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fox-from-fairytale · 28 days

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Some of my personal considerations regarding Lilly in The Final Season.

⚠️ Warning: this is a long post ⚠️

Before going on I want to say that, while it's obvious that the teams working on the series must have changed for every season (or even in the middle of them), I have absolutely no idea if there are some people that were there for Season 1 as well as The Final Season. Each game feels different from the previous, and so I'm going to treat the writer teams accordingly.

While replaying these four games I was torn about Lilly's return. I did miss her through the other seasons, and I actually couldn't wait to see her again, even if I was aware already that the way she was written in the last one wasn't... the best, to say the least. This annoys me a lot because, as we see with what they have done with Clementine, AJ, their relationship and the new characters, Lilly's poor writing then clearly isn't due to the writers being incompetent, since they aren't.

Now I've completed the whole series, and while I do prefer the concept of The Final Season to Season 2 and The New Frontier (this is simply because of personal preference, of course; I do like all four games), it's also the one that disappoint me the most, and mostly because of what they have done with Lilly.

Long story short: not only I believe that the writers didn't understand Lilly's character, but that they didn't even try to.

First of all, I think they made her come back not because there is more to tell about her character (and there is more to tell about her; her arc didn't feel finished when she leaves/is abandoned in Season 1, and for what they have done with her, it remains incomplete), but because they needed someone who is still alive from The Season With Lee, so that they could make as many references as possible. I know that Christa was the other option for filling that role, and I don't know if they stated why they decided to go with Lilly in the end, but I wouldn't be surprised if they based their choice just on how much Lilly is (unrightfully) hated among the players and considered "crazy" by them; people can't deny that they must have easily put her in the antagonist's role since players already think she's one.

Honestly, what I hate isn't even the fact that she's the antagonist of this season (even if it does annoy me that this is the way they made her return, and maybe I'm "okay" with it simply because I'm used to her being treated like one). What these games have always shown with all their characters, Clementine especially, is that while this apocalyptic world can bring the best out of people, it can also (and more often) bring out the worst. Because of this, every single character of this game is morally grey, but while the male characters are often praised and in some cases their actions are even justified, what happens with the female characters is the opposite, Lilly included.

The players love to pretend that Lilly is some sort of "crazy evil bitch", but she isn't. In Season 1 she is a tough and strict leader of the motor inn's group, and she doesn't take any bullshit lightly, but why should she? They're in a deathly situation, and even a small mistake can cost their life. She's also the only one who took the responsibility to distribute food, but just because she doesn't want more mouths to feed it doesn't mean she'd survive at the expense of other people: she doesn't like that Kenny/and Lee uses a girl screaming in pain to keep the walkers at bay, and she doesn't want to take the stranger's supplies. Moreover, just because her father says or do something, it doesn't automatically mean that she is on his side, like she explains far from Larry. Speaking of which, regardless if her relationship with her father is idyllic or awful, losing him in such a brutal way, and when she firmly believes she can actually save his life, can traumatise anyone. She is left with nothing, the only family she had is gone, and then she loses the only other thing she is trying to defend so desperately, and again because of someone within her own group. I'm not saying that killing Carley/attempting to kill Ben was a good thing to do, but you can't seriously consider her an "evil bitch" solely for a single action, which she has done as a result of a mental breakdown. From her point of view she has been betrayed two times from the same people she actively tried to help doing one of the most stressful tasks, and none of these same persons seems to care about what happened both times.

After that she's abandoned/leaves the group, and apparently she remains alone for years, until she finds the Delta. It shouldn't be too unbelievable for Lilly to be willing to do anything to defend her home, especially considering what happened the first time and what she must go through before joining the Delta; a solitary life in that type of world can make anyone become ruthless, and again, we see it with Clementine especially, and apparently her new community is at risk because of a group "worse than hers". However, while Clementine does have a "turning point" from this path (killing Helen at the ranch), Lilly clearly doesn't.

So it's not exactly what she does, but the way she behaves while doing it that I don't like. They wrote Lilly too over the top: certain lines she can say are even childish, while her actions in the third episode are vicious. That's not her anymore.

My problem with the way she was written doesn't start immediately. In Suffer The Children (second episode) there are moments where it feels like the Lilly from Season 1 is there. We don't have much time with her though, just a few phrases about the past and then we run to move the plot forward. I don't think she was well written here either, considering what she says about Lee with whom she could have had a good relationship and even possibly cared only about him and Clementine by the third episode (as stated by other characters), it's simply better than the other episode.

The first time I've played Suffer The Children I was hopeful for the way they could have handled things with Lilly in the next ones though, only to be disappointed. Based on the interactions in this one (remembering her or not/taking her hand or not/telling her we were family once or whatever the other two options says) I expected two paths: one where she becomes fully the antagonist of the season and a "redemption arc". This seemed to me what Telltale was going for, and maybe it was the original intention, and because of what happened to the studio it's already a miracle if they completed the game at all, but this doesn’t make me feel any less disappointed in the final result to be honest.

Broken Toys (third episode) is the one I have most issues with. Not only there isn't a single moment where she resembles the Lilly from the first season, but here she doesn't even remind me of the Lilly from the previous episode. They switched her character with a cartoonish type of villain basically; if she seems to have depth and layers it's because she's supposed to be a character that already has depth and layers, not because the writers of this season gave them to her, nor because they were able to use what the writers of Season 1 created.

With this episode the writers fully embraced the distorted version of Lilly players created, the "monster" who is "crazy since the beginning" that killed Carley/Doug simply because things didn't go the way she wanted. They removed from her every bit of humanity she had, and catered to the crowd that claims she's evil. The way she talks about Minerva and Sophie specifically, and how pleased she looks when Minerva reveals that she killed her own sister, is something that actually makes me hate the writers; they turned Lilly from someone who do what she does solely for her community's survival to this manipulative bastard who takes pleasure into others' suffering. Honestly? What they did it's vile; turning her into that and making her treat kids like that was vile.

If you spare Lilly you can have a miserable little conversation that gives nothing to the player. Her whole presence in this game, in the end, gives us nothing: we learn nothing more about her (other than the fact that it's confirmed that Larry was an abusive father, and they've done it in the worst way possible, making it sound like the stupidest thing), and her being in this season only ruins her character.

I wish they didn't ruin Lilly. I wish they actually cared about her character. In a possible redemption arc scenario she could have helped Clementine, who could have been her "turning point", making her realise what she was doing, what she was becoming.

With this I'm not saying I wish they created a flawless version of her, but that they maintained her flaws instead of creating more and more until she became someone else entirely, going from morally grey to a villain, even. Also, like they made sure you could have a good relationship with Kenny in Season 2 (where regardless of everything you do and say they force the characters to be in good terms), they could have given us the same possibility with Lilly in the last season (where regardless of everything you do and say they force the characters to despise each other).

I wanted Lilly's return not only because, along with Clem, she's my favourite, but also because she has much more to give. Instead they took such a complex character just to strip her of all her humanity and depth so that they could have a flat villain everyone already hate.

#i'm not a lilly apologist simply because there is nothing to apologise for #ive put in here some stuff i wrote in a post about s1 in general because i wanted all my thoughts about lilly in one post? idk #there are certain paragraphs with which i tried to contain myself but i wanted to go more in depth with some stuff #brevity isnt a skill of mine #the walking dead game #twdg #twdg lilly #twdg tfs #twdg the final season #twdg season 1 #twdg s1 #lilly twdg

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