WARNING: The following contains minor spoilers for Final Space. Watch episodes Mondays at 10:30PM EST on the TBS Network. Final Space Chapter 5 airs tonight.
It’s hard to know what to write about this episode. More attention is focused on interaction between Quinn & Gary, which is decidedly harsh. Quinn is completely no-nonsense and it’s great to see a female character so driven to do the right thing, but otherwise I can’t say I like her as much as Avocato, Mooncake, and Gary (my favorite characters, in that order.) That’s a personal preference though, I like characters who make me laugh and hold people close to them. While Gary may be “failing upwards” constantly, he trusts people and forms true friendships. And while Quinn’s thorny response to all extended hands thus far puts me off, plus it’s by no means unjustified! But what really draws me in for her is what appears to be the beginning of a very difficult personal journey after she finds the Infinity Guard, an organization she joined with zeal to protect Earth from intergalactic threats, turns out to be doing the exact opposite. To be honest, it hits a little close to home; I think we’ve all felt betrayed one way or another.
Maybe I’m just biased, but I felt like Avocato didn’t have many lines this time around. That’s probably the case, particularly since the episode tries to focus a lot on Quinn, but even then I don’t feel like a whole lot of development was made with her. Hopefully this will change, given her faith in everyone, herself included, has been shaken so badly. Once again, Olan provides an additional background character voice, as does Coty Galloway (Avocato) but both were just varied enough that I wasn’t so bothered to find more voice actor recycling.
So far, it seems like every important character in the show is being dealt a good portion screen time to grow and show us more of who they are, especially as far as what they regret.
The big question is, now that we know the Lord Commander is trying to breach a rift in the universe in search of “final space”… What IS that? How will reaching Final Space and/or capturing Mooncake stop the Lord Commander from succumbing to whatever ailment is killing him? Was Gary’s father’s mission failure planned by his fellows of the Infinity Guard? I would’ve liked to get a little more insight from Captain Stone or whatever his title was. It bothered me they made a point of showing this character is a high ranking officer and yet hardly gave us anything from him besides “hey everyone except you has pledged to the Lord Commander, Quinn” and “we’re thiiis close to reaching final space, which I’m just going to act like everyone knows about!” Whether this was an intentional tease or not, it didn’t feel like a well-spun subversion of my expectations. In the end, my biggest investment is in Little Cato, still a prisoner of the Lord Commander, and once again the bait for our heroes to rush for and bring Mooncake close enough to little David Tennant’s evil tiny fingers. Side note, I hope we get a lot more insight into the Lord Commander, I hate to think we won’t get any indication of where this guy came from or why he’s such a jerk. What do you want, you tiny jerk?
So yes, not my favorite episode, but I sure do want to know what’s coming next. Chapter 6 has been hyped up for awhile, especially by the show’s creator Olan Rogers, on Twitter. Fan or not, I’m skeptical, but this show has thrown a lot of great material at me before now, so I’m looking forward to uncovering what this next installment holds.
