S01.E08 - Talia and Kyle sitting in a tree
Written by Rhonda Smiley, cover by Gaëlle “Galou” Autin.
Talia & Kyle… I’ll be honest, this episode is far from being the team’s favorite, and personally I think it was a missed opportunity.
As a lot of you already guessed, we were asked to give each of our girl “an official boyfriend.” Iris has Nathaniel from the start, Auriana was written to have many & none at the same time, but nothing was written for Talia in the serie’s bible.
As I explained for the previous episode (Sirens), we experimented a lot during the first episodes of the show. We were still somewhere between “development” and “production”.
And so, Kyle was created… but now it feels that we rushed it. We weren’t ready to give Talia a boyfriend, and we made a lot of early mistakes. :) No shame to admit it though, as long as we learn from it.
Kyle was thought to be a nice and patient boy, able to “melt” Talia’s sense of duty and help her relax and enjoy life too. It was “Talia’s issue” in this episode, and Iris was supposed to help her solve it. It could have been good this way, but truth is : Talia didn’t need Kyle for that, and it made this relationship kind of artificial and forced. The twins’s evil plot was kinda confusing, I admit it too.
Now, I think a better way to finish this episode would have been to have Talia realizing that focusing only on the mission all the time wasn’t healthy for her, politely telling Kyle “thanks, you’re cute, but let’s just be friends… at least for now”, and telling Iris & Auriana “thanks girls, you’re the best, and you’re right : I should relax more, but right now I don’t need or want a boy for that. Let’s play music instead !” or something like that. As for the twin’s plot, I don’t know, but we’d have kept the Minotaur anyway though, ‘cause it’s a cool monster !
Unfortunately, since Kyle doesn’t appear much in the show (only in episode “Rex”, in season 2), we never had the opportunity to either fix or develop their relationship into something more genuine and cute… and it’s sad because Kyle is really a nice guy, and would deserve more screen time. :)