American Gods - 'Come to Jesus'

"Let's have a story..."

And so it comes to an end; sort of. Perhaps less an end and more the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning.

  

Anansi makes suits for Wednesday and Shadow, and insists on telling them the story of Bilqis, who has adapted to survive throughout history, while envious and fearful men struggle to pull her down. Driven from her homelands (presumably in the Yemen) by kings, and from Iran by Ayatollahs, she comes to America not with her worshippers, but to find worshippers, only to be struck down by a more terrible enemy than any man: AIDS, and the fear of sex which haunted the 90s because of it. At her lowest ebb, the Technical Boy offers her a way out; a new altar where worshippers can swipe left or right. So Bilqis is reborn and so she becomes one of the New Gods(1).

The moral of the story? Get yourself a queen.

"Hit me with your best shot..."

Thus, Wednesday takes Shadow to Kentucky(2) to meet Ostara, aka Easter, a chic and successful Old God riding the sugar high of her holiday thanks to its association with not only the modern, commercial Easter, but also with Jesus Christ. This brings us to what is likely to be one of the more controversial scenes in the series, as Shadow begins to realise that he is in a room full of people, virtually all of whom are, in fact, Jesus Christ(3). Wednesday tries to persuade the sceptical Ostara to join his cause, despite her current success, spinning her the story of Vulcan's murder at the hands of the New Gods and promising that with just a little withholding of her power, she could be truly worshipped again, instead of growing fat on the table scraps of later powers.

While they are talking, Laura arrives with Mad Sweeney. Ostara agrees to 're-life' Laura, but discovers that she cannot, because Laura died at the hand - or at least the design - of a god, leaving Laura to beat the name of the god who sent him out of Mad Sweeney while she attends to more unexpected visitors: Media, and one of the faceless 'children'. Media hints that Ostara has done well by her deal with the New Gods, and could do badly were she to break it, as the one faceless man splits into many, also disgorging the Technical Boy.

My one major regret about this season is that these faceless men failed to do
any finger snaps while circling Ostara.

Shadow talks to a particularly relaxed Jesus about belief, and how he has none, before joining Wednesday and Ostara on the lawn for the big showdown. As the New Gods dismiss him as unimportant, Wednesday draws down lightning to smite the faceless men, dedicating their deaths to Ostara and declaring his names to Shadow: Grimnir, Glad-o-War; Odin. Ostara flexes her own muscles to take back Spring and so blight the land with famine, and, what with one thing and another, Shadow Moon has become a believer.

And then Laura asks to speak to her husband, while in Wisconsin, Bilqis approaches the House on the Rock on some mysterious commission from the Technical Boy.

"Who's queen?"

Episode 8, 'Come to Jesus', brings the first season of American Gods to a close, and it's been quite a ride, full of sex and violence and as many aggressively, deliberately jarring jazz chords as Birdman. Opening pretty much just like the book, it then diverged to include more of Mad Sweeney, more of Bilqis, and much, much more of Laura Moon(4), as well as bringing in Vulcan out of nowhere. It's been more... full-on god than the opening of the book, using hyper-stylised cinematography and effects to portray the divine in contrast to the more commonplace look of the mundane. It's also expanded greatly on a lot of the background action, which is a common enough feature of visual media adaptations of books with a limited narrative viewpoint, and importantly has done this well, which is a lot less common.

It hasn't been perfect, but it's always been interesting, and I'm delighted that the second season is already confirmed. Here's hoping for a third, since that should just about round the story off.

(1) A part of the radical departure from the book, in which she scraped out her worship as a sex worker and was ultimately the victim of male aggression.

(2) Because of course Kentucky.

(3) Explained as the effect of a faith growing so large that it encompasses widely disparate worldviews which look on the same figure in very different ways.

(4) The sheer fact that so much of the heart of this series comes down to the foul-mouthed chemistry between two really quite unpleasant characters is kind of dizzying.