So I'm thinking about the line "The warmest hello, to the coldest goodbye." again for a number of reasons.
Because when Curt says goodbye to Owen- when he shoots him. When Owen dies. Curt's goodbye to Owen, that's the coldest goodbye to him. Any goodwill between the two of them has been severed. Even if Owen lived there was no way of fixing that bond. He betrayed his partner- called him weak. Tortured him. That's the coldest goodbye for Curtwen.
But for us? As an audience? Well, coming back to rewatch SAF after Wayward Guide, where it's been established that Chimera took over the world. That Curt couldn't stop them. That Owen died for practically nothing.
It feels. Cold.
Upon the first viewing of SAF, we feel a sense of optimism. That Curt's gonna stop Chimera. Everything will work out. But upon the rewatch after Wayward Guide.. there is no optimism. The whole ending for the show just feels bitter.
We say goodbye to the heroes knowing that they're not gonna succeed. They're gonna go through all that trouble for nothing. Chimera's gonna become too big to stop. It all ends on an inevitably unhappy ending.
And that my friend, for us as an audience, is the coldest goodbye. An improper conclusion. Saying goodbye, despite knowing that the big corporation will take over. And there is no hope.
My friend mentioned an idea for a reverse soulmates AU where the name of the person you're destined to kill slowly becomes a more visible scar on your arm AND IMAGINE THAT WITH CURTWEN???? He'd obviously never tell Owen he's destined to kill him and I think Curt would believe he could change his fate and he fails. TWICE.
I'm kinda obsessed with this at the moment and might write something for it because the angst would be magnificent.
Oh my GOD. Anyone who has been around the SAF fandom from the beginning has probably seen this, but I just saw this for the first time five minutes ago, when Twitter put it in my timeline. Holy shit. All this time I've been assuming that "relock the safety barricades" meant putting some kind of limit on the explosives themselves, I didn't realize they were talking about opening and shutting literal blast doors. Everything makes so much more sense now.
So when Curt stopped Owen from relocking the safety barricades, it didn't just lead to an uncontained explosion. If the barricades were shut then Owen wouldn't have fallen so far, he would've fallen onto the barricade. And since the barricade would be shut, he would've had protection from the explosion. He would've presumably been okay. Even if Curt couldn't get to him before the building blew, he had a good chance of survival. Oh my god. I'm never going to recover from this.