i feel my main issue with the finale is that it’s a bad ending that exists for the wrong reasons.

one of the aspects of c!tommy’s lore that appealed to me was how fundamentally bleak his existence always turns out to be. he’s inherently a tragic character: the consequences for his actions are always overblown in comparison to both the intent and the impact of them. because of his loud personality and even louder voice, he’s the centre of attention in any room he walks into, which makes him a quick and easy scapegoat if you’re looking for someone to blame. he’s stubborn and he’s surviving, but he’s never at peace with his circumstances because something is always missing - his discs, his friends, his family.

i know that suffering for the sake of suffering is not a story beat that many are fond of. i know that many watchers just wanted tommy to heal because he deserved something hopeful. but to see a character whose circumstances are always stagnating, stuck in this tiring cycle where they always find themselves ending up right back where they started… that really appealed to me on a personal level, and so keeping that in mind, i always thought there was a chance his ending was not going to be a happy one.

but to me, this does not feel like his ending. it’s not an ending that exists for c!tommy. it’s not the natural conclusion to his story. this was an ending made to excuse c!dream’s entire villain arc instead. c!tommy’s characterisation as a victim did not matter here, because characterising c!dream as a victim instead was the intended goal. the abuse c!dream inflicted on c!tommy is less important than desperately clutching at straws to make a character, that we as an audience have no reason to view as sympathetic, ‘worthy’ of our sympathy. the narrative is desperate to give room for c!dream to have a second chance, something that comes at the cost of enabling victim blaming against a canonical child abuse survivor.

when c!tommy, in the haze of memory loss, befriends his abuser, i don’t think it was intended to be tragic. it could and should have been, because c!tommy having no recollection of anything is a good set-up that would leave him vulnerable, open to c!dream’s manipulation once again because he doesn’t know who to avoid and who not to trust. but it isn’t trying to be unsettling when we see c!tommy unknowingly befriending his abuser; it’s meant to be a sign of hope that now everything has been reset, maybe there could be peace again. it doesn’t work, because the viewers remember everything even if the characters don’t. instead the amnesia plot line feels like a flimsy method of making a blank slate and a fresh new start where c!dream can avoid the consequences of his actions completely. this is a unintentional bad ending for c!tommy, because he’s placed in a position where he will grow to trust someone who has the full capacity to hurt him, but it’s an intentional good ending for c!dream and it seems that’s where the cc’s priorities lie.