The season just concluded, with a satisfying and only slightly open-to-interpretation ending. The biggest reflections that the series left me with were on the statements it made about the flaws in our current systems for achieving justice, and the power that certain individuals can have, within their roles, to help women, and in particular indigenous women.
In the absence of real justice, and in confronting the realities of a system that looks the other way, in the interest of corporate greed, the marginalized, and often victimized, group and the two main characters in law enforcement, sympathetic to this group, have an unspoken understanding of what real justice looks like. In talking about this with my dad, he pointed out that this is vigilante justice, but that at the same time, that is what superheroes are doing, often in systems that are not working. Maybe this, in a sense is a radical imagining of the power of indigenous women to fight back against the violence, that so often goes unpunished, against them.
I believe the director/writer was intentional in not focusing many of the shots on the indigenous women who had different jobs, and were literally living on the margins of the community, to illustrate that they are not often considered or perceived. Coming from Mexico to the US, the director/writer notices this same kind of lack of consideration/perception, when she sees immigrants from Mexico in similar positions, and I think that she points out this parallel in one of her interviews. This outward “weakness” which can leave this group vulnerable and without access to real justice, is also a power, in this imagining. They were uniquely able to figure out who murdered Annie, where, and to carry out their own form of justice.
There is an aspect of magical realism all throughout the show, with the main characters having to contend with ghosts that can invade their reality, sometimes to the extent that you as the viewer do not necessarily know what is real and what is imagined. One interpretation, or story some could tell is that it was “Annie” or a spirit older than her that took revenge on her murderers. There is the real word explanation, as well, that we saw shots of. But who is to say what story one should ascribe to. There is the story that Jodi Foster’s character tells at the end, to the investigators. I am still thinking about all this, but I guess the idea is that we tell ourselves and others stories for different reasons. Protecting people is definitely a major reason for telling stories.
