Richard Armitage 30 day challenge
8.) Q: a scene of his which made you cry
A: The Lucas North end scene
The big beautiful blue sky atop the apartment building. Harry, trying to talk Lucas down, feeling so scared and guilty himself. Lucas, finding out that it was all for nothing; the secret project he risked Maya’s life for wasn’t even real. And then Lucas starts to break down, which makes me break down.
“I can’t go back to prison, Harry.
I’ll die there, you know I will.”
The first time I saw it, I was a mess afterwards! I knew what was coming, had been dreading if for the last few episodes.
Watching the facade crack, little by little, was quite painful to watch. My tarnished hero was going to die. He was going to jump off that building, thinking that those dirty blackened wings of his wouldn’t work, so why even try.
“I’m nothing.”
Wings are wings, Lucas! OPEN THEM!! maybe if I scream a little louder, he will hear this time…
but he never does.
Nowhere in Particular RA 
Oh Kelly, that’s the scene that I chose when Serv interviewed me for her blog re a scene that made me cry. Painful to watch. I avoid it usually. But looked again today. I found that very convincingly acted. Very. Goosepimple stuff.
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when his voice starts to crack and he’s holding back the tears, I’m a goner! I get very emotional about Lucas 😦
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He’s not dead. No way. He’s pulled a Sherlock Holmes and we’ll find out soon how he did it, jumping off the building and not getting hurt.
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and now I’m picturing Benedict & Martin, coming to investigate! should that be my answer for the “cameo” question? “Sherlock” 😀
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Regardless of Richard’s superb acting in Spooks 9, I can never get beyond the fact that his original character and back story were trashed so mercilessly. As Richard always seems to create a back story for his characters – even though the actual screenwriters for this series may not have – it must have been hard for him to dismiss all that from his mind in order to be this whole different person. If I remember correctly I think Nicola Walker alluded to this – perhaps in the DVD extras – and she said she felt sorry for him (Richard). I can only think it must have been quite a shock when he read the script.
The “Maya” character never rang true for me – and they seemed to have zero chemistry on-screen. To my way of thinking his ex-wife was his only real love. You just have to watch his reactions to her in S7. *sigh* Yes, I wept at these scenes but to my mind Lucas is So Not Dead but is very much alive and well somewhere in the world! 🙂
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I agree about Maya, it’s like they just threw her in there to make it all sadder. I think his character clung to her in his identity crisis, just to have something to ground him somewhere, since everything was falling apart around him.
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“trashed…mercilessly” is a great description of what they did with this character.
I didn’t care for the Maya storyline, because it totally undermined everything they had set up for this character in season 7, so whether or not Maya and Lucas had chemistry, it just didn’t seem right or believable.
(FTR, I think they might have believable as a couple, if we hadn’t been told that Lucas/John’s only love for all those years was Elzvieta and if the scenes between them hadn’t been so well done. Those scenes had poignancy and pathos. The scenes with Maya felt like a plot device, or something that wandered into the Lucas storyline from someone else’s)
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yes, it was a clear case of “how do we get rid of this character quickly, without just straight-out killing him?”
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If John Bateman had been presented as a different character who happened to have a backstory and was going to try and kill Lucas and replace him in the present *then* I could have accepted it.
The other thing that is awful about that story arc is that it basically requires us to think of Lucas North’s 8 years of torture and solitary confinement as being somehow irrelevant to who he “really” is.
(Or as some bloggers would have it, a punishment which he himself at some level felt he deserved)
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I can’t forget his time in prison, because it is the basis for the Lucas I knew. he may have thought he deserved what he suffered in prison, but I think the fact that he lived through it and then tried to atone for his sins, earned him a clean slate.
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Ugh. Right there with you on this scene. I always want it to end differently, and it always breaks my heart instead.
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I think “it’s not going to bother me this time, because I know what’s coming”, but it always ends up making me cry each time!
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When he says the words, “I’m nothing,” everything inside me just completely falls apart.
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I know. even if we, as Armitage fans, didn’t know that he was going to die; when Lucas says those words, you know it’s over for him.
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I’ve seen it only once, Lucas9 broke my heart.
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I’ve only seen the whole season once, but those last few episodes a few different times. it’s the whole story from beginning to end, what makes him who he is (to us, anyway 😉 ) that makes it all so heartbreaking.
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I never wanted Lucas to die like this considering all the things he had been through. But this scene never fails to make me cry 😥
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the actual way he died, and the dialogue that proceeded it, I wouldn’t want to change. I’d hate for him to have gone unexpectedly, with a slash to the throat or something. but the whole “secret persona” thing, I didn’t much appreciate either, so…*shrugs* it is what it is.
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I read somewhere that they actually filmed him going over but changed their mind. In the end, he disappeared sort of how he appeared. What a misstep this story line was.
And No, Maya was not the least bit convincing.
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I’m glad they didn’t show him actually going over the edge of the building. it was more impactful for me *knowing* but not seeing.
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I agree.
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Hmmm…don’t know what you guys are talking about….what rooftop? What project? What deception?
😉
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LOL! 🙂
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😀
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