Sense8’s ‘Amor Vincit Omnia’ shows the power of… | Little White Lies

Not Movies

Sense8’s Amor Vincit Omnia’ shows the pow­er of pos­i­tiv­i­ty in adversity

11 Jun 2018

Words by Roxanne Sancto

Group of people laughing and shouting excitedly.
Group of people laughing and shouting excitedly.
The fea­ture-length finale gave fans, the char­ac­ters and the Wachowskis the clo­sure they all deserved.

Fol­low­ing the abrupt can­cel­la­tion of Netflix’s Sense8 after the show’s sec­ond sea­son, there was no way fans were going to let their clus­ter go with­out a fight – and they won. The recent fea­ture-length finale gave fans, the char­ac­ters and the Wachowskis the clo­sure they all deserved: the Sen­sates came togeth­er once more to tie loose ends, sup­port each oth­er in their mutu­al quest for peace in diver­si­ty and, of course, engage in their tele­path­ic orgies, this time with new guest play­ers blown-away by the mind-expand­ing experience.

Many fans feared it would prove impos­si­ble to wrap up such a dense sto­ry­line with so many pro­tag­o­nists in a dig­ni­fied man­ner, but although the finale felt rushed in some instances, the mys­ter­ies sur­round­ing the homo-sen­so­ri­ums and those wish­ing them harm were resolved in a man­ner that grant­ed us clo­sure, even find­ing space to devel­op indi­vid­ual sto­ry­lines. More­over, Amor Vincit Omnia’ did exact­ly what the show has always done best: rein­force the idea that love real­ly does con­quer all.

As some­one appre­cia­tive of, but not usu­al­ly into action-packed shows in a sci­ence-fic­tion­al set­ting, I was ini­tial­ly sur­prised by Sense8’s abil­i­ty to draw me into its world and, at times, incon­sis­ten­cies. Its pilot episode pre­sent­ed me with all the things I liked – diver­si­ty, humour, cul­ture and a visu­al style so beau­ti­ful it brought tears to my eyes – and many things I didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly dis­like but wasn’t entire­ly inter­est­ed in either. For one, I antic­i­pat­ed the Heroes prob­lem – a sto­ry­line so rich with char­ac­ters that they even­tu­al­ly lose their essence, caus­ing indi­vid­ual sto­ries, and the gen­er­al nar­ra­tive arc, to fall flat.

At times, the over­all Sense8 expe­ri­ence could be accused of this issue, but as is true with the show’s oth­er, minor flaws, these things are eas­i­ly and grate­ful­ly over­looked, sim­ply because it is impos­si­ble to nit-pick a series that exudes love, pos­i­tiv­i­ty and tol­er­ance so pow­er­ful­ly, that this clus­ter’ feel­ing becomes almost – if not entire­ly – tan­gi­ble. You’ll for­give almost any­thing when your heart is aglow with such a strong sense of love and uni­ty. Even unnec­es­sary violence.

The John Woo effect is the only oth­er weak spot in Sense8’s finale. With more bul­lets than their guns can pos­si­bly hold and more bod­ies than excus­able for their quest to save Wolf­gang (Max Riemelt) and destroy Whis­pers (Ter­rence Mann), the Sen­sates have become cold in their killings. Giv­en their cir­cum­stances, how­ev­er, one can relate to their hav­ing gone into sur­vival mode with­out fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion as to who might have been star­ing down the bar­rel of the gun. After years of hav­ing been hunt­ed like rab­bits, every­one even remote­ly linked to Whis­pers, BPO and their ide­olo­gies has become the ene­my and, at this stage, even the empa­thy the show so open­ly thrives on can­not save those who come into the Sen­sates’ line of fire.

And this is where it’s impor­tant to recog­nise the metaphor of these blood­baths – defeat­ing their ene­mies in this man­ner is not just an act of sur­vival on their part; more so, it is the killing of the ide­olo­gies the organ­i­sa­tion rep­re­sent­ed and, as such, can be con­strued as an act of kind­ness for human­i­ty at large. Is it naïve of the Wachowskis to sug­gest that elim­i­nat­ing one school of thought could result in soci­ety embrac­ing diver­si­ty through kind­ness and empa­thy? Of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is a fan­ta­sy that keeps many of us going.

Sense8 focused on the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty in a man­ner that bare­ly anoth­er show has done before by dig­ging deep into its char­ac­ters’ psy­ches and exam­in­ing their respec­tive cul­tures, thus giv­ing view­ers a sol­id under­stand­ing of the peo­ple and envi­ron­ment that shaped their expe­ri­ences and (in)ability to stay true to them­selves. Next to the show’s over­whelm­ing por­tray­al of love, this is what sad­dens me most about Sense8’s can­cel­la­tion: although the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty doesn’t owe the straight mass­es any form of edu­ca­tion or expla­na­tion, the series had the poten­tial to inspire com­pas­sion and tol­er­ance from the intol­er­ant through its depic­tion of cul­tur­al per­spec­tives (Lito’s Mex­i­can home-base, for instance) and the inti­ma­cy with which the character’s sto­ries were told. And this is the kind of con­tent we des­per­ate­ly need for the TV spec­trum to become inclu­sive and as beau­ti­ful as the peo­ple so under­rep­re­sent­ed by the industry.

As the series drew to a close fol­low­ing Nomi (Jamie Clay­ton) and Amanita’s (Freema Agye­man) spec­tac­u­lar wed­ding atop the Eif­fel Tow­er and the Sen­sates and their respec­tive sapi­ens retreat­ed to their hotel rooms for one last orgas­mic meet­ing of minds and bod­ies, one char­ac­ter in par­tic­u­lar voiced a sen­ti­ment that sums up the les­son the Wachowskis have been relay­ing through­out the entire­ty of the show.

Sand­wiched between his wife Kala (Tina Desai) and her fel­low sen­sate Wolf­gang in a glo­ri­ous dis­play of pure love and sheer eroti­cism, Rajan (Purab Kohli), a rel­a­tive­ly con­ser­v­a­tive man raised on India’s preva­lent­ly homo­pho­bic mind­set, breath­less­ly exclaims: My God. I didn’t think such things were pos­si­ble.” Oh, but they are. We are all capa­ble of this kind of love for our fel­low human beings, regard­less of their gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or race, whether on a phys­i­cal or emo­tion­al lev­el – we just need to be open to it, and this open­ness starts with empathy.

You might like