A word about Michael

Now that I've had time to poke around the responses to the Disco S2 finale, I want to respond to one line of criticism I've seen. There are some who feel the finale does Michael a disservice, since her existence, and Discovery’s, are made secret. I think that's an unfairly selective reading, given the accumulated weight of events and the way her story plays out:

•  Her achievements are recognized and celebrated by everyone who has personally experienced them.
• She turns out to have been the moving force of the entire, season-long story arc --  the person through whose agency every other event occurs. 
• Michael is accompanied into the future by people who willingly sacrifice their 23rd-century lives out of personal loyalty to her.
• Michael's relationships consistently humanize the story for us, and...
• Michael's relationships are two-way streets. 

That last point is very important, and relates to another criticism I've seen: that Michael's role fulfills the trope of the female black character who carries the emotional burdens of others. But Michael gets as good as she gives; others carry burdens that make it possible for her to grow and achieve. Unlike those who feel that Spock and Pike steal the show from Michael, I find that, to a large degree, they carry a lot of water for her. Michael pieces Spock back together, but he does exactly the same for her. And, while Pike's sojourn on Discovery helps him come to terms with his past (sitting out the Klingon war) and his future (his TOS destiny), it is through his insistent belief in the message of the Red Angel that Michael fulfills her destiny. It's Michael in whom he's been placing his faith all along, a fact that comes as no surprise by the time it's made explicit, because we've watched him come to know her and believe in her week by week. 

By the time we get to the end of the season, Michael, having confronted her sense of abandonment and despair and grappled with the reappearance of a dead parent, has overcome a Hamlet-like funk (which I suppose makes Spock Ophelia) and is ready to take center stage and bring the story to its heroic conclusion. She can do that because the people around her have supported her along the way. It's too big a stretch to say that, from a narrative point of view, Michael is being denied the recognition or the centrality due the hero. Her erasure and that of Discovery are necessitated by a convoluted story half a century in the making, and were inevitable from the start.

Where Michael's story is weakest in S2 is in her failure to connect with the series' regular characters, especially Tyler and Tilly, with both of whom she's supposed to have a special bond. That, I do attribute to the presence of Spock and Pike. They're the ones with whom Michael forges the deepest bonds this season. I'm not saying it was a bad choice to bring them into this story. They lift Discovery out of the weird, negative place Lorca left it (both the ship and the show). They take away the bad aftertaste of dysfunction and mistrust. But their presence comes at a price, and other characters pay it. That, too, is down to Michael's central role. It's an ensemble cast, but Michael is its heart, and everyone needs time with her. 

My sense is that the writers manage one exception, Saru, whose episode early in the season, as sketchy as it is, sets up an interesting dynamic for him going forward. Tyler doesn't fare as well; I have no idea what his journey has been about this season, other than working for the wrong guys, hanging around in the background a lot, and not really dealing with the massive shit he remains saddled with from S1. Tilly seems to have landed in comic-relief land as everyone's goofy, brilliant kid sister; her relationship with Michael advances not at all.

S2 has other problems, too. As in S1, we're given an intriguing antagonist, Control, who could have represented a deep, philosophical problem -- something about the moral danger of an unwitting act of creation, maybe? -- but...doesn't. Meanwhile, the deep, philosophical problem left over from S1, in the person of Mirror Georgiou (Do we all embody the potential for good and evil, or is there some inherently different nature in each? Can evil be redeemed? What role does forgiveness play, if any?), fades into frustrating ambiguity and cliched fetishwear.

I think from the outset, Disco intended to move its central characters out of TOS continuity; there’s no other explanation for the big canon issues raised by the spore drive tech from day one. But in the meantime, Disco juices the TOS time frame with a more inclusive, enlightened group of characters who should have been there from the start. I have my doubts about the leap to the future -- I can live without Voyager redux -- but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I think what the show needs more than anything else is to avoid bringing on any more major, single-season characters, so the regulars finally get a chance to take and hold center stage. All of them.