Scans_Daily

you might like how things go for her.

Truthfully, it was a pretty honorable - even, dare I say, almost heroic - death. Which means that personally, I'm more conflicted by it than pleased. On the one hand, in a genre where important, awesome women with history and team headlines get abused or crippled or killed in tears or driven mad with power on a regular basis, seeing a character who is not important or awesome - who is, in fact, a murdering rapist and the refined, one-woman symbol of an utterly heinous storyarc - get a dignified, respectful, powerful ending is maddening.

On the other hand... this is a genre where women get abused or crippled or killed in tears or driven mad with power on a regular basis, and I can't say it could possibly have ever sat well with me to send off Tarantula in a vile or abusive way either, because no matter how much she individually might deserve it, you can't separate that from the wider trend, or how disgusting that is as a genre-wide phenomenon. So Gail's choice to deliberately buck that trend, even, yes, with this character of all characters, is also a profound relief.

So, yeah, I wouldn't call it an uncomplicated sop for Tarantula haters, at any rate. It's far too nice to her for any kind of straightforward schadenfreude, if that's what you're after.