I think the initial complaint, going back to the first episode, was borne of him supposedly overreaching his grasp and also keeping Lady Ochiba hostage. He wasn’t-- he let her go-- but I also think the real motivation comes down to Ishido attempting a power grab and seeing Toranaga as a threat to that, not just…

I read, I think, five reviews of the finale? And I know there are more. (Here, Episodic Medium, NYT, The Ringer, Collider) If he hates this reviewer so much, he has no shortage of options to choose from and no one but himself to blame for refusing to do so.

So the Ninjas blew the door open and then after seeing they killed Mariko they just high tailed it out of there?

Not a huge Hozier fan but this song isn’t too bad. My local “indie” station is playing it all the time, though, so I’m hoping they scale back a little because I don’t want it to turn into an “ugh, this again” song.

Funny enough, I went through about a decade where I barely listened to new music, and in the last couple of years I’ve been getting back into it big time. I suppose there are a couple of factors; I moved a few years ago and have a new indie station that’s pretty good for turning me on to new stuff, but as much as…

I was a little surprised as to how this finale told that tale-- but the more I thought about it the more it made sense to me. Mostly, though, I had already concluded that Mariko’s death would be a catalyst for one especially important domino in Toranaga’s plan to fall, and so it was.

I thought we’d get more of a real battle than we did, but the more I thought about it, the more this finale felt appropriate, especially for the kind of schemer Toranaga is. Like Yabushige, I was expecting a great battle; like Toranaga, the show revealed that Mariko’s death was the true climactic action, and…

Village spy guy was pretty significant in the finale.

Exactly. (Sure, I'm saying this having seen the finale, but the broad strokes were pretty much what I expected after this episode.)

“It’s censorship if you don’t give me a place on this website to tell the people who work for it, probably woefully underpaid, how much they suck!”

Yeah, Yabushige is predictable in that you can count on him to put his own neck ahead of any loyalty. Toranaga clearly expected him and Blackthorne to ally and look for a way out last week, and was in some way banking on that (even if as just a way to get Mariko to Osaka).

That actually makes more sense, since just outright killing her, as we said, lacks any kind of plausible deniability. I don’t think Ishido is so stupid that he would just kill Mariko and figure that solves his problem. I mean, Lady Ochiba has the real sway here, and she has a lot of respect for Mariko, and she’s not…

I don’t think so. I think Ishido really overplayed his hand here. Considering what an uproar it apparently would have caused among the noble families if he’d let Mariko kill herself, I don’t think any of them are going to buy any polite fictions that this was the work of anyone else.

Yeah, but those were just hints that could have been reasonably explained without the supernatural, whereas this was far more blatant. By the time of The Return finale, Twin Peaks had already had the White Lodge / Black Lodge, everything in episode 8, that creature that crashes through the box and shreds the two…

Hell, maybe in some way Whitney really only needed Asher to get Green Queen established and have a baby, and once that was done, the universe sent him on his way.

That first part is interesting, because I also think Whitney was right when she says that Asher wouldn’t be doing anything good if it wasn’t for her. So even if Asher is sincerely putting in the effort, in some ways he is Whitney’s creation. Another friend of mine suggested Asher left the planet because he had become…

Hahahahaha.

I don’t know all the think pieces or theories about The Rehearsal, but I remember having the idea myself that the show paralleled the book of Genesis in some ways, but I can’t remember off the top of my head what those are beyond “man” and “woman” being the first and second episodes. (Maybe the Fielder Method is…

Interesting-- as the Green Queen pushes out her baby, Mother Earth pushes out Asher.

I have no idea what to make of that yet. I’m sure there’s some meaning I’m not grasping. Was the curse real? Is there some mythological parallel to this I’m not aware of? Mostly, what the hell did I just watch?