Sacrificial Love

Season 2, 

episodes 19, 21 and 22.

The world class banana magnet/legendary Brotwurst gobbler, April Rhodes, resurfaces. She is outfitted in a dress and scarf decorated with cherries or apples (hard to tell) but either way, fruit is a symbol of temptation and she is undoubtedly there to tempt Will, ostensibly to Broadway but if she can tempt him into bed that’s a bonus. Thus RIB establish the final installment of the Wemma relationship: sacrificial love.

Juxtaposed with Quinn’s jealousy and possessiveness of Finn in the previous scene, shippers are reminded just how healthy the Wemma relationship has become as Emma enters the auditorium and watches Will perform. There is no sign of jealousy from Emma as Will sings with April and gone is the swooning ingenue who sat next to Rachel as Will sang Young Girl/Don’t Stand So Close to Me. Emma radiates pride and pleasure as she watches Will, he still takes her breath away. Then April reminds Will ‘we’re standing on the exact same stage wishing that we could have done something bigger.’ Emma’s face registers the painful truth: She must let him go. If she tells him she loves him, he will never pursue his dream of performing on Broadway, he will stay in Lima for her and never know what might have been. She realizes that as Will had to ‘back off’ during The Carl period, she must take a back seat and encourage him, as she did in the first episode, to follow his dream.

She waits for him in the staff room and we get an insight into how well she’s progressing with her OCD. ‘I’m so proud of you Emma’, Will clasps her shoulder (aside from grabbing her hand last week to pull her on to the stage, the first time he’s touched her meaningfully since RHGS) and she leans into his touch. ‘You inspired me to make a change, to take charge of my own destiny and now I want the same for you…you deserve to at least try this Will’ she says with conviction and optimism, wanting what is best for him, just as she did in the very first episode. Will, on the other hand wants to remain loyal to the kids and Emma (as he did in the first episode): ‘We’ve all worked so hard and we’re so close. Yes, the shippers nod in agreement, this season’s story line nearly killed us and we’re so close to getting an ‘I love you’ from Emma, don’t you dare leave! ‘I just don’t want to lose you (the shippers’ hearts are all a flutter)… but Emma, I want to go so badly.’  She looks pensive and for good reason: being with him is her dream but if she indicates to Will that she wants him to stay, he won’t fulfill his dream because to quote Emma, ‘one blink from you and I would have been out the door.’

‘Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow’ April reminds him but isn’t ‘Yesterday’s gone’… the camera turns to Will looking at April questioningly. ‘Don’t you look back’ warns Rachel and New Directions.

Emma and Will stay, away from Prom…as any right-minded adult would. Although this shipper saw it as an opportunity to explore Emma’s own prom…did she ever go to one?  Did the boys reject her? Could Will have made her his Cinderella again and asked her to the prom and danced with her privately away from the madding crowd? No, there were other ships that needed sailing in that episode, so I like to think Emma and Will were at Will’s place having a D and M about Will’s Broadway opportunity, or why Emma married Carl, or the truth about April’s sleep-over a year ago!

And it seems they were because in ‘Funeral’ Wemma are looking comfortable together in Will’s bedroom, (note to RIB: please more ‘at home’ scenes with Wemma for season 3). Emma is helping him pack and we have ‘the vest scene’. The shippers almost cry with pleasure at the perfection of this symbolism. Will reveals his sentimental side as he explains to Emma the reasons for his attachment to his vests and ‘that was the one I was wearing the first time I met you,’ the shippers’ hearts skip a beat, as does Emma’s… he’s LOVED her for SO LONG. We are also reminded of ‘Hello’ and how he once told her ‘there are so many things you don’t know about me and I can’t wait to introduce them all to you.’ Well that’s one down and we’re looking forward to the many more. The shippers are dying for Emma to pour her heart out to him and for them to fall on the bed amongst the vests in a passionate embrace but Emma once again reminds us that she is the flip slide of Will – whereas his heart leads him, it is Emma’s head that leads her. ‘Well you know what? You have to let it all go…you’re following your dreams. However, her actions speak volumes to the shippers as she lovingly folds and strokes the vest (Will) before handing it to him. Emma doesn’t look too convinced by her own words but Will, trying to take on board Emma’s pragmatism (and letting out a sigh, that suggests an ‘ok, if that’s the way you want it’) puts the vest (Emma) in the box labeled ‘Giving away’. Emma looks sad and if she could allow her heart to speak she would have sung ‘Oh my man I love him so, he’ll never know. What’s the difference if I say I’ll go away, when I know I’ll come back on my knees some day… I am his forever more.’ So Rachel does it for her, arguably meeting Streisand’s original, in a performance that is totally heart wrenching.

Just as Rachel has expressed Emma’s feelings for Will, Sue’s eulogy expresses Will’s feelings for Emma, as he reads: ‘When you love someone, they are a part of you, it’s like you are attached by this invisible tether and no matter how far away you are you can always feel them….it feels like a piece of me has been ripped off, I just want to hold her…’ I guess RIB thought it a too blatant emotional manipulation for Emma to be at the funeral making eye contact with Will and to cry tears over these words.

 Then we take a trip down memory lane to Vitamin D when last we saw Terri Schuester in the corridors of William McKinley High. Last visit she was the tip of a constant triangle in the eye of the camera, however this time she is filmed separately from Will and Emma indicating that she is no longer an interference in Wemma’s life. Will walks away from her along the corridor indicating she is now relegated to his past, while Emma enters from the side and walks alongside him into the ‘future’. Emma is unperturbed by Terri’s presence…perhaps she and Will also discussed Terri while they were at his place during Prom! 

In their final scene Emma and Will are both wearing white shirts, symbolizing purity - their love is pure, they have transcended the darkness and 'death' of their relationship in season 2, but they are more than wearing matching clothes, Emma is WEARING Will’s vest. ‘I didn’t have the heart to throw it away’ she explains to him. She has such a tiny frame, we can’t believe it’s not hanging off her slender shoulders, but that aside, her message is clear: I’m not throwing you away Will, I LOVE YOU, I want the comfort of knowing you’re beside me, even if you’re not. ‘Emma this isn’t forever’ (translation: I am coming back for you.) ‘I hope it is.’ (translation: I want your dreams to come true). However, in giving Will the freedom to pursue his dream, Emma is sacrificing her own dream: being with Will. Despite her outward encouragement and detachment ‘don’t be a stranger,’ and lightly kissing him goodbye - a nice parallel with her kissing him goodbye before Sectionals, only this time we get to see Emma’s face as she kisses Will and there is a slight furrowing of her brow, as there was with Will’s last time, indicating her pain. She turns away from Will towards the audience to reveal that pain as she starts to cry. She is sacrificing the love of her life. Will stands alone in the corridor, looking underdressed without Emma standing beside him. He sadly watches the other half of himself walk away.