Valhalla is a State of Mind
LOST GIRL – Episode 413 – Dark Horse – SPOILERS ⁓
The book of prophecy left behind by the recently deceased Rosette informs Tamsin (Rachel Skarsten) that the portal through which Bo’s father will arrive on Earth is called a cinvat. Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) also reads the book, and discovers a prophesy that “Bo’s heart” is the only thing that will close the portal.
In Zoroastrianism, the cinvat is the bridge between the world of the living and the world of the dead. For the wicked it is a narrow passage and allows them to be more easily snatched by demons on their way across. (The demons attempt to drag them to the “house of lies”).
For those not wicked, the passage is wide, allowing them to pass easily across to the afterlife. Usually there is no traffic in the other direction.
Through the hand print on her chest, Bo (Anna Silk) can feel her father crossing the bridge. She also feels him trying to “bring out” the Dark Queen inside her, so she asks her grandfather Trick (Rick Howland) to tell her everything he knows about her parentage.
“When the Blood King’s daughter attacked the Dark to avenge her mother’s death,” Trick explains, “the King had to set an example to prove that his blood laws were infallible.” Then he slips into first person. “I had no choice but to hand her over to the Dark,” he continues. “I prayed she’d be executed. She wasn’t.” Aife (Inga Cadranel) spent years in the Dark’s dungeons where she eventually became pregnant with Bo, who inherited from her father the ability to draw life force (chi) from multiple victims and to transfer that chi to someone other than herself. Trick has no idea who Bo’s father might be.
From her mother, Bo inherited the blood of a Mage, and the Magi were an order of priests associated with Zoroastrainism. The dualism of that religion, as expressed by its founder Zarathustra, is consistent with the Fae’s sharp division between Light and Dark. Persia is also the likely location of the earthquake referred to by Trick in “Destiny’s Child” (episode 4.9).
Massimo (Tim Rozon) has eaten the Origin Seed and acquired all the powers of the Una Mens,. He has also captured Lauren (Zoie Palmer). With the idea in mind of handing Bo over to his mother, he shows up at the Dal looking for the succubus. Massimo kills Rainer (Kyle Schmid), but like the Una Mens, he acquires the powers of the Fae he kills, and absorbing Rainer’s foresight disorients Massimo. He leaves without doing any more damage.
Bo decides her primary job is to save Lauren, so she puts on the necklace Lauren gave her, and puts Dyson in charge of defending against the revenants coming out of the cinvat. Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) behaves like a proper wolf. Once he recognizes that Bo, not Trick, is the leader of the pack, his role becomes clear to him.
Following a flirtatious discussion with Trick, Evony (Emmanuelle Vaugier), the leader of the Dark, also goes to Lauren’s place to rescue her because she needs the Doctor to make her Fae again. Bo gets there first, and the duel that follows results in Evony’s death. Massimo pleads with Bo to revive his mother, so Bo uses Massimo’s life force to resurrect Evony, then kills Massimo with a sword, even though she could have killed him by drawing out all of his chi.
Lauren tells Bo: “I’m going to stay. Evony’s stable, and, you know, just Hippocratic oath and all that…You saw her, all vulnerable and human. And I kind of did this to her.” Bo says she gets that, and heads back to the Temple of the Women of the Horse to help battle her father’s revenants. When Bo arrives at the Temple, Kenzi is already walking toward the portal, having decided that only she can close it, because she is ‘Bo’s heart’.
In the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike closes the hellmouth and dies in the process.
The portal closes, all the revenants that have entered through it fall dead, and Kenzi does the same. Tamsin sprouts wings and attempts to convey Kenzi’s soul (and her entire body as well) to Valhalla, but Dyson finds the Valkyrie collapsed outside Valhalla’s gates. She tells him that Kenzi is “gone”, and Tamsin sounds and looks frightened. “What did you see?” he asks her, and gets no answer, but she does caution him not to let Bo find the other helskór.
As Dyson carries Tamsin away, the gates vanish and are replaced by a graffiti-lined alleyway It seems implied that Valhalla, Irkalia, et.al. are accessed by looking at reality in a different way.
In the final scene Bo places sunflowers on Kenzi’s grave, and from the tombstone we learn that Kenzi’s last name is Malikov and that she was born in 1991. Bo vows aloud that no one else will die on her watch.
Bo says, on her way into the cemetery: “We buried Rainer near the battlefield at Ancrum Moor. It only seemed right that he should rest with those who fought and died for him.” Ancrum Moor is 130 kilometers southeast of Glasgow, and was the site of an important battle in the Eight Years’ War between England and Scotland.
** — Revised. Originally published on 1 May 2014