the thing abt challengers that’s so craazzyyyy is Tashi doesn’t see either Patrick or art as her equals, she sees herself as peerless and above them but she envies the easy camaraderie they have and she DOES actually want to be a homewrecker, she wants to insert herself in their closer than skin bond bc there isn’t a corollary available to her… as a black woman who doesn’t come from money she doesn’t get to have her prep school blood brother so she has to possess the two of them bc she views control as ownership……….
challengers spoilers…. im obsessed with how we know everything we need to know about art and patrick and tashi within their first scenes like. art asks patrick to throw the match so art can please his grandmother (or at least that’s what he says) and patrick agrees both because he’s deeply unserious about tennis separate from art, and also because art asks. then tashi enters. patrick blusters and pushes her but she keeps looking at silent art who seems to have fallen for her tennis game at first sight. she says tennis is a relationship. whoever wins the match will get my number. and patrick, knowing that art and tashi are both going to stanford, doesn’t throw the match. because the only way he can stay in their lives (art’s life) as they go off to the same school and work on the same sport, is to be dating her……..