaaaaahhh pretty much. it’s totally jarring, and felt forced. like writers needed to justify why they never showed kanan and hera explicitly together previously – which YES they needed something to naturally develop this change but…… a weird What Are We™ talk and dramatic and depressing Love Confession isn’t that Something
there are definitely previously established points of tension between them that s4 touched on (i talk a bit about that here). the war heating up on an unprecedented level causing tensions between them DOES kinda check out, but not “we’ve NEVER talked about us.” (??????!) more like, “all of this is bigger and scarier than we could have ever imagined and we need step away from it for a second and touch base with each other.” and with jacen in the mix, i can see why thing might be ah. tricky. cos a kid on top of everything is else HUGE.
BUT THAT LOVE CONFESSION FOLLOWED BY BRUTAL DEATH JUST TO MAKE YOU HURT ISNT THE RESOLUTION IM LOOKING FOR OR WHAT THEY NEEDED. AT ALL.
they needed something like “mystery of chopper base” where hera and kanan struggle to communicate their feelings cos of specter of something huge and terrifying and deadly hanging over, but ultimately DO get to talk things out. it was like things clicking back into place and returning to normal, by addressing everything that was scaring them. its not a huge new breakthrough for kanan and hera, but reaffirming what they have, overcoming the things that are bother thing and showing their connection to the viewers on a level we hadn’t really seen before.
i think THAT’S the sort climax they needed, NOT than taking kanan and hera several steps back and going “well if THE VIEWERS have never seen hera and kanan kiss or openly address their feelings or say i love you before then WE HAVE TO present it like THEY’VE never done it either”
pretty much every significant scene they share leading up to jedi night touches on the idea that they have Stuff they REALLY need to talk about but don’t have a chance because War Things get in the way. heroes of mandalore, the occupation, kindred. but INSTEAD of kanan and hera getting to sit down and talk out everything that is scaring them about the war……. We get that Love Confession, kanan acts like it’s absurd hera would ever say that to him (?????). And then he dies. and they never actually talk about anything that’s bothering them. Wow. what a waste.
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