Say goodbye to Weo, whose story ends here. I appreciate the sad, strange boundaries of his character arc: knowing that he’s fated to die in childhood, he nevertheless tries to get as much joy as he can from the life he will have. A little melancholy creeps in as he says his goodbye to Byron. But he’s foreseen his own life often enough to know there’s no point in crying over what can’t be changed.

(I also appreciate the declaration that our heroes will never see the winter elves again, because it precludes the possibility of any real Guilded Age sequels with the high stakes of the original. As writers, you gotta know when to walk away.)

And say hello to “Freddie Best.” We knew a change in his look was almost a requirement after the events of “The Last Axemas,” but picking one was harder than it looked  from my perspective. He had to come across as somehow sensitive yet powerful. A lot of musicians’ personas are on the arrogant side, which of course worked fine for earlier incarnations of Best but wouldn’t fit his new attitude. And yet the team was about to face its two greatest challenges ever—war on Gastonia and the battle with Dedalus. Best couldn’t look weak (or “emo”) if he was to stand shoulder to shoulder with the others in that. So what music-star persona could possibly—but Flo brought up Freddie Mercury almost immediately, and then that was pretty much that.