The Last Act: Amazing Digital Bogus

The Cast of TADC

The Amazing Digital Circus is a drama about characters stuck in a digital prison – their minds uploaded to “The Amazing Digital Circus” controlled by the god-like artificial intelligence Cain, who puts them through torments big and small. The final episode of the show was released in theaters as “The Last Act,” and this essay is my attempt to explain why its conclusion felt like a bitter, painful betrayal. (Spoilers ahead)

I liked the show a lot. My girlfriend introduced it to me, and I fell in love with the characters. They are well written, dynamic, and despite their cartoonish appearance, very real and relatable. The setting is clearly inspired by “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream,” but the tone is much more lively, and the story is about learning to live with those around you and work through your personal issues through forming friends and community. It is funny, endearing, and gripping when it really put its characters through the wringer. So I was looking forward to the final episode and its theatrical release.

The Last Act promo poster

I don't think I expected anything in particular from The Last Act. I know I expected to be surprised, I know I expected the cast to go through hardships as they dealt with the fallout of Cain's sudden death, and I know I expected to get some insight into Jax in particular as a character—why that bunny was so angry, mean, and impossibly resistant to all the sympathy and outreach expressed by other characters. Why, even as Gangle, Zooble, Kinger, Ragatha, and Pomni all work to coexist and find a community in their purgatory-like existence, did Jax seem to dead-set on remaining apart and isolated? I mean, look at the poster (right). Jax's narrative was even being advertised as central to the finale.

And it was. And it was insightful, and beautiful. And yet, it was also possibly one of the most personally hurtful narratives I have experienced from a piece of media like this.

So, let's cut to the chase: Jax is transfemenine. This was a fan theory for a while, but many little hits and foreshadowings to this end were present in the earlier episodes. Without understanding the releave in The Last Act as confirming Jax to be transfem, her character arc and the narrative in TADC lose coherence. But, the same narrative that centers and explores her as a trans woman/trans fem concludes by putting her back in the closet, deadnaming her, and refusing to engage with any potential growth or consequence of that personal revelation.

Let me walk through Jax's narrative in The Last Act chronologically, and I will try to convey why I feel so hurt by the choices made for her character.

Early on in the movie, Jax abstracts, which is a sort of digital death that leaves a character as an amorphous, rampaging monster. This was foreshadowed, and a clear consequence of her bottling up feelings, isolating herself, and being embroiled in self-denial. Pomni, the show's main character, decides to approach this abstraction in a different way then previous ones. Before now, characters who became too overwhelmed with their stay in purgatory “abstacted:, and when this occurred their monstrous forms were locked away in the “Basement.” Instead of trying to lock Jax with the other abstractions, Pomni works to reconnect with her friend. She gets Jax in a dark hallway (dark calms down the abstractions, we have learned previously from Kinger), and gives him a hug – letting herself be subsumed by the glitchy, eye-filled mass that Jax has become.

An abstracted character

Once inside, Pomni goes on a journey through Jax's mind; her perception of others and of her self, opening doors to the ugly, hurting parts of Jax's psyche. She finds a room with multiple Jax; each representing some aspect of herself – one breaking the 4^th wall, one cynical, one 'ironically' but casually wearing a maid outfit, and one chained to a piano, who when she speaks up is shouted down by the others. Finally, Pomni reaches a memory: one so deep it was locked away with a key. The memory is of Jax and Ribbit, and their relationship.

Ribbit, who is now abstracted, has only been alluded to in the show until this scene. We get a montage of Jax and Ribbit as they become friends, then a bit more than friends, and then Ribbit and Jax have a heart to heart. The scene is several minutes long. The camera moves from Jax's perspective to looking straight at her as she explains her story – growing up in an abusive household, her dad leaving, being forced to be the “man” of the house by her mother, and finally confessing “something personal” to her mother in order to change that perception; and then being shut down and ending up homeless before entering the Digital Circus. TADC does not say Jax is a woman outright. Jax does not say “I am a girl.” But that is the implication: immediately after her story, Ribbit puts a bow in Jax's hair – she lights up, the movie pauses to let us and her enjoy the euphoria. Ribbit says “Your secret is safe with me.”

In the theater, my whole polycule gasped – we couldn't believe trans Jax was actually real, and not just fans over reading a few comments and moments. Jax's scene with Ribbit was so much more than we would have hoped for: a transfem character coming out, working to accept herself, struggling to push past all the narratives, the fear, the self-denial, and the self-hate that so many of us have grown up with.

The imagery in the scene is as blatant as it gets without saying it – and the writers are cowards for not just saying it. Zooble is non binary, using them/them pronouns exclusively. There are two lesbian relationships formed between the other members of the cast. Zooble even brings up the fact that they want the ability to have sex. But somehow Jax's “secret” can't be said aloud, even in her most personal and revelatory moments.

The narrative's denial is reflected in Jax's character – as soon as the moment between her and Ribbit passes, she tries to retreat and retract her confession. She plunges back into her state of self-denial, pushing away Ribbit as we return to a montage, then another friend, and it is implied her actions helped lead to their abstractions. In the end, Pomni and Jax hug in her mindscape, Jax now finally able to express some genuine regret and sympathy. “I don't want to go,” she says, breathing hard. They are ripped apart in a flash of light, and Pomni returns to her friends as the abstracted Jax is enveloped in bright light.

A montage set to “Isn't She Lovely” plays: showing us a flashback to Jax from previous episodes, reframing Jax as the “she” who is lovely. It was beautiful and swelling. And it is from this point on that the show lost me completely, and started to hurt.

Jax stays abstracted. Her friends set up a large tent to keep her calm in darkness; not in the basement, but still out of sight. The end of Jax's arc as a transfem is to be trapped in a body and mind that are no longer hers, unable to connect to those around her, unable to do anything to make up for the hurt she has caused others. No one, not even Pomni, refers to Jax as “she.” They keep using he/him pronouns. I guess the montage was just for us, the audience, to understand Jax as “she”, as transfem, but only in the most abstract, unrealized way. A theoretical trans woman, kept calm and manageable by the darkness of the closet, robbed of all agency and character.

Other characters get narrative closure – after Cain returns (he got better) and makes amends, our cast gets to see what their real-world counterparts are up to. Each is living out their ideal life, the life that has been denied to the consciousnesses trapped in the Digital Circus. And this does bring them some comfort, as they had known they were only brains scans, not the originals. But this comfort is not for Jax; not only does she not get to see her outside self, that self is still in a state of denial: hiding her face in photos, still using her given name – and the fact they even give us “his” name feels like deadnaming to me. I felt disgusted watching it. Jax's life was giving particular emphasis to show that she is doing okay, making a life for herself. Even frequenting a gay bar. But we are giving no evidence that she has transitioned, that she has been able to find a space where she is able to share her “secret” safely. We get no closure related to the Jax's textual narrative (we never find out what happens to her mom after she ran away).

Watching it felt particularly, surgically, designed to hurt. Why show us euphoria upon wearing a bow? Why “Isn't She Lovely”? Why frame so much of the first half of The Last Act around the details of Jax's story to just... dead end it. The journey through her mind, her conflicting sense of self, her home life, her relationship to masculinity, abuse, homelessness. All of those struggles and feelings are so intimately familiar to me, my partners, my friends, and the stories of so many other transfems I know. She gets no chance to redeem herself. She gets no time to live as herself. She is abstracted. We are given her anguish as a form of drama, and the catharsis is supposed to come from the others living happily together, not from any further change or growth or comfort to her own character.

Cain is allowed redemption; the second half of The Last Act focuses on his rehabilitation. He, who had the
power of god when he decided to hurt others, is allowed back in with little friction, while Jax, who has been living in overlapping layers of hell, is not given a chance to live or learn once her character is finally able start the process of confronting her feelings. She doesn't even get properly gendered outside of a musical montage. Her persona in the maid outfit is the best we get, and it is always played as a half-joke at best. It has been used on merchandise, usually with her embarrassed or angry to have been put in the dress (it was not her choice the first time it occurs in the show), and even in her mind she is only able to wear it “ironically.”

Jax in the maid outfit.

Why does it hurt so much? Jax's story hurts because it is my story, it is SO many of my trans sisters' story. But only the start of it. Growing up transfem is growing up feeling there is something wrong with you. It is growing up feeling that you do not belong anywhere, that you are a pervert and a freak. It is a state of constant, vigilant self-denial. It is taking that all these feelings and thoughts you are having and shoving them down again and again and again and punishing yourself or anyone else who tries to get close to them – it is ugly, and hurtful, and miserable in all the ways that Jax is shown to be. But at some point you work through it. You find yourself or you die. And in this narrative, Jax found herself. She was shown to be finally starting to pry open the doors she had kept shut for so long. And then the door was slammed in our faces just as she started through the first crack.

The abstracted, and therefore Jax, do not recover by the show's end. I was hoping, praying, for Jax to walk out of that dark tent, having had time to rest and recover, and ready to start a journey of healing (for herself and others). But we didn't get that. Abstraction is permanent, even in this 'happy' ending. It has been used as a metaphor for overwhelming despair, for giving up, for dying without truly dying. And through Pomni's journey into Jax's mind, we see that there is still some semblance of a mind there. In that way, abstraction posits that there is a point at which damaged people are unrecoverable. If you are too hurt or to overwhelmed or too broken, you can never come back into community. At best, Jax can only exist around other in a sort of stasis. No redemption or growth or forgiveness. Only an eternal hospice is possible.

Why does it hurt so much? Because we don't have transfem narratives. I didn't hear the word “transgender” until I was in college. The first trans women I saw were in pornography. I think back on all the shows and narratives I have watched and read in my life, and I can't name a single prominent trans woman whose narrative centers on and really investigates the emotional reality of growing up subject to transmisogyny, if living through that subjugation and finding happiness after you finally break out of that eggshell.

And they almost gave us such a narrative. They DID give us such a narrative. This internet-grown, independent, queer-friendly little show that somehow made it into a movie theater framed its finale around a story of a transfem character.

And then it was ripped away. As soon as Jax acknowledges her feelings, she feels the need to shove them all back into the closet. And TADC does this too through its narrative. Jax is transfem: confirmed. Jax is transfem. And then dead. Jax is transfem. But it can't be said directly. Jax is transfem: but only inside. Only as a secret, private thing away from any public or community she might find herself around. Not in the real world, nor in the Digital Circus is she allowed to be lovely, or even “she.” "Isn't she lovely?" I don't know, TADC, we never see what "lovely" might mean for her. Jax is transfem, but only in the most abstract, amorphous, monstrous way. She is the only central character to end the story excluded from community, stripped of self, and whose real-world equivalent is not yet living her best life.

It hurts because that is supposed to be the happy ending to the story of someone like me.