Recap / Final Space S 2 E 7 The First Times They Met

"And now I have to accept the possibility that there is no happy ending. That you and I are meant to be together, but never meant to be."

—Nightfall, to Gary

Rejected by Gary, Nightfall decides to create a holographic Gary for herself based on her memories. This causes an accidental release of many crazed KVNs.

Tropes

• A God Am I: Played for laughs when HUE believes he was responsible for restoring power to the ship, immediately after admitting he doesn't know what to do, and declares he is not just useful again but is a god.
• Alternate Self:
  • Nightfall is revealed to be one to Quinn, not just her future self.
  • Nightfall's Gary is revealed to be one to Main Gary.
• And Show It to You: KVN kills the last of the other KVNs by pulling his heart (or something like it) out.
• Bookends: The opening scene has KVN foolishly press a button that unleashes the first evil KVN, and the last scene before The Tag has KVN destroy that same evil KVN when they are arguing over who is the real KVN. KVN even lampshades this before killing his counterpart.
  KVN: I started this by bringing you into this world and now... I'm gonna finish it!
• Black Comedy Burst: Nightfall flirting with Gary in the Cold Open almost kills Little Cato when she playfully presses the airlock button.
• The Constant: No matter which timeline Nightfall enters, Gary is doomed to die. Which likely is the reason why Nightfall continues to stay in this timeline.
• Combining Mecha: All the evil KVNs (except the first one) combine together to form a Mega-KVN, which according to Clarence is the rarest of them all.
• Continuity Nod: Bluenstein and Derrick, the two thugs chasing Gary before he was sentenced to be imprisoned in the Galaxy One, appear in Nightfall's memory of the first time they met as Gary's friends from the Infinity Guard.
• Despair Event Horizon: Implied with Nightfall. After seeing in this episode that Gary has no romantic interest in her because it's his timeline's Quinn specifically that he's in love with, she uses the Virtulasium to create a duplicate of her world's Gary (whose relationship reached the engagement stage before he died closing the breach to Final Space) even though this will ultimately cause the deaths of herself and everyone onboard, and it's hinted she knew she was going to die and wanted her last minutes to be spent in simulated happiness.
• Dimensional Traveller: Nightfall reveals not only is she from the future, she's also from an Alternate Universe where Gary was an officer in the Infinity Guard, instead of a con artist impersonating as one in this universe.
• *Drool* Hello: How Fox and Little Cato are first alerted to the evil KVNs.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Little Cato was almost Thrown Out the Airlock in the beginning. The crew gets rid of the evil KVNs by doing the same thing.
  • Nightfall's realization that her and Gary, while meant to be together, are never meant to be foreshadows her death in the season finale.
• Killing Your Alternate Self: KVN kills the last evil KVN when the two start arguing over who is the "real KVN".
• Locked Out of the Loop: Nightfall, Gary, HUE, AVA, and Mooncake remain entirely unaware of the evil army of KVNs that took over the ship and planned to murder everyone. On the other side, Little Cato, Ash, Fox, and Clarence have no idea why the ship suddenly started having power failures and was falling apart.
• Meet Cute: It's shown that Nightfall's first meeting with Gary was like this, in a timeline where he was a member of the Infinity Guard.
• Mood Whiplash: The episode switches between 3 plots, all totally different from one another. The main plot is a dramatic Day in the Limelight for Nightfall as she shows Gary how tragic her situation is. The b plot is a Survival Horror story involving an evil army of KVNs trying to brutally murder everyone. And the c plot is a mostly self-contained event that has HUE trying to prove that he's not The Load.
• The Multiverse: This episode reveals Nightfall isn't just travelling through time.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nightfall causes a power-surge that unleashes the evil KVNs and traps her and Gary in the virtualazium.
• Not So Stoic: Nightfall turns out to be this. She's been presented throughout most of the series as a Stoic Woobie, hardened by twenty years of traveling through hundreds of Alternate Timelines and watching Gary and all her friends die in every one, but in this episode, she implicitly hits the Despair Event Horizon when she uses the ship's virtual simulator to create a duplicate of her world's Gary from her memories, even though this is heavily draining the ship's power and will likely kill her and the rest of the squad.
• Odd Friendship: While already on good terms before, it seems like HUE and Mooncake are becoming really good friends. HUE calls him "Dudecake" from The Notorious Mrs. Goodspeed.
• Pet the Dog: Fox saves Little Cato's life by grabbing him before he falls out of the airlock. Little Cato says that nothing has changed between them, but they both know that it's Blatant Lies.
• Pyromaniac: Ash has a bit too much fun when using a flamethrower on the Mega-KVN.
  Ash: Eat flames, you dipwads! Bathe in my punishing fire!
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The evil KVNs all have a glowing red eye.
• Sarcasm Mode: After getting rid of the evil KVNs, the only two remaining are the main KVN and the first KVN he activated. Despite looking completely different, Little Cato sarcastically says since they can't tell who is the real KVN they should kill them both to be sure.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Fox lets out a huge girly scream when he sees the army of evil KVNs are free. Ash even recognizes it as "Fox's little girl scream".
• Sequel Hook: The final shot of the episode reveals the evil KVNs are still alive, floating through space frozen and declaring they will have revenge.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: As Nightfall gets intimate with her holographic Gary the focus changes to the real Gary watching them, who goes through several expressions of awkwardness, horror, disgust, and admiration for what he sees. They can still be heard though and their shadows are seen on the wall next to Gary.
• Schmuck Bait: The beginning scene has HUE and Mooncake find a sign that says "Keep Away" and a button that says "Press here". HUE lampshades that only an idiot would press the button. Immediately after this, KVN finds the button and immediately presses it.
• Skewed Priorities: Clarence is more concerned about not being able to make back the money he spent on the evil KVNs if they are destroyed than he is about his own life and everyone else's, and is thus hesitant to use a flamethrower on them.
  Clarence: It's like I'm literally burning money!
• Space Is Cold: After being Thrown Out the Airlock into space, the KVNs instantly freeze.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Nightfall and Gary, she recognizes. No matter what they do, Gary always dies in every timeline she's been in, and in the one timeline he survives, he doesn't want to be with her because he's in love with the Quinn from that timeline.
• Takes One to Kill One: Implied, the KVNs are stated to to be near-indestructible and this is demonstrated in the episode, yet the main KVN is able to easily kill the remaining evil KVN by punching through his chassis and tearing out a vital component.
• Third Line, Some Waiting: The main plot of the episode is Gary and Nightfall trapped in the Virtulasium while the latter tries to make a duplicate of her Gary from her memories, and the B-plot follows Little Cato, Fox, Ash, and Clarence dealing with an army of evil KVNs that were released because of the power outage this caused. The third line with the least focus though is just HUE and Mooncake isolated in a single room unaware of what is going on, as HUE unsuccessfully attempts to restore power to the ship.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The B-Plot of a group of KVNs fighting Clarence, Little Cato, Ash and Fox seems to be taken straight out of Aliens and contains a few shots similar to the movie.