The moment that Odin’s curse breaks, Freya’s eyeliner begins to fade from her cheeks, revealing itself to be just as magic as her trauma’s origin. This is what haunts me when I see Freya’s eyeliner, the persistent visual symbol of her lack of agency.įreya’s eyeliner is a persistent visual symbol of her lack of agency But I also don’t see why the only options were to kill Baldur or let Baldur kill Freya. Like Kratos, I agree that Baldur killing Freya doesn’t seem like the best possible way for them to achieve any closure. The result is that both Baldur and Freya never achieve closure for the abuse Freya inflicted on him - abuse that began with an attempt to help, but which spiraled into its own toxic cycle. Having killed his own father, Kratos defends Freya’s life, hoping to break what he perceives as a cycle of violence by stopping Baldur from killing his own mother. The spell had not only protected Baldur from pain but made him incapable of feeling anything at all - the ultimate symbol of how a mother’s love could become suffocating, even abusive. She had sworn revenge on them for killing her son Baldur and, more importantly, for not allowing Baldur to kill her - a death she was willing to accept on the condition that Baldur would finally forgive her for a protective spell she had placed upon him. That’s why those black smudges disappear, like magic, after Freya breaks the curse that Odin placed upon her.Īt the start of Ragnarök, Freya attacks Kratos and Atreus, sticking by the vow she made at the end of the previous game. Her eyeliner is not only a shorthand for her grief but for her instability, her trauma, and her abuse at Odin’s hands. As though intent on making her sadness as visible as possible, Freya never wipes these tears away, so those black smudges stay on her face all the way through the first third of God of War Ragnarök (2022). I’m talking about Freya, whose eyeliner becomes two tear-stained smudges that rain down her grieving face. At the very end of God of War (2018), an important character undergoes a massive transformation.
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