Today's bit of heartbreaking XL sadness ... don't read further if you are out of kleenex.
One think I love about this show is all the foreshadowing and the repeated motifs, like XL's lonely walks away from XY into the darkness and death and killing of his life. I tear up just thinking about it. One thing I noticed early on, and thought was cool, was those scenes where we see XL teleports or goes invisible (don't know which it is) in a swirl of smoke and snow. I thought it was such a cool effect and fit the character perfectly. I watched this video on Twitter and saw it again, here at the very end.
XL and FFB video
And it suddenly struck me. That's the last thing that XY will be able to remember of XL at the end of the series. He killed their poison love bug connection, never allowed her to realize her love for him, erased his images from the mirror and did his best to distance himself. He leaves no body to mourn, and the place he fell is inaccessibly toxic. He will fade from existence, from memory, just like that image, into a swirl of snow and disappear. Even if you hadn't read the novel, or spoilers, Zoe Quin and her team have been telling you XL's fate from the very beginning. It just stabs me in the heart again.
My only hope is Fang Feng Bei, and I'm sure novel readers will come along and crush that fragile flower. ?
Fang Feng Bei was weaker than XL. He asked XY to remember him and wrote his name on her palm. He taught her archery and even if she densely can't figure out he commissioned the bow, his blood activated it. How can she ever pull a bow, and that bow in particularly, and not remember Fang Feng Bei? And the crescent moon on her wrist is a reminder of the 37 years they spent watching the moon together.
Oh no. I feel the loss of her bow coming. XL truly is a bastard.