[lazarus musical/talk of death bc...Lazarus musical] Listening to Heroes again this morning I got hit by something that makes 'the show was meant to make no sense if you hadn't seen the movie'' a very reasonable thing (spoilers inside for the movie and musical)

If you hadn't seen the movie, you don't know for sure that Newton's family is dead. You can understand why an immortal alien (who was made immortal due to something that was done ot him on Earth but I digress) might hold hope of seeing his family after so long!

But the musical doesn't REALLY tell us how bad the drought was back on his home planet but even if it had, okay, we don't know how much time has really passed since he got here etc maybe it's okay!

But the movie does a brief cut to his home planet (I think twice, actually) to show his family dying. iirc, we see one of one of the children dying in his wife's arms and a second of her dying crawling towards a projector of some kind, presumably the thing that let his race see Earth and all the water on it.

and why is this important? because it is the exact reason Marley is What She Is. Marley hereslf doesn't know she's dead (or well, stuck between worlds) until the end, and neither does Newton.

and it's why he's so gutted when she tells him he's the only one who can bring her peace, this girl who, when asked to prove she's here to help by telling him something true about himself he's never told anyone, tells him the story about his daughter.

Marley's role as proxy-daughter only really works if you know why the hope Newton clings to for his family back home truly is in vain. Without it, without the context of his family's real fate, Marley's role is just Creepy, and the end-Heroes,'speak some more and we'll travel on'-is just weird and uncomfotably funny, instead of sweetly melancholy.

tl;dr: you have to know this man lost his family but didn't see their bodies so has to believe he didn't to understand why a half-dead girl is A. Half-dead B. His salvation, even if it's not in an entirely happy way for either of them

(boy do I really want a proper DVD release so I can go over and over certain things like. I want to figure out if the fluid in the balloons was just white water, paint, or milk and the symbolism in whatever it is. it looks too viscous to be water but??. it's important bc of the sadly playful way Marley and Newton waterfight with it at the end so)

LOOK this show was made for weird meta which is My Jam so

(also I have been having thoughts about Ely being the real psychopomp, oddly, and how that's why she's the one who gains a chance at a Fresh Start in the most conventional sense)