Person of Interest Review: The Day the World Went Away (Season 5 Episode 10)

In many ways, Person of Interest has become a respite for LGBT+ viewers looking for a show that won’t bury its gays — at least, not in the way most LGBT+ characters have gone.

A tactic agreement was made between the viewers and the show when it launched: everyone would die, it was just a matter of when.

I have praised Person of Interest in many of my reviews for its ability to take tired narrative tropes and turn them on their heads. The show chose to buck many television conventions to take on a huge, progressive life of its own without declaring itself as the new face of representative media. In “The Day the World Went Away,” it appears that this is no longer the case.

A number of things happen in this episode that are key to the final sprint towards the show’s end: Finch’s cover is blown, Elias is killed, the Machine becomes a closed system, and Finch finally loses it.

All of these events are overshadowed by what happens to Root — and rightfully so. So, did it really happen?

It Was All A Dream

One thread of hope is the possibility that nothing that happened in “The Day the World Went Away” is real. We’ve seen Shaw in multiple Samaritan-created simulations this season, just as we saw the Machine walk us through a number of potential realities in “If-Then-Else.”

It’s possible that the entire season has been one big simulation all along. It’s also possible that the Machine is showing us a potential path Team Machine may take if one of their own was killed and Finch were to lose all control and abandon his morals entirely.

Either way, if it’s a simulation, it certainly would explain the strange pace and tone of the episode, as well as the rather anticlimactic reactions to Root’s “death”.

Faking It

Let’s be real, here: Root is the most dramatic human being on Team Machine, and Reese once threw himself out a window just to tackle a guy. It’s entirely possible she could have faked her death to finally galvanize Finch into action.

We don’t see Root officially get shot — we see a bullet, we see Root swerve the car, and then we see Root hunched over. Later, we see Fusco overlooking her body, but we don’t see her actual death.

Knowing Root, this could all be an elaborate plan that has her popping back up in the finale with a flirty quip and a huge gun.

Real or Not Real? Real.

The last — and most likely — scenario is that it really did happen. All signs point to this being the case, which means that Person of Interest threw up a blue screen of death.

A case can be made that Root was a special exception, that the show was always going to kill its main characters. That’s very true, and if she’d died differently, it may have passed muster.

The reality is that Root was killed by a stray bullet and then took on a role as an voice for an AI — sound familiar? I think I can hear Lexa’s battle cry from here.

Media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The “Bury Your Gays” trope existed long before Lexa died, and long before Root’s death was presumably written in 2015.

Yes, Root was probably always going to die. But did she have to go out so early? And by herself, with no one who loves her by her side? Was it necessary to kill her to further Finch’s story? Was an AI war not enough to kick him into action?

If Root really is dead, then she at least died for someone (Finch, and by extension, the Machine) that she loved, which is something Shaw believes in. But it doesn’t change the fact that she is yet another LGBT+ character to die in the same way so many have, and it doesn’t bring comfort to those viewers who took refuge in the representation she provided, especially in a world where so little of it is left.

If she’s not, well…get up, girl! You have work to do!

What did you think of this episode of Person of Interest? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Person of Interest airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on CBS.

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