The End Review
By John Keegan
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It’s a fairly common storytelling device within the genre: take a character into the future, show how bad it will turn out to me, and then return the character back into normal time. Not only does it reveal something about the character in terms of his or her reaction to the revelation, but it increases the tension for the audience. Knowing how bad it could get gives the audience a reason to invest in the characters and their attempt to prevent it.
In this case, we don’t really know if this is a true vision of the future. Zachariah has been known to mess with Dean’s head before, and manipulation is the order of the day. Zachariah doesn’t seem sincere even when there’s plenty of reason for him to be sincere. Dean catches on to that pretty quickly, and does his best to make a choice that might change things up a bit. Of course, because Future Dean said that Dean would do exactly that, the audience is left with that familiar tension. Has that future been avoided, or will this just be a much harder road to the same bitter end?
