SPOILER FREE

Saved by the Watt

This review is spoiler free. I’m happy. Let’s get that out of the way. This series finished on a high with threads enough for more but with a suitably tight resolution that I felt satisfied.

It ends in a way which ties right back into the ending of Guards! Guards! but asks some surprisingly hard questions about identity, erasure and what can be expected of us when we’ve nowhere left to turn.

What’s most surprising about this is how the show never slaps it in our faces but makes the subtle but inescapable point that Vimes is to blame for all this. Everything in the series comes back to a mistake Vimes made and which we’re shown right in episode 1.

The more I think about it, the more I find the idea fascinating. I’ve been talking in previous episodes about the contrasting of the Watch with Wonse and Carcer. Cheery, Angua, Carrot and Vimes are all White while Wonse and Carcer are not. I’m still thinking through how that played out in the resolution of this storyline but it’s not because I think there are problems but because I think the show says something super smart which I want to take away and think upon.

It asks us what choices people have when everything is taken away from them. It asks not whether it’s right for people to do wrong when there’s no other choice but instead it challenges us to ask ourselves why they should care about us. Why should someone who’s suffered and been pressed down care about the greater good? Why should they care about others when those others have been, at best, solidly indifferent and at worst actively hostile?

It asks us about what the consequences are for those who are erased and what can they do (if anything) to stop that happening? Should they fight and be hated? Should they sacrifice those who were happy to sacrifice them first? Should they simply take their erasure?

At one point the claim is made: you could be the hero. Yet it’s dismissed and quite rightly because erasure is erasure – when all your actions are dismissed then both good and bad become meaningless. Only those remembered can be assigned agency, only those who are seen get to have a voice.

So I walk away from this episode knowing I’m going to watch it again because it handles being powerless with dignity and never lets us forget the truth of being in such a place – that in the end none shall save us. Those threatened with erasure, in trying to grasp power enough to be free for themselves, can only ever upturn the world which is trying to erase them. There’s no middle ground for them.

The show also presented to us, finally, a Wonse with more than a two dimensional perspective on things. I was hugely pleased with how the last episode centred her and made her something more than Carcer’s sidekick.

There’s also quite a lot of relationships finding their feet and I love the romantic threads weaving their way through the story. Whether Carrot and Angua (and a laugh out loud moment in front of a magic mirror) or Vimes and Sybil – it was heart meltingly good stuff.

Vimes holds his team together this episode and it’s like we’ve finally found the man I remember from the books – the one who knows what he wants but also knows it can all be taken away in an instant. Instead of worrying about that he’s ready to fight, to let those around him do the same and to be the one around whom they orbit.

Verdict: So that’s it. The Watch’s shift is over and I’m going to miss it. Anarchic, hilarious, loving and all of that without losing sight of the hard questions. I didn’t come into this with much by way of expectations. There have been a lot of well-known public voices telling anyone who’ll listen this was a show without the heart and soul of Terry Pratchett. I was ready and almost looking forward to eviscerating it. Yet I’ve not only been won over but have utterly enjoyed my time with these characters. One final salute then and goodbye to Ankh-Morpork.

Rating? 10 forgotten memories out of 10.

Stewart Hotston