Chucktoids: Did Sarah Leave Malibu With Chuck?

The tears and passionate kiss Chuck and Sarah share before the series fades to black suggest they will leave Malibu together. However, additional audio-visual clues during the final episode subtly reinforce this impression.

Imagery

The finale’s opening sequence of Sarah free falling foreshadows her ultimate awakening and transformation in a variety of ways. She revives in time to pull her chute and stop her perilous free fall, signaling she will do the same, emotionally-speaking, in her relationship with Chuck. Sarah then plunges in the ocean and exits dripping wet, a baptismal image implying her impending change, imagery that meshes with the evolutionary motif of hatching from (emotional) baggage on the plane and emerging from the ocean on to dry land.

Near the finale’s end, Chuck and Sarah reprise the pilot when defusing the bomb (even their positioning is mirrored). The bomb is notably wired to an old Prism Express laptop with a “tricky configuration,” implying the emotional intricacies of the amnesia-plagued Sarah, who also has reverted to the defensive Season 1 model of herself. Chuck proves able to “circumvent the system” and disarm the bomb, just as his love and charm slipped behind Sarah’s interior walls in the past and will again to defuse her turmoil.

The episode concludes with another image recalling the pilot: the Castle Couple sitting on the beach facing the cloudy horizon (i.e. hazy future) together, side by side. Why would the outcome be any different this time around?

Songs

The clues come in words as well as images. It is no coincidence that the bomb-defusing scene in the music hall is set against the lyrics of Aha’s “Take on Me”: “Take on me / Take me on / I’ll be gone / In a day or two.” The chorus suggests Sarah’s latent desire for Chuck, an idea complemented by her uncanny suggestion of the Irene Demova virus to disable the bomb despite her admitting she doesn’t remember the prior event.

And then there are the famous strains of “Rivers and Roads” as they sit on the beach: “Rivers and roads / Rivers and roads / Rivers ’til I reach you.” If nothing else, the words serve as a promise that both Chuck and Sarah will strive until they finally find each other, though all of the above makes it seem more likely that they already have.

 

Chucktoids come to us from G. Walter Bush, author of Unpacking Chuck: The TV Series Interpreted and Unpacking Chuck 2.0: The Conversation Continues, both available via Amazon.