Now That Season Three Is Over, And Both The Lottienats And Lottielees Were Fucked, Can We All Just Hold

Now that season three is over, and both the lottienats and lottielees were fucked, can we all just hold hands? We're all just freaks who like lesbianism with religious symbolism. Super extremely important gay dissertation under the cut.

I think the argument on whether or not Laura Lee or Nat meant more to Lottie is kind of stupid, considering they've both been shown to have a lot of value in her story. Laura Lee was the sort of precursor to the wilderness, she's the one who started all of that in Lottie. Meanwhile, Nat was "always its favorite"; the one who was at the center of the wilderness for Lottie, she was the sort of chosen one. I also think Laura Lee and Nat work as interesting foils in Lottie's overall story. Laura Lee represents complete unwavering belief and faith, while Nat represents doubt and skepticism. Throughout the first two seasons (before the massive nosedive in season three happened) we saw Lottie navigating the thin line between faith and doubt, and Laura Lee and Nat are the physical embodiments of those key elements.

Due to these different roles Laura Lee and Nat played they both offered different but very needed things to Lottie in their respective moments. In season one Laura Lee offered Lottie what she so desperately wanted, belief and validation. Lottie has always felt insecure and unsure about herself, especially in regard to her schizophrenia. Laura Lee, for better or for worse, intensely validated Lottie. So much so she convinced her she was a prophet touched by god. Laura Lee offered her comfort and belief, which is something Lottie had never received from anyone else throughout her life. Jump to season two we can see now that the way the girls have deified Lottie is beginning to weigh heavily on her. She doesn't know what to do with it, she's not even fully sure of herself, and definitely not sure enough to lead an entire group of girls who are desperate for something to believe in. But then there's Nat who disagrees with her and challenges her at every possible moment, she doesn't deify her, she just views her as a teenage girl. Even if it was frustrating, it's what Lottie needed in that moment, a break from being put on a pedestal. Which is why one of the only scenes in season two where we see Lottie just acting like a teenage girl, separate from all of the wilderness politics, is with Nat in the bathtub scene. It's also a contributing factor to why she ultimately crowns Nat as their new queen.

-I realize in season three the girls stopped believing in Lottie and instead begin to dehumanize and demonize her. However, as we see in episode eight, Nat doesn't call her crazy when she wants to stay like everyone else does and instead tries to reason with her and talk to her like what she is, a scared teenage girl.

With all of this in mind, I'm just incredibly mad at how they handled Lottie's character in season three. They did not mention Laura Lee once, and they did not give Lottie's connection with Nat the exploration it deserved. I was very pissed at how they handled her death; it could have been a very interesting final exploration of her relationship to faith and doubt, but instead we got no real insight into her mental state. Lottie deserved some kind of post-death scene, not necessarily a plane scene, but a scene where she confronted the wilderness and what it really meant to her. She could have been met with Laura Lee and Nat who were the physical embodiments of her faith and skepticism, and seemingly two of the most important people to her. Instead, they stripped out all of the nuance from her character and left what's honestly a quite harmful portrayal of schizophrenia. So yeah, with that being said, we should all just kiss and hold hands because this season absolutely massacred Lottie's character.