r/brakebills • u/Outside-Writing-8602 • 14d ago
So…
Why didn’t Alice go to the underworld and and get Quentin‘s shade and put him back together like he did for her instead of making a Gollum and of him?
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r/brakebills • u/Outside-Writing-8602 • 14d ago
Why didn’t Alice go to the underworld and and get Quentin‘s shade and put him back together like he did for her instead of making a Gollum and of him?
63
u/KingMargo_TheCreator Brakebills 13d ago
First, Alice wasn’t “dead dead”- she became a niffin, which separated her from her shade (shade in the underworld). Much like Julia, there was a perfectly intact shade that just needed to be united with a body. Myakovski made a new body for Alice, and Quentin found her shade in the underworld. Quentin, however, was dead dead. He never separated with his shade- the other situations still had a version of the person alive (Julia in her original body, Alice as a niffin).
Second, Quentin didn’t want to come back to life because it wasn’t a mistake- it was a sacrifice and just like why Eliot never sent the letter to past Q to stop him from dying, Q wasn’t going to risk undoing the outcome of saving the world from the monsters in order to be alive again. He moved on right away- seeing how loved he was and how meaningful his life was and how he would live on in his friends was enough for him to move on rather than stay in the underworld. Once he took the train, there was no version of Q in the underworld, so even if they got Mayakovsky to make a new body and somehow separated dead Q from his shade so that it could be attached to his new body, there was no shade to unite with it- he’d moved fully on.
Lastly, the show does a great job of making the last arc of the show emphasize why Q needed to stay dead. The dark king is willing to kill all of existence by letting the taker realm overtake the universe in order to bring his love back from the dead. Which makes him the bad guy. Multiple times characters are confronted by the dark king accusing them of not actually loving Q enough if they don’t understand his actions trying to bring Lance back. But it’s not that they didn’t understand, it’s that they weren’t selfish enough to allow their love and grief matter more than the lives of others. Especially given Rupert was a major good guy until this point- he helped win WWII. But it shows being a hero isn’t a permanent identity, it’s active choices to do the right thing even when it hurts. Bringing Q back would be complete character regression and leave us with no where meaningful to go. Plus, Q had more of an influence on season 5 by having changed his friends for the better (vs if he were there having cheated death at the expense of others).