My issues with Wally and Artemis can be summed up in one word:
Fear
For a majority of their interactions in season one, they bring out each other’s fears in one way or another; they make each other’s insecurities worse.
And now that they’re together five years later?
They’re STILL bringing out each other’s fears. They’re just enabling fear of the worst together instead of apart.
Wally doesn’t want Artemis to go back to heroing because he’s AFRAID she’ll never want to stop again.
If they had chosen to leave for other reasons, then I’d be sad, but I wouldn’t be depressed about it.
We also know that they hero-ed up through sophomore year, when the game took place, so school wasn’t an issue.
And fuck it, I’ll say it: I went to Stanford, so did Greg, I spent enough time in the Band and with LSJUMB members and in Gaieties and on the Stanford Daily and graduated in the top 15% of my class just one class shy of a double major, so trust me, you can achieve work-life balance there.
If they had to quit because they both wanted to triple major in something because of a passion for particle physics, that’s different. But all we hear about is how Wally’s afraid.
But while we have evidence that M’gann is capable of pushing her moral gray area regarding mind squishing from the first season - we have zero evidence that either of Artemis or Wally would want to give up the heroing life on their own. If anything, we have tons of evidence against it.
Artemis internally fought tooth and nail to earn her spot on the team; she sacrificed so much to do it.
Wally felt “naked in civvies,” enough said.
So the only thing that I can think of that would drive them off the team is fear caused by Tula’s death.
To do ANYTHING or to NOT do anything because you’ve given into fear is neither admirable nor something to be romanticized. We didn’t admire them for NOT admitting their feelings. We didn’t admire Artemis for NOT telling her secret.
To those who say it would be irresponsible for them to not quit because they wanted to be a family or whatever:
Better give Barry that news.
Maybe I should call my brother-in-law who’s in the army and let him know that he was “irresponsible” to get married and have a baby because he’s in a dangerous line of work.
And all the policemen and firemen.
We look up to heroes for a reason. Because the thing they fight hardest?
THEY FIGHT FEAR.
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS SO ELOQUENTLY jhasf;gldskhgjfdl this is basically all of my feelings about why I can’t actually deal with Wally OR their relationship in season two. Within the context of the show, we’re supposed to see what the team is doing as a good thing. They’re heroes. Hell, Homefront was all about Artemis not quitting even when things got hard and scary. THIS IS WHAT THE SHOW IS ACTUALLY TELLING US.
But they gave up, presumably because of each other. It just really makes me wonder what we’re supposed to get out of it, and it depresses the hell out of me.
