Last episodes are difficult, especially when the story clearly isn’t over. (And for what it’s worth, this ends with a card saying, “See you next mission,” so I suspect we’ll get more.) This season finale has a lot to cover, as well; the whole spy mission needs to be wrapped up, Loid and Yor need to work out their misunderstanding, and, most importantly, things need to be put back on a relatively even keel. Although it’s not perfect, I think all of this is handled decently well, and that’s not just because Anya’s dream of many Bonds is adorable.
The most important piece of this, to my mind, is one little throwaway moment. When Loid is approaching his apartment, he thinks to himself that it feels like forever since he’s been home. Just “home,” not “Loid’s home” or “Operation Strix’s home,” home. That one line tells us a lot about how he’s changed over the course of this series: he’s becoming Loid Forger in truth in all the ways that matter. Loid Forger has a home, a wife, a daughter, and a dog. He has people waiting for him and a place where he can rest and feel safe. Twilight has none of those things; he’s just a man going from job to job with the slightly nebulous goal of world peace. Loid can put a little pink-haired face on that ideal, and Loid can also worry about not being able to go home, something he hasn’t felt since he was _______, the little boy in a war-torn nation. I don’t think he realizes it yet, but Fiona certainly has, although she doesn’t want to admit it. I’m sure Handler knows, too, and I wonder how much of this was intentional on her part. She talks tough, but I think she genuinely cares.
Although he’s not fully aware of what’s going on, Loid does grasp some of it. He knows he underperformed on the mission, though he probably doesn’t realize that it sounds a lot like he’s making excuses as to why he couldn’t bring himself to kill Yuri. To put it coldly, Yuri’s death could actually have brought Yor and Loid closer together, as he’d be the only one left for her to depend on. (I’m very, very glad this didn’t come up.) The scene where he stands in the shower and lets his arm bleed is in many ways his moment of self-reckoning as he grapples with what he sees as his failure, even as he’s not quite self-aware enough to realize that the Forgers’ shower is a place that feels safe enough for him to do so.
But what does all of this matter when we’ve got Bond trying his best to be a lion, a giraffe, and an elephant for Anya? Or the adorable Yor-Anya bonding moment over brushing hair? Even if Yor seems to be using the same hairbrush for both Bond and Anya, it’s still a heartwarming scene that shows the Forgers as a real family. Yor often get sidelined for the other members of the family, and we don’t get nearly as many mommy-daughter scenes as daddy-daughter ones, so this is a nice way to close out the season even without the cuteness factor. Everything’s tied up as neatly as it can be without feeling too final, and there is a real art to that, just like there’s an art to coming up with a solid alibi that no one in this series has quite mastered. Hmm, which is less believable: falling from the fourth to the first floor of a hospital, being body-slammed by your boss for bad paperwork, or dealing with a pro wrestler who doesn’t like needles…?
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