Bring Tech Back - Blog Posts

I distinctly remember the first time I watched "Spoils of War/Ruins of War" (the day the episodes aired) and we got to this scene:

... and my first thought literally was a surprised "Huh, wonder why they focused on Tech here. I'd have thought they'd linger on Romar. 🤔🤷‍♀️" It just seemed like such an odd choice at the time.

Fast forward to now, post-"Plan 99," and this scene is one of the top reasons why I firmly believe the writers always intended to bring Tech back (even if they didn't end up doing so in this show).

I mean, really, why else would the directors/writers make the conscious decision to have Romar matter-of-factly talk about survival and then keep the focus on Tech here, instead of Romar?? It's not like, in-universe, Tech needed to learn that he's also a survivor like Romar - Tech is already self-confident enough to know that about himself already; and if the point of the scene is that Tech has discovered more common ground with Romar, that just reiterates that Tech already knows he's a survivor. So obviously the message was for us as the audience. The fact that this comes after two episodes of the show proving beyond any doubt that Tech is a WARRIOR, not "just" the brains of the team, and has him fight through and survive insane situations while injured, hammers home the link for us between "Tech" and "surviving."

But what about "subversion of expectations," you may ask? What if the point of this scene (not to mention the events of "Faster" and "The Crossing," just to name a few others) was to build up the expectation that Tech IS indeed a survivor against all odds, all for the sake of highlighting the bitter irony that Tech is the one who ultimately doesn't survive?

To that I say: "subversion of expectations" really only works well if the expectation is proven completely wrong. So long as there is any room for doubt as to a given outcome, the subversion can't stick. If the writers intended for the "survivor" angle to ultimately just be a misdirect and a cruel irony, they needed to follow through and prove well beyond ANY reasonable doubt that Tech actually died. (That means things like a body or a reliable witness (not a villain with ulterior motives); not to mention things like not having even the villain "witness" be deliberately vague about the issue, and not using the supposedly dead character as one potential red herring for the identity of a new unknown character.) And since the writers very much did NOT take the time to irrefutably confirm Tech's death, I cannot read the above scene as subversive foreshadowing. Rather, I still read it as a major hint that the writers wanted Tech to survive - or, bare minimum, wanted to leave the potential open for his return.

So, whenever I need a bit of hope that Tech is still alive out there somewhere, I just revisit this scene and remember that Tech, too, is a survivor ❤️❤️❤️