The Human Factor

This won't be a review of the episode, per se, just my thoughts on two of the main issues its about.

I've read complaints about the fact that Janette began to crave her mortality, that it wasn't like her to be so insecure about her nature. Janette became a vampire to avoid the pain inflicted to her by mortals. With Robert and Patrick, Janette found mortals who went against everything she was used to. After a thousand years of living with a cold heart, she realised she was missing something. Janette is not the only vampire to have fallen for a mortal. Nick loves Nat. Lacroix loved Fleur. Finally, Janette, too, found someone who could give her faith in mortals.

This, I think, is what made it possible for her to regain her mortality. It was with this episode that it became undeniably clear to me that, in the Forever Knight vision of vampires, what brings a vampire across and then back to mortality has nothing to do with the physical body. Generally, we have seen vampires come across to escape something from the mortal world. For Janette, becoming a vampire was a way out of prostitution, a life where men could not treat her simply as a sexual being. Robert dispelled the myth Janette conjured up, that she would always be a sexual being to a man, and never worth more. By loving Robert, but, most importantly, allowing herself to be loved by him, Janette made her peace with the mortal world and in doing so, had no more reason for being a vampire. Hence, her crossover back to mortality.

In wonderful irony, Janette could only find humanity as a vampire.

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