Ahem. This episode title was not intended to be named after a Harry Styles song, but here we are. What can you do about it now?
This is, obviously, the hardest episode so far. But it was so nice to finally get to the root of Heather, someone who I think we don’t really get a chance to understand until the very end of this episode. Up until now, Heather is so violently against Anika and anyone with super powers that it starts to feel like almost a little too much, but finally seeing who she was before super powered people entered her world was a moment I really wanted to work up to.
In terms of the acting on this, I love what Eli and Jose brought to the room/booth. We cheated a little bit — they’re already together, but they’re much more, you know, happy, than Heather and Sean. Sean and Heather’s scenes for the whole season were actually the first thing on the docket for us when we got into recording, and we recorded them in chronological order, rather than episodic. Which means this episode? Was right up top, real quick. As emotionally taxing as that turned out to be, I loved seeing how Eli and Jose brought that moment into the rest of their scenes that come after.
This moment is the one that changes everything between them — in a world where Heather gets super powers instead of Anika, this would be her origin story as a hero/villain herself. But instead, she’s paralyzingly human, and loses a part of herself that she’ll never get back. Having Eli operate from the point of experiencing that moment and then jumping right in to her scenes that happen in the present felt like she brought that trauma into everything going forward. Her interactions with Sean, her reactions to any mention of anything super-related. And with Sean, Jose brought in the same in his moments with Harrison, his moments with Heather. I loved seeing how they chose to react to the same event with two very different characters — both a little manic, both incredibly stubborn, and both incredibly different.
This is also our personal dose of what Anika’s powers really are doing to the world and the people around her, and we see it with people we’re a little attached to. Even if she’s not trying to be one, does this information and knowledge make her a villain in our books?