Every time Owen expresses his real feelings, they’re at all times directed towards Maddy. Although their conversations are few and much between, their platonic kinship imposed by the sequence lends them to share deep talks about their lives and fears about themselves. Maddy shares with him that she’s homosexual, and Owen claims doesn’t know what he likes. His non-defined ace, trans self, responds, “I feel I like TV exhibits.” Owen additionally shares that he fears having no soul, as if he’s consistently been suffocating; if hypothetically he opened up his innards, there can be nothing of substance.
These phrases come into play throughout a pivotal second in Owen’s life the place, throughout their maturity, years after Maddy’s disappearance, she returns in assured, gender-non-conforming clothes, much like Tara’s within the sequence. She informs Owen that they’re actually Tara and Isabel from the present. Their lives have been uprooted by the occasions of the season 5 finale the place their nemesis, Mr. Melancholy (who seems like a cross-breeding between the enduring Man within the Moon face and the nightmarish Mac Tonight from the ’90s McDonald’s advertisements), poisoned them with Luna Juice. The fiend additionally buried them alive and solid their souls to the realm they reside in now.
Throughout an unbelievable monologue scene powerfully carried out by Brigette Lundy-Paine, Maddy pours their soul into describing the hell they endured to get to and from the realms on the opposite aspect of the TV display. Maddy did this so she will persuade Owen that he’s Isabel and their deep conversations about him feeling buried alive was the reality. In a Matrix-like “Pink Tablet, Blue Tablet” situation, additionally a hella trans allegory, Owen rebukes Maddy’s speculation. He lives out the cursed life permeated by his dad’s projection of masculinity.
The Ending
I Noticed the TV Glow’s psychologically horrific finale bridges its trans themes right into a profoundly unsettling but poignant bow. Owen’s obsession with The Pink Opaque and with Maddy helped him discover a deep-rooted connection and uncover his true self whereas distracting him from the isolating mundanity and devastation surrounding his household. Nevertheless, his lack of embracement and belief in Maddy’s attain at each alternative failed him.
Owen ultimately lives out the best worry skilled by queer offspring of estranged mother and father: they turn out to be their father. As time passes, Owen explains that he acquired his household residence after his dad’s passing, ridding himself of all his childhood belongings, together with his beloved Pink Opaque movies Maddy gifted him. Owen’s tastes differ to suit the masculine expectations he units for himself, upgrading his life to suit into conventional, cisgendered modernity.
Upon watching The Pink Opaque on streaming by way of his new flatscreen, all his love for the sequence from his youth and the nostalgic satisfaction of watching an episode throughout airtime are gone. The enchanted love he as soon as had as a toddler upon his first obsession vanishes as he watches with discontent, admitting how embarrassed he feels. Contemplating that his soul is simply too far gone from embracing any ideas of his transness, so too does this have an effect on his ideas towards the present.
