I Feel You

Not the full finale I wanted but still a good ending

Mildly SPOILERY for the season finale of Sense8.

Sense8 is over. Maybe? I don't know but here we are at the official series ending. Maybe? No matter what we are here with a 151 minute wrap-up to the Netflix series created by The Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, a potent combination that gave us an interesting idea that we needed and still need in this world.

If you have never seen Sense8, the series is centered around a group of eight individuals around the world (Chicago, Nairobi, Mumbai, San Francisco, Berlin, Mexico City, Seoul and London) who are connected psychically. They are part of a new type of human being called Homo Sensorium or a Sensate. They are birthed by a woman named Angelica Turing when she committed suicide. The series is both the individual stories of these eight characters and their fight from independence from being hunted by the Biologic Preservation Organization or BPO led by the mysterious Chairman and another Sensate who wants control. This Sensate is known as Milton "Whispers" Brandt and he wants to use Sensate mind-controlled drones as assets but secretly wants to gain immortality. All of this is occurring while Jonas Maliki from Angelica's original group is an unknown as an ally or foe and other clusters are on their own missions for power and/or survival. Oh, and a group of 8 Sensates are called a cluster by the way.

The two season (and a Christmas special) series is a wild romp around the globe with cool visuals and engaging connected story lines. The Sense8 cluster connect in different ways and use their life skills to help each other. They are mostly separated physically until the end of season 2 where they have to come together when one of their cluster, Wolfgang, is captured by BPO. This is where the series ended and would have ended if not for the groundswell of fan support on the internet. Netflix had to give us something to satisfy us. The Sense8 group is together except for Wolfgang and this is where the finale starts off.

Will, Riley, Capheus, Lito, Sun, Nomi, Wolfgang and Kala.

The series finale pretty much wraps up the questions brought up by the series. It also fully fleshes out the motivations of some of the non-Sense8 characters like Whispers and Jonas. It was a good cap to the end of stories but I got the feeling watching it that some was rushed and it was definitely compacted to fit what they were allowed to budget and time wise. I'm upset that we didn't have more- more emotional scenes, more tension with Lila and her evil cluster, Whispers escaping and being on the run for some episodes, more character development for minor characters and I'm very upset we didn't get an Aunt Kirsty fighting BPO soldiers scene. Very upset.

Even with all of those wants, I still enjoyed the finale. Things are tied up and ends on a beautiful note- a wedding. All the characters and the humans they have connected with are together at last. The Sensate connection is between this special group of humans but it also has spread to homo sapiens allied to this cluster. Every day in reality we are getting more connected. Not psychically but through technological means. I can learn skills from people in China, I have listened to my friends DJ in another American city multiple times and more importantly is I have connected with people I would not have in the past because of the web that humans are creating now. 

We are almost all living quasi-Sensate existences at this moment in time and it's beautiful. And this show is beautiful because it shows both that we have differences that we can overcome to love someone and differences that we can learn from to make us better. I also don't think that it is a coincidence that this message is so felt right now. Racism, homophobia, trans-phobia, misogyny and other ills are affecting society both in the USA and globally. This show takes all of that and makes it personal and allows us to really think through what is going on and how it affects people around us, strangers and friends and family. There is a reason the cast looks the way it does and the message is clear- we need to be better and we need each other to do that. 

Farewell, family.

Sense8 is about a different type of human- a human that we can all aim to become in some way.

Sean Fields is an aspiring writer and has been in the education field for more than a decade. He works mostly with teenagers nowadays which both keeps him well informed on pop culture and makes his hair turn grayer daily. He has a few blogs but is currently focused on this one and this other one. You can also find him on Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram, if you want to be entertained or infuriated.