Again, I want to know why!
I need to see what is motivating them.
I want to be clear: I ALSO want to know why! I ALSO want to know their motivations! But that's an issue with poor characterization, which is more of a criticism of the writing and presentation, not a litmus test on whether a theory on the story is or isn't correct. We can (and hopefully we will) still get characterization and explanations of why people are doing what they're doing. But given the shallow characterization, if the only answer is that everyone behaves like wooden board because they're just being puppeted by a godlike entity... I mean while that is an answer, I feel like that's kinda similar to when people criticize a game for having bad controls or bad menu system, and the creators respond that "it's bad on purpose for immersion reasons". Like... that might be true and might have some artistic merit... but being bad on purpose isn't exactly praiseworthy, right
?
Or at the very least, for it to be satisfying to me, than you at least have to have some characters be well written and contrast the bland ones to hint that the reason why these people aren't acting "right" is because of outside influence. A variation of this would be the episode of Star Trek Enterprise: Observer Effect. Two godlike entities possess various members of the Enterprise crew to observe how they react to facing a plague. Throughout the episode, they possess different people, and there's a noticeable change in the way they act since they've been possessed. Something like that could have been really compelling, where you can pick up some clues as to who is being manipulated. But we really haven't seen any hints to anything that nuanced.
He didn't go after Andrew when he was crossdressing, so that didn't seem to be what turned him on.
Proposes to Andrew and kisses him (with increasing intimacy) 3 times in the same night. That doesn't raise any red flags? He's quite clearly enjoying the power dynamic.
Some of the stuff could just be sex talk. But it's all really commanding and demanding submission.
And especially something like this. For pretending that Elena isn't Andrew, this is pretty explicitly telling Andrew to give up and stay Elena forever.
I dunno. There's enough of a running theme with how Nikos behaves, it feels like some kind of cross of a feminization/identity death/twinning fetish, with a bit of dominance sprinkled in.
Like, look at this response he has to when Elena still has signs that she's resisting being Elena:
He's disappointed. He's obsessed with Elena being Elena (hence my mention of an identity death fetish). He's not interested in lording over and taunting Andrew over the male life he's lost. He's getting off on successfully killing an identity. As to how he's so sure he can pull it off: we have to see.
And maybe you're right that the only solution is magical. I'd still say it needs foreshadowing, but I could see an argument made that Nikos prays to Aphrodite, and she's answering his prayers. Because fundamentally, Nikos has been the only winner in this whole story. But if that does end up being the reveal, that doesn't make Nikos any less of a monster.
From a story telling perspective, in this situation, magic is the best way for someone like Melissa to make a nerd like me shut up.
I'm gonna flip this around: If this whole thing was just goddess Aphrodite feminizing someone, would that really be a satisfying answer considering there's no clear motivations here? What is Aphrodite's relationship with any of these characters that makes that satisfying? What connection does she have with Andrew that feminizing him into Elena worthwhile? Why give Nikos seemingly everything he wants? Why put Marina through this torture?
It would literally be a deus ex machina. Effectively saying that the plot is so broken that the only answer to the questions of the plot is that god/magic/"it's all a dream" is at play. Those types of stories can work. In Batman the Animated Series, Over The Edge where Batgirl dreams that she dies, and Commissioner Gordon starts hunting Batman in a destructive way is an amazing episode because it deepens and progresses our understanding of Barbara's loyalties, as well as forces the watcher to consider some of the possible scenarios that could make the series incredibly dark. Perchance to Dream has Batman dream about if he'd never lost his parents and the story utilizes the fact that it's a dream to showcase Batman's mental endurance and determination. These kinds of stories can be satisfying, but the purpose needs to be beyond just being the twist of the story.
You compare early Shyamalan movies like Sixth Sense, where knowing the twist actually makes rewatching it interesting as you spot threads you didn't realize before (or West World season 1), compared to Shyamalan twists like Signs (or Westworld Season 2), where the twists doen't really add to the plot and might even make the story make less sense.
That's where I really struggle with adding a strong magical element. We're so far into the story and if we had an explaination that this was from magical influence, to me that just raises all sorts of questions as to why was magic able to do X but not Y? Like, let's say that Sofia and Eva are magically on board with this feminization due to this goddess's influence. So why not Marina? Like... I'll be honest: if there really was no one on Andrew's side at all, if this was written a bit like a horror story where everyone Andrew encounters gaslights him, even the one person he thought he could trust starts behaving like he was always Elena, then that would actually be narratively compelling to me if the reveal was that he was being tormented by a god. Kinda like that horror movie, Smile.
But we really haven't had that kind of build up.
Or on the flip side, if there was no magical elements, I would personally love it if the story was about how Nikos and the daughter's enterprise isn't hotels, but a professional feminization service. It would explain why they have these resources, contacts, and confidence to pull this off. But just like the "done by a goddess", while we have some elements of this (Eva and Sofia having these prosthetics on hand, this really sketchy doctor with some very specific medical procedures available), we really haven't built up any of that either. We've had no other victims foreshadowed, no concurrent feminizations happening, etc.
I think the Game of Thrones comparison is interesting because it does feel like an apt analogy. Going into the 8th season, there were some massive questions people had. Really, two big ones: How do they stop the Night's King and his army of white walkers, and who rules Westeros after all is said and done? I think every one of us was highly skeptical that Season 8 could deliver when it was announced to only have 6 episodes. Those are questions requiring massive payoffs, and how do you deliver on 7 seasons of build up with just 6 episodes?
In their case, the answer was that they couldn't. Hell, George RR Martin is still struggling with the second to last book, never mind the last book. Getting all the pieces in place, foreshadowing them, and delivering on that ending is fucking hard. And we're at a point where Mirror is long enough. I love these discussions, but does anyone want Mirror to go on an additional 3000 pages? Probably not. So I think we're all seeing that the ending is in sight, and there's already some signs that we might need to temper some of our expectations. At least, that's how I've been feeling (especially after the "plot exposition/clarification" chapter).
