"Scott Pilgrim Takes Off" Blind Reaction: Episode 8

All SPOILERS marked

Welcome back to my blind coverage of the new Netflix anime Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, a series based off of some of the most influential comic books and movies of my life. What I’m doing here is giving my thoughts, analysis, and predictions after each episode before moving onto the next, but given that Episode 8 is the finale, I will also be looking back at the series as a whole, and there will be spoilers for all eight episodes.

You can find coverage of all previous episodes below:

Episode 1: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life
Episode 2: A League of Their Own
Episode 3: Ramona Rents a Video
Episode 4: Whatever
Episode 5: Lights. Camera. Sparks?!
Episode 6: WHODUNIT
Episode 7: 2 Scott 2 Pilgrim

With that out of the way, let’s jump into episode eight. I just need to finish my decade of training first…

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EPISODE 8: THE WORLD VS. SCOTT PILGRIM

Ramona Flowers runs from her problems. It’s probably the most important thing to know about her as a character; she responds to hardship time and time again, not by facing it head on, but by fleeing, re-inventing herself, and trying again without fundamentally changing anything about herself. I’d forgotten a bit with the return of Scott to the narrative over the past few episodes, but Ramona is really the main character and protagonist of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, so it only makes sense that, as the series reaches its finale, Ramona is forced to face this fault of hers head on.

Turning Scott himself — though, admittedly, a potential future version of himself — into the villain of Takes Off was a risky move that raises a lot of questions, even when it comes to Ramona. Future Scott is a massive walking red flag; at one point I paused the episode and jotted down in my notes “Why does current Ramona even want to be with Scott after seeing his future self?!” Amusingly, Ramona asked herself the same question in the episode as soon as I un-paused it, and she, in return, is answered by her own future self telling her not to run from someone she loves, not again.

See, Scott isn’t actually the issue here. For sure, the final form of Future Scott is a worst case scenario come to life — in previous adaptations Ramona feared that Scott was just another Evil Ex waiting to happen, and by infusing himself with the abilities of all the Evil Exes, Future Scott becomes a literal, ultimate manifestation of that fear — but Scott has always had just as much potential to lose his way as he has to clean up his act and dedicate himself to becoming a better person. Frankly, everybody has the potential for both, and by running from Scott for fear of the worst case scenario, she’d also be missing out on the chance of enjoying the best case scenario. It’s just what Ramona has always done, running when things get hard instead of trying to make them better.

In fact, Ramona’s propensity for running from her problems helped create Future Scott in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, Scott still bears much of the blame — especially 47-year-old Scott, who very purposely spent 10 years transforming himself into what he most hates, and who is rightfully rejected by his own Ramona — but this whole situation arose when Future Scott and Ramona hit a rough patch and Ramona, once again, ran. She viewed it as just getting some space, but Scott interpreted it as a break-up, and even told current Scott that he was divorced! Divorced, when Ramona thought she was just getting some space! There was a communication issue between these two, and Ramona was incapable of communicating when she wasn’t there to begin with.

Well, no more. Ramona is done running. Whatever happens between her and Scott from here on out, for better or for worse, Ramona will be able to say that she gave it everything she had, did everything she could to make it work. In my eyes, that makes the version of Scott and Ramona who walk off into the sunset at the end of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off better equipped than any incarnation before them to make that happily ever after stick.

Stray Reactions:

— It’s a real blast seeing the entire cast, Evil Exes and all¹, come together to fight Future Scott as a team. It really solidifies the work Takes Off has done to turn the Evil Exes from antagonists into part of the ensemble, who can be called upon for gags or character work as needed.

— In that sense, I suppose this episode answers the questions I’ve raised in previous Reactions about redeeming the Evil Exes by just redeeming them. Well, “redeeming.” Notably, some of the Evil Exes are still evil, but they’re no longer making it their mission to target Ramona and Scott; even Gordon’s big evil plan is to get revenge on Matthew Patel, not Scott or Ramona. I suppose that fits the original metaphor the Evil Exes were created to embody in the first place. We all enter new relationships with the baggage of our past ones, but hopefully, over time, we can shed some of that baggage and start seeing our exes as people, rather than evil villains.

— Except that Gideon really was an abusive criminal, and I feel like he got off easy. It’s notable that Takes Off had to drop most of the horrible things he had done in other adaptations — such as literally controlling Ramona and keeping his own Exes cryogenically frozen in his lair — in order to be able to pursue this lighter take on the character. But it’s also notable that Gideon (and Julie!) are the one who show up in a mid-credit teaser as still being threats. Are we getting another season of Takes Off at some point? If as much thought and love are put into it as Season One, I’ll happily take it.

— Given Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’s real life box office failure and eventual cult status, I don’t think a Broadway musical adaptation would actually be a big hit.

— What is Wallace’s middle name, anyway? O’Malley’s original name for Wallace before the comics launched was “Wallace P. Weldon,” but even then we don’t know what the P stands for.

— Wallace doesn’t heckle the musical! It must be good!

— There’s quite a few cameos of minor characters from the comics/movie in the stands at the musical. I was able to spot Lynette Guycott (the drummer of The Clash at Demonhead) sitting next to Envy Adams, and Joseph (a friend of Holley’s who went on to date Stephen Stills after he came out in the comics) further back in the crowd, but I’ve seen quite a few more names thrown out there (such as Michael Comeau and Scott’s brother Lawrence) by other viewers, so I’d venture to guess that just about every minor character possible is in those stands somewhere if you take the time to pause and look.

— The A.K. Field (Anti-Kiss Field) has to be another Evangelion reference, this time to the A.T. (Absolute Terror) Fields that both the Angels and the Evas themselves create.

— My mini-essay in my Reaction to Episode 2 was about the way the episode was working to do some world building that previous adaptations hadn’t, but in retrospect, I don’t think that’s what was actually going on at all. After all, what we learned about Scott’s “death” in that episode didn’t end up being legitimate at all, and Matthew Patel’s coup didn’t end up teaching us anything new about the League of Evil Exes either; it actually broke up the League, which led to the ongoing rivalry between Matthew and Gideon. If anything, all of these developments were meant to be set-up for more character work, planting the seeds of Ramona’s guilt and grief, introducing us to the Evil Exes, and setting them free as their own agents rather than full-on antagonists. It’s fun to see how my perspective on that episode has changed with more information.

— Knives Chau shows up to the musical in her most iconic outfit, her black clothes/long flowing scarf combo. This is the outfit she wore during her most famous scene in both the comics and the movie: her attack on Ramona with her dual blades and their subsequent battle, which includes her now signature battle cry of “Chau Down!” In the comics this took place in Volume 2 at the library, while in the movie it was moved to the grand climax, taking place simultaneously with Scott and Gideon’s first battle. Takes Off gives this scene a whole new context: Ramona provides Knives with her blades, and Knives yells “Chau Down!” and attacks Future Scott instead. It changes the moment from one that pits Knives and Ramona against each other to one that makes them allies, and that’s a pretty beautiful moment of growth.

— Gordon tells Future Scott that he has no beef which him; Future Scott replies by taking off his jacket, dropping it to the ground, and asking “What if I have beef with you?” This is an exact recreation of the exchange Scott and Gideon share when they first meet at the Chaos Theater in the movie.

— At one point during the giant group battle with Future Scott, Knives, Stephen Stills, Kim, and Young Neil all cross their arms to create a force field. This is actually taken from the Matthew Patel fight in Volume 1 of the comics, where all of Scott’s friends cross their arms and create a force field that protects Scott from one of Matthew’s fireballs.

— This part of the episode also brings back the shoe tying gag from the movie!

— This episode brings us Takes Off’s strangest vocal cameo, bringing in noted actor Stephen Root to “voice” the nano machines Future Scott uses to create the A.K. Field. I put “voice” in quotations because the nano machines do not actually speak, and Root’s recording session reportedly consisted of five minutes of him making random noises into the microphone. King Shit.

— While we’re on the topic, I missed a few notable vocal cameos in previous episodes, including frequent Scott Pilgrim vs. the World director Edgar Wright collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the security guards in Episode 4 (who reappear in Episode 8!), and The Tick actor Griffin Newman as “Straight Wallace.”

— I’m so proud of Ramona moving on from being a delivery girl to getting a real career as a Hollywood stunt person. I think that makes her the first Scott Pilgrim character with an actual career rather than a menial Millennial job.

— The original comics incarnation of Lucas Lee was based off actor Jason Lee, who began his career as a professional skateboarder. The movie and Takes Off transformed Lucas into a drastically different character entirely, and in this final episode, give Lucas a new trait that he shares in common with his voice actor Chris Evans: he has a great ass.

— The man Wallace meets in France — and finally feels sparks with! — is his boyfriend from the comics, Mobile. Mobile is an off-screen character for most of the series, and all we really know about him is that he’s psychic. Notably, he’s not vegan; “he is psychic for his own reasons.”

— Near the end of the episode the song “Scott Pilgrim” by Plumtree plays. This song is integral to the Scott Pilgrim mythos, as it was the inspiration for the entire series. It also plays early in the movie, and Scott wears a Plumtree shirt at one point in both the comics and the film.

— The credits to this final episode include a dedication “To our friend Doug Sherwood.” Doug Sherwood, who passed away early this year, is an integral figure in the Scott Pilgrim mythos, serving as a production assistant on the last two volumes of the comic and working an unspecified role on the movie as well.

— There are quite a few significant plot lines from the latter half of the comics that didn’t make it into the movie due to time, and while Scott Pilgrim Takes Off made it clear early on that it wasn’t going to be a straight adaptation of what came before, I’m still surprised that a few of those plots never resurfaced in the series in some way. Notably, while Kim did get a spotlight episode, we still got far less of her than I’d expect given her prominent role in the last few volumes of the comics. Envy Adams is another character O’Malley revisits in the final volume of the comics and grants far more depth to, so I was surprised to see her reduced to a caricature in Takes Off. Finally, Stephen Stills comes out as gay in the final pages of the comics, and I’m really surprised that Takes Off didn’t take the opportunity to at least bring this change into a another medium, even if it didn’t have much time to explore it. With Stephen Stills and Julie having broken up before the series began, it wouldn’t have been hard to do.

— Now that I’ve finished the series, I’m excited to dive into the long list of spoiler-laden reviews and interviews I’ve been bookmarking since Takes Off debuted. One thing I’m really interested to hear is what sparked the idea of taking Scott out of the series and making Ramona the protagonist in his place. From my perspective, I think this is something O’Malley has been inching towards for a while; the second half of the Scott Pilgrim comics, once Envy is out of the picture, essentially move Ramona into a co-protagonist role anyway. Moreover, despite being his largest and and best-known work, Scott Pilgrim is kind of an anomaly in O’Malley’s oeuvre. Every other story he’s created — be it Lost at Sea, Seconds, Snotgirl, or even his early pre-Scott Kim Pine comics — have featured a female protagonist, which leads me to believe that O’Malley is just more interested and better connected to female protagonists in general. I’d love to hear his own reasoning, though.

Wow, I can’t believe this project is over already! I loved Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, and I loved getting to talk about it with all of you! This series, in all its forms, has meant so much to me in my life, and its a rare and unexpected joy to not only get to revisit it via new material, but for that new material to something original that I can apply the same obsessive attention to detail to as I have its previous incarnations. It’s been a privilege, and I can’t wait to watch Takes Off all over again a few more times.

Hopefully I’ll be able to publish something in the interim, but if not, I’ll see you all back here in a few weeks for my annual “Best of 2023” Year End lists! Take care!

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ABOUT

“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!

1. Aside from Envy and Stacey!