Of Roosters and Lions...or, why I haven't even seen the A2a finale and my heart is already broken

[qthewetsprocket]

When I was three or four years old, I saw a film in preschool about a rooster who lost his voice. He had a really pretty voice and he loved it, but one day he got laryngitis and couldn't crow. He did everything he could to try to make it better - the image of him lowering his roostery construction-paper-head down for a hopeful drink of water is seared into my memory forever - but nothing worked. And I don't remember if he ever got his voice back or not, because I was crying so hard they had to take me out of the room before the film was over.

My teachers and grandparents were all like, 'Wtf?? The damn rooster's not even real, it's imaginary, it's made from shapes of colored paper'. Eventually I calmed down, but for the rest of the day, whenever I remembered the poor rooster trying to make his voice better with a drink of water that was never going to help, I started bawling again.

This? Is like that. Only much, much worse.



In the first 3x08 trailer, we see Alex walk up to a scarecrow in the middle of a field and pull an epaulet number off its coat: 6620, the same number as the young cop who's been haunting her for the whole of s3:

Click to view

And in the second one, we see Gene Hunt in the Lancashire field where the young cop is buried, looking as though the place is hauntingly familiar.

Click to view

So...why does Gene know this field, and how did the epaulet number get there?

I keep thinking of what Louise said in 3x04, about going undercover in the Staffords' lair:

"It wasn't my choice to be in there alone; I thought I'd have more backup. I went in there terrified that I'd be uncovered, and when I was, I didn't back down. It's like I was pushed in there and abandoned! And now I'm out, I want to leave it all behind me."

I think those are the exact words the young cop would say if he could speak.

I think that sometime in 1953, Gene Hunt - a young nineteen year old copper, fresh out of training - got into a situation he couldn't get out of. Maybe it was a random call...but given the amount of epmahsis this series has placed on police solidarity, and cops being let down by their department - Viv and Louise in particular - I think he was sent in undercover, without any backup. And I think he was rumbled.

From what we've seen, it's not too hard to guess what happened next. They dragged him out to the middle of the field, miles from anywhere; miles from help. They tied him to the scarecrow pole. I don't know what they did to his head, whether they beat him or shot him, but when they were finished, they left him there to die.

For hours.

That's why we keep hearing crows whenever the young cop appears: it's the last sound he ever heard as he hung there dying, waiting for backup and help that never came.

I've had that image in my head ever since I saw the trailer. And it's why I nearly burst into tears on my way home from getting dinner, making everyone wonder why a grown woman was blubbing into her cheeseburger bag.

Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah have said that they wanted to make sure the ending wasn't 'unguessable'. I really, really don't want such a terrible thing to have happened to Gene, our Guv, our beloved Manc Lion...but judging from the look on his face when he's back in the Lancashire field, I think it's probably not too far off the mark.



In a few days, I'll probably be able to appreciate how elegantly brutal this is from a writing perspective (which it is), and to mull over the Christian symbolism and the parallels with Aslan the Lion in the Narnia books. But right now? My heart is fucking broken, because he was NINETEEN goddammit he was only a BABY and they hurt him and left him out in a field all alone to die.

All I know now is that whatever Heaven Gene Hunt ends up in? In my own personal canon, he will always have a pet rooster who drives everyone nuts with its beautiful crowing voice.

Q