Guess what? We’re finally done with Divergent! Or at least we will be, once we learn what everyone’s doing two and a half years after the story ended, which is the obligatory move for all fiction series since Moses descended from the mountain with the stone tablets inscribed with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Thou shalt giveth children unto thy characters, who are now adults, and they shall have dumb names.
Well, at least we don’t have to worry about learning that Tris and Four have children named, like, Thirteen and Sassafras or whatever, like how Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and even fucking Fifty Shades of Grey ended in their completely necessary epilogues. Because Tris died.
Epilogue: Two and a Half Years Later
Ugh, seriously, fuck you, J K Rowling.
This could all have been avoided across so many subsequent, completely unrelated books, but NOOO we had to learn that Harry has three kids and Neville’s a plant professor.
We open with a scene where Tobias picks up Evelyn to take her back to Chicago, which has changed so much in the past two years that “I don’t see the harm in her coming back, and neither does she”. Tobias explains that people frequently come and go from Chicago, including people from the fringe. Tobias does not explain how the economy recovered enough to allow for social mobility from such rampant poverty, but I’m sure it had something to do with serums.
“How are you?” she says.
“I’m . . . okay,” I say. “We’re scattering her ashes today.”
I glance at the urn perched on the backseat like another passenger. For a long time I left Tris’s ashes in the Bureau morgue, not sure what kind of funeral she would want, and not sure I could make it through one. But today would be Choosing Day, if we still had factions, and it’s time to take a step forward, even if it’s a small one.
Jesus, remember when these books were about factions? They’ve been irrelevant in the plot for so long, this is less symbolic and more #throwbackthursday, which I assume is an awkward tone to set for scattering ashes.
Evelyn asks what living without factions is like and Tobias replies that it’s “very ordinary”, which I’m sure will be a meaningful explanation to a middle-aged woman who lived her entire life not doing that. Tobias also explains that some scientists are trying to restore the Chicago river and Lake Michigan, which you might recall were partially drained, on purpose, for reasons. Probably serums.
“Hey, let’s partially drain one of these.” “What purpose does that even-” “SERUMS. FACTIONS. GENETICS. JESUS, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”
Anyway, I bet you’re curious what all our favorite characters have been up to for the last two and a half years! Right? Well, remember that almost all of them died, so, we’re left with, uh…
“George says he needs some help training a police force,” Evelyn says.
[Shauna] has a better wheelchair now, one without handles on the back, so she can maneuver it more easily.
Zeke and Amar are policemen
There are, of course, plenty of familiar names left. Although a lot of them are either still so relatively new to the story (replacing those that didn’t make it) that I never had time to care about what they were involved with then, much less now:
Cara [works] in the laboratories [in] a small segment of the Department of Agriculture
Continuing Neville’s proud tradition of “friend who gets a line in the flashforward to make sure we all know they work with plants”
And sometimes not even Tobias seems to be able to care about them.
Matthew works in psychiatric research somewhere in the city— the last time I asked him, he was studying something about memory.
As for characters we actually care about (editor’s note: ????), we learn that:
- Tobias is an assistant to Johanna Reyes, who is now a politician, and he hopes to be one too, someday
- Christina works with a company that relocates people from the fringe to the city
- Caleb works in the Department of Agriculture with Cara. Tobias says he made his peace with Caleb, but his similarities to Tris are “not enough of her, but [are] also far too much”, which is fair
- Nobody knows where Marcus is. Tobias says that someone told him he left, and he didn’t care to ask where. Much like Allegiant did with any of the plots that Marcus was relevant in.
- Peter went to Milwaukee and nobody cares
But none of those are even the most shocking change that’s taken place in the last two and a half years, and I know you’re all dying to learn what happened to…
The trains.
the train is coming. It charges toward us on the polished rails, then squeals as it slows to a stop in front of the platform.
THE TRAINS STOP NOW.
After learning that the flipping trains have experienced more development than most of the characters in this series, the group goes to the top of the John Hancock building, where they will spread Tris’s ashes by zipline, which even the black hole in my brain that is supposed to have feelings about Divergent has to admit is pretty fucking badass.
Although, like all of Divergent, it’s about 10% things happening and 90% people narrating what the things mean. Sometimes to the point where they forget to pay any attention to the things themselves.
I understand why she did it this way, face-first— it was because it made her feel like she was flying, like she was a bird.
I can still feel the emptiness beneath me, and it is like the emptiness inside me, like a mouth about to swallow me.
I realize, then, that I have stopped moving. The last bits of ash float on the wind like gray snowflakes, and then disappear.
Yeah, that seems about par for the course.
Since I was young, I have always known this:Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage.
But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.
You know who else mends stuff? Editors.
Tagged: allegiant, books, Divergent, Four, Tobias, Tris, Veronica Roth, YA, young adult
