
Note: This article is going to be heavy on Tyrell/Tyrelliot talk, so you probably shouldn’t bother reading if that’s going to upset you.
As I said in my previous article, I’ve been watching this show from the start. I found season 1 to be stellar, even though there were a few plot choices I was displeased with, but I was excited and thankful that we would be getting more. That feeling didn’t last long though, as the more I watched of this show, the less satisfied I was in practically every area: story, the treatment of the characters (especially LGBTQ characters and characters of color), the seemingly never-ending list of questions that we never truly get answers to… But, from what I can tell from my time on Tumblr and Twitter, many viewers don’t seem to share the discomfort of how the characters are treated by the narrative; and many people seem to laud this show for its LGBTQ rep, but, with Tyrell’s (likely) death now, it’s overdue to take a(nother) closer look at how damaging this rep really is.
Yes, this article will be focusing on Tyrell because he is a fan favorite and the events of “404 Not Found” are why I’m writing this article now, instead of finishing the season before writing another critique on this show. Most of the time, I’d also be furious with a fandom fixating on a white character over a lead of color. But when we’ve been baited for 4.5 years over the relationship between Elliot and Tyrell, when Tyrell has spent most of his screentime prioritizing Elliot, when Tyrell has repeatedly been given significantly less screentime than practically all of the other mains… It’s difficult to be angry at fandom for prioritizing him, when Sam Esmail was clearly just stringing us along and never cared to give us any follow through on things he teased.
I’ve already talked in length about the homotransphobia in the first three seasons in my other article. But for the purpose of a quick recap and adding what we’ve seen from the beginning of season 4: Gideon? Canonically gay and graphically murdered. (But not before he loses his job and we learn that his husband left him!) Shayla? Implied to be sapphic and graphically murdered. Angela? Implied to be sapphic and graphically murdered. Trenton? Hinted to be sapphic and graphically murdered. While Whiterose’s first love’s sexual identity is questionable as he thought he loved a man, but he learned that he loved a woman, he immediately accepted Whiterose when she felt comfortable enough to tell him, and then he graphically killed himself in front of her because he couldn’t live the life his family wanted of him. And now, Tyrell, has been killed off as well. These characters had a few brief moments of happiness before they were pulled into a mess of Elliot’s (unintentional) doing, where they were constantly in a state of misery before being killed. (This is excluding Whiterose’s story, obviously, but she had happiness within reach before it was violently and horrifically taken away from her as some sort of explanation for her to be the “cold” and “ruthless” woman we know now.) And then we also have the whole… thing with Darlene seducing Dom to steal her badge, because we want a sapphic relationship that started through deception and manipulation!
(Also, very brief side note since I mentioned multiple ladies from the show and don’t want to detour too much: Yes, Sam Esmail has let his female characters be complicated and messy, but half of them have been graphically murdered, Dom and Darlene are constantly suffering, and Whiterose and Janice, a trans woman and fat woman respectively, are both portrayed as terrifying and dangerous and vilified by the narrative. It’s not good writing when you’re just relentlessly writing misery porn and villifying women who are marginalized, Sam!)
Sam Esmail has repeatedly proven a willingness to kill off LGBTQ characters and has demonstrated that he prioritizes shock value over the substance of his writing. He’s even demonstrated a cavalier attitude towards the fact the he killed these characters, as seen by the whole nausea inducing sitcom dream episode where we watch both Gideon and Tyrell be graphically killed, and both of these deaths happen with a laugh track over them. As I mentioned in my previous article, there’s also the deeply upsetting fact that Tyrell died the same way as Shayla had in this dream, in the trunk of a car, with their throats slit. Given how much thought Sam Esmail puts into the details, I find it impossible to believe that this was just a silly coincidence.
What pisses me off the most is that this move was so incredibly predictable, but I had tricked myself into believing that Sam Esmail wouldn’t dare to kill off Tyrell (even if I’d stopped believing his relationship with Elliot would ever go anywhere), because it wouldn’t make sense given how much the show stressed the importance of the relationship he had with Elliot. What was the point of Elliot’s withdrawal dream where he saw Tyrell in his apartment, holding a key, for us to get absolutely no clarification on what that dream was symbolizing? What was the point of Elliot spending 2/3 of season 2 and the entirety of the season 1 finale trying to find Tyrell and learn what happened after Tyrell broke into his apartment? What was the point of Elliot having a dream where he imagined that he and Tyrell were friends? What was the point of Elliot’s multiple dreams featuring Tyrell mentioned in Red Wheelbarrow? What was the point of Elliot naming his journal Red Wheelbarrow in the first place? What was the point of Elliot remembering meeting Tyrell as he thought he was about to die? What was the point of establishing, in the pilot, that Elliot hates people making physical contact with him, and to show Elliot allowing Tyrell make physical contact with him, if Elliot was never going to tell Tyrell he cared about him? What was the point of any of this, when the end result was Tyrell dying to protect Elliot, while Elliot still has no idea about Tyrell’s feelings for him? Why did we spend 3 seasons circling around their relationship just for this end, when we easily could have learned that Elliot had, in fact, killed Tyrell at the arcade, like he was worried that he had?
Regardless of whether you ship Tyrell and Elliot or whether you loathe the concept of them together, you literally cannot say that this show hasn’t been stressing the importance of their relationship since day 1. You cannot call people “delusional” (which is extremely ableist by the way!) for thinking that this relationship would go somewhere when Sam Esmail was incessantly talking about how he loved that people shipped Tyrell and Elliot and how they understand each other on a level that no one else does and how they’re two sides of the same coin and insisting that Tyrell really truly loves Elliot. You cannot make fun of us for believing in Sam Esmail’s insinuation that we were going to get content at some point where they had a real talk about their feelings for each other after Tyrell confessed his feelings to Angela, just for Tyrell and Elliot to be separated the entirety of season 3 and continue to be separated up until the episode where Tyrell dies! And they don’t get the chance to talk things out! Elliot says a few things that imply he does care about Tyrell, but he never outright says that! Tyrell says some things that hint at his confession to Angela, but he never outright tells Elliot that he loves him! This was quite literally Textbook Bait (although I’d argue calling this queerbaiting is a bit unfair as Tyrell is explicitly canonically in love with Elliot) and I know people are still gonna be up Sam Esmail’s ass talking about how great an ally he is because of how many LGBTQ characters exist on the show, as if he hasn’t killed most of them off in horrific ways and made their stories about suffering.
Even if the remaining 9 episodes somehow reveal that Tyrell survived, even if these episodes make Tyrell and Elliot a couple or just explicitly establish that Tyrell’s feelings weren’t(/aren’t?) one-sided, the writing for Tyrell will remain to have been primarily misery porn. The writing for Tyrell will still be built on him in a near constant state of suffering because of his prioritizing Elliot. Nothing Sam Esmail can do at this point will change 3 seasons of the narrative relentlessly punishing Tyrell for fixating on how Elliot perceived him and doing absolutely anything Elliot asked of him in his desperation for Elliot’s approval and acceptance. It doesn’t change the fact that he was still prioritizing Elliot after he was shot and refused to let Elliot get him help, because that would place Elliot in danger.
Also is no one going to talk about the racism/xenophobia of painting Dark Army/China as the villain? I’m not gonna go into detail on this because, frankly, I don’t think I know enough on the subject to discuss how horrid this decision was, but this is literally a surface level look at the text. We have been repeatedly told that Whiterose/Dark Army are evil and Whiterose holds a high office in China… It’s extremely blatant and the opposite of what we need from media right now when racism/xenophobia has been spreading and increasing the past few years.
