Summary
The Gift‘s finale is by no means perfect, but it’s about as fitting and as poignant as it needed to be for long-time fans to be rewarded for their dedication.
This recap of The Gift season 3, episode 8 contains major spoilers.
It’s a tough ask to satisfyingly end any show, much less one as dense and sprawling as The Gift. The final episode of the final season has the unenviable task of not just closing off the plot but finding a fitting thematic resolution in all the esoterica; a series that has always been about humanity has to eventually decipher all its symbols, after all, and if The Gift season 3, episode 8 doesn’t quite manage to tie up every loose end and answer every question, it at least manages to provide some kind of emotional reward for long-time fans who have stuck with the whole thing.
The introduction of Atiye’s daughter, Aden, is undeniably the axis around which this final season spins. Nevertheless, though, there are plenty of secret languages, symbols, clues, high-tech globes, historical sites, trees of life, and ancient cities. The Gift has always had a fascination with the past; the second season looped it back around to potential futures, and this final one meets both in the middle.
The figure of Melek factors in heavily. One of those classic characters that doubles as a walking retcon, it’s not always easy to buy into the idea of one figure being responsible for grandly orchestrating all of the previous season’s events. Melek’s ties to an ancient family of protectors is, though, fittingly thematic; her ties to the same organization to which Serder answered lends coherence of a kind; her responsibility for the massacre of seer Umut’s family and the molding of Aden’s young mind give her villainess bona fides. All the requisite parts are there, if in a slightly cliched form.
The question of whether the past will repeat itself weighs heavily. Snippets of an ancient ritual enacted again and again in Aden’s mind give way to an alternate path; fate is not final, history doesn’t always repeat, the end can be averted. In place of the end, though, what is there? A new beginning, perhaps? Can one take solace in knowing that there are other timelines, other realities, in which different things come to pass? It might help in grappling with the death of someone like Ozan, whose arc has been one of the most fleshed-out and integral throughout all three seasons. In this timeline, this reality, he’s dead. The fact that maybe elsewhere he isn’t is a comforting thought.
If one could see this, see all possibilities, then they’d surely be the most powerful being imaginable; this is what the show contemplates primarily through the Eye of Horus, an Egyptian symbol of all-seeing divine omniscience. If the eye of the seer can see past and future, perhaps it can also see all the universe’s binaries; good and evil, male and female, dark and light. In that hypothetical midpoint is Aden, perfectly balanced. (As all things should be! Gah, couldn’t help it.)
The Gift season 3, episode 8 touches on all kinds of potential theories, from aliens to alternate universes and ancient prophecies fulfilled. Many of these things remain suggestions, things to ponder, rather than outright justifications for what we’re seeing. That’s the deliberate ambiguity that the show has trafficked in since the beginning, and you can’t be mad at it for keeping it up all the way to the end. What it does find, though, is a hopeful human component that cuts through all the esoterica and nails something essential about all of us. We’d all like a second chance, the opportunity to do things differently. Most of us are denied it. But perhaps, in love and connection to others, we can always create a new beginning for ourselves.
