Station Eleven
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Station Elevenis about goodbyes in all their varied forms: protracted, painful, overdue, bittersweet, unexpected.
This is why Whos There?
stands out from the preceding episodes.
Theres comfort to be found even in the fiction of company, same as Miranda felt with Dr. Eleven.
Talking to the dead or the missing, or the invented is emerging as a powerful motif.
First hundred, she tells him, a period of time that haunts all pre-pans.
Soon Miles, still providing airport security after all these years, catches them lurking inside the perimeter fences.
He drags Kirsten and Tyler (now d.b.a.
Lonergan) through the airport terminal to face Clark, revealing something of a paradise along the way.
His plan to install solar panels worked.
They grow their own fruit trees in Severn City; they have bathrooms and surveillance cameras.
They even have support groups, where Clark, now an old man, can spill his feelings.
Maybe Clarks perception is accurate.
Even in the winter of his life, he wants the doors to his little fiefdom to stay shut.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, pleads with him to welcome the world back in.
The Travelling Symphonys limited invitation, it seems, is an experiment in compromise.
What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
Clark asks and waits for Tyler to respond.
Compounded it with dust, whereto tis kin.
Except Clarks not satisfied.
He asks for a scene, and Kirsten savvily picks up a mug off the desk.
The two perform a scene from soon after Lonergan recovers Elevens body.
From just outside the room, Elizabeth listens in too.
Does it sound familiar to her?
Did she ever flip through the comic that kept her son so enthralled?
What about Clark did he ever sneak in the pool house to peek at what Miranda was working on?
Or perhaps Kirstens face is what sends Clark into his memories.
Back at the hotel over dinner, Clark even has to remind Arthur of his boyfriends name.
They fight with the special awareness of each others fragile spots that decades of friendship afford.
Clark says Arthur prefers sycophants anyway.
The conversation gets so deep under Clarks skin so quickly.
He pours himself a drink.
It makes him bolder and meaner.
Clarks not jealous, he insists.
He just misses friendship.
He misses when Arthur was someone he could be friends with.
Poor, misunderstood Claudius!
Out on the tarmac, though, the Travelling Symphony is settling in and having fun.
But when Clark releases Kirsten back to her friends, the mood sours.
She immediately reframes the situation according to the cynicism Tyler told Alex to expect from pre-pans.
The fences dont keep bad things locked out; theyre keeping the Symphony locked in.
Sarah isnt being helped.
Shes being held for ransom: one performance ofHamletfor one conductor.
Holy fucking shit, she says, which I think is under-the-radar perfect dialogue, really.
Kirsten has seen the world end, but nothing jolts like coincidence.
Imagine if Franks grandfathers compass broke when it was pointing west.
Maybe Kirsten and Jeevan never cross Lake Michigan.
Maybe Kirsten never meets Arthurs son like she was supposed to do all those years ago.
Do people like me anymore?
he asks Miles as they settle into bed.
The conversation between aging lovers is interrupted with moments from after Clarks last bender with Arthur.
The detente between them didnt last.
Thats the Clark that Tyler knows.
Tylers come back to Severn City on a revenge mission thats wrapped up in liberation dressing.
Its impossible, of course, yet Kirsten decides to follow him on the hopeless errand.
Tyler tells Kirsten how Clark punished him for trying to help the planes only survivor.
Its a moment for confessions, it seems.
Kirsten reveals that she knew Arthur, that she knows Tylers real name.
Theres recovery here for him, too.
He could get his mother back.
I remember damage, then escape, then adrift in a strangers galaxy for a long, long time.
He repeats Mirandas words to Kirsten like Clark mutters others to himself.
The magic in Mirandas writing is that it has nothing to do with the worlds end.
Weve all had fallow periods, directionless ones.
Kirsten belongs to before.
Tyler sets the memorial on fire, and Elizabeth meets him by the blaze, followed by Clark.
Theres a reckoning but no reconciliation.
For Tyler, Clark is the living embodiment of pre-pan culture: cruel, cynical, stuck.
MirandasStation Elevenends without an ending, without closure.
Maybe this is what happens.
Civilization does not rebuild because there are enough people who dont want it back.
Its the episodes only goodbye.
At Sarahs request, Kirsten promises not to tell the others that Sarahs dying until after the show.
InHamlet, the play reveals Claudiuss guilt.
What secrets are left to be unearthed in Severn City?
