Final Space 2×05
So! Turns out Gary’s mother has been alive all this time. She’s some sort of badass space criminal who’s ended up on death row. Gary announces he wants to see her before she dies. “To save her life?” Little Cato asks. “Oh heavens no. Why would I wanna do that?” says Gary.
And so begins the sort of abusive parent exploration story that sci-fi does so well. In the end Gary can’t of course leave his mother to die, and he sort of vaguely reconnects with her for a few brief moments. And Sheryl Goodspeed is legimately cool! She’s badass, she’s witty, she beats up her captors, she wins over Gary’s crew, she’s likeable. But she’s also a goddamn terrible parent and no amount of space flashniness can change that. She may not have wanted Gary in the first place and she certainly got out of the situation with good speed (sorry) the second he was her solo responsibility.
At the end of the episode, a haunting song plays over Gary’s memories of his mother. It seems that after John’s death she went off the rails, possibly became an alcoholic (she’s briefly seen hurling a wine bottle at a photo of Gary) and finally just left without a single word of comfort for her son.
Space stories are packed to the brim with abusive fathers. I know, I love ’em. But what with Final Space being somewhat of a mash-up of all the good sci-fi tropes, I love so much that it decided to do something fresh and reverse the gender roles. I’ve never actually seen that before, the father as the saintly tragic hero and the mother as the rogueish, heartless villain. You don’t really get all that many unequivocally awful mothers in fiction. We accept that a father might not love his child, for some reason, but a mum? Really?
Sheryl Goodspeed is a horrible, horrible person and I literally cannot wait to see more of her.