Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 'Confirms' What The Internet's Been Claiming For Years
Contains spoilers for "Scott Pilgrim Takes Off" Episode 8, "The World vs. Scott Pilgrim"
Netflix's "Scott Pilgrim Takes Off" is a new anime based on Bryan Lee Malley's graphic novel that uses the cast and aesthetic of Universal's live-action "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" to really hammer home the multiple timelines narrative. In Episode 1, "Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life," the story unfolds as fans expect it to ... until it doesn't. Just as Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is about to fight Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha), he's yanked through a vegan portal by a masked stranger and into the future. That event changes the entire course of the narrative and allows Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to take a more central role as she investigates Scott's disappearance.
So, who is the masked stranger who takes such a vested interest in Scott? In Episode 6, "Who Did It?," Scott returns to his own timeline and reveals that his assailant is none other than himself, but it isn't until Episode 7, "2 Scott 2 Pilgrim," that he explains what that actually means. It means that Older Scott (Will Forte) wants to avoid a relationship between his younger self and Ramona. but it also means that Netflix leaned into a fan headcanon as old as the franchise itself.
Don't know what we're talking about? Here's your big hint: Episode 8, "The World vs. Scott Pilgrim," sees Even Older Scott (Forte) teleport the entire main cast of characters to the moon for an epic battle, presumably to the death. That's right, Scott Pilgrim is technically the true villain of "Scott Pilgrim Takes Off." According to a vocal subset of fans, though, he's always been the Big Bad.
Scott Pilgrim is a deeply flawed person
In "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," Scott Pilgrim is a deadbeat musician who would be homeless if not for the begrudging mercy of his roommate Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin). He sleeps in Wallace's bed. He eats Wallace's food. He steals the poor guy's credit card to make purchases. Worse still, Scott is 23 years old and he's kind of dating Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) ... a 17-year-old high school student. Their relationship isn't sexual but it's definitively gross.
When Scott meets Ramona Flowers, their (age-appropriate) mutual infatuation immediately turns sexual, which would be fine if not for the fact that Scott is still technically dating Knives when it happens. Scott spends most of the movie avoiding breaking up with her because it makes him uncomfortable. Dear reader, this is the protagonist we're talking about. We're supposed to root for him.
In a 2020 opinion piece for "Merry-Go-Round Magazine," musician and editor Ted Davis wrote, "Scott Pilgrim is a caricature of the same douchey band-boy entitlement that allowed dozens of artists to get away with pedophilia in the indie rock circuit for over a decade. If 'Sex Bob-Omb' was a band in 2020, they'd be lucky if they could quietly kick Scott Pilgrim out before Twitter publicized his wrongdoings." Davis' words echo a sentiment carried by numerous fans who, over the years, found Scott's behavior on par with, if not worse than, the behavior of Ramona's seven evil exes. In a 2018 interview with "Anime News Network," Bryan Lee Malley described Scott as "kind of stupid and very hard-headed." Why should fans consider Scott a hero, after all, if even his creator knows him to be deeply flawed?
Scott Pilgrim's flaws are kind of the whole point
The terms "protagonist" and "hero" are not as interchangeable as the modern media landscape might have you think. Yes, Scott Pilgrim is the protagonist of Bryan Lee Malley's story, and readers/viewers are taken on a nostalgia-fueled, fun-filled adventure with him, but Scott was never meant to be viewed as a morally upright dude.
Redditor u/redbishopp explained it best by saying, "[Scott's] an awful person at the start ... [He] isn't someone you'd want to be [associated] with ... A feminist retelling of this wouldn't be half as sympathetic, indulgent, or forgiving ... so he's the bad guy. [It's a] 'death of the author' reinterpretation that I'm sure some people get some value out of, but I don't think [it's supported by the] text. Scott does grow ... There's still plenty of room to criticize him by the end, but it's facetious to claim he's just the villain ... He's a bad guy ... but he's not the Bad Guy ... maybe the former is more important, and the theory is just a way of reminding us that, despite the fun adventure we have with him, Scott is not someone to emulate."
The point of Scott Pilgrim's journey is that an objectively crap human being realizes that they are, in fact, objectively crap. With that knowledge, Scott begins to grow. He's not perfect by the end of the story, but he's better. The same holds true for Ramona Flowers, whose character arc is more robust in Lee Malley's graphic novel than it is in the live-action film. They're great characters, just not great people, an important distinction that neither makes them heroes nor villains.
"Scott Pilgrim Takes Off" is now streaming on Netflix.