Zeb Larson reviews The Wicked + The Divine #11…

The end of Fandemonium. The end of Ragnarock. The end of the arc. The start of something else. Everything’s going to be okay.

Well, I’m not going to lie. I really did not see this coming, and I’ve got to give it to Gillen and McKelvie for springing the events of this issue on us in such horrifying fashion. If they stick with what they’ve done and really let the consequences emerge naturally, this will substantially change the dynamic of the whole series. This is going to be a review with a whole lot of spoilers, so I assume you’re only going to be reading this if you’re comfortable with that. Do not read on, otherwise: there’s a hell of a lot that goes down in this issue.

Laura walks home and thinks about the Pantheon, why she didn’t receive godhood, and her refusal to give up on any of the people she’s met. When she arrives home, she sees Ananke waiting for her. Elsewhere, Baphomet works himself up for his strike on Inanna. While the attack doesn’t go initially as planned and Inanna gets a few good hits in, Baphomet eventually gets the upper hand even as Inanna taunts him. Ananke talks to Laura and invites her into the Pantheon as Persephone. For a split second, Laura is happy and about to sing before it’s all gone. Ananke snaps her fingers and leaves Laura’s burning body on the lawn. When her parents come running, Ananke murders them too and leaves.

That was a sucker punch of an issue. When it looked like Laura got her wish, I was rolling my eyes. Then, in literally a finger’s snap, it was gone. Of course, it’s possible that Laura/Persephone has survived all of this. After all, Persephone is the goddess who went down to the underworld and returned, and her narration indicates that she has some kind of consciousness after death. But that would really cheapen the blow if it turned out that Ananke made Laura a god, intended to murder her (Ananke’s words) and failed, and then murdered her parents while sparing her. She kinda needs to die to keep the stakes high, or there needs to be some other fantastical explanation for her return. Her survival would also raise too many questions about Luci’s death. Ananke has the motive to make her a goddess, after all: she can’t intervene against mortals normally, but once Laura has that whiff of divinity, Ananke can act. So the question is why Ananke feels the need to kill her?

You could argue that Laura was just a device that Gillen and McKelvie used to explore the Pantheon and then discarded. We certainly didn’t get to dig deep enough into her character, beyond her persistently frustrating desire for godhood. Yet Laura did allow us to explore the dangers of fame and godhood. We’ve heard all of these entreaties and speeches about the pain of dying so young and the dangers of being around divine beings, but that threat has either been confined to characters we didn’t know (the judge) or other gods (Luci). The dangerous aspect of the Pantheon has now been brought firmly and totally into view.

What comes next? I have no idea. Perhaps Persephone is going to guide us through the Underworld, a step closer to the actual home of the Pantheon. This coincides with the news that the series is due to be adapted by Universal for television. Big changes are coming. I can’t wait to see more.

Zeb Larson

https://youtu.be/SNwsAgrJ91c?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng