Good comments, Cameron and Laura.

Good comments, Cameron and Laura. In applying character archetypes to this analysis, it’s good to remember the mantra: They are tools, not rules. While we may tend to think of a Nemesis as a Bad Guy or a specific character, and while that often is the case, it’s good to remember that the Nemesis character baseline function is to provide opposition to the Protagonist. Also good to note that any character can don any archetype mask in any scene.

With that in mind, who provides opposition to Isabel?

For much of the story, one could argue Theresa does. Isabel wants to get the money and go back to India as soon as possible. Theresa keeps finding ways to keep Isabel in NYC. That’s opposition. Thus, in their scenes, especially through the first half of the script, often Theresa is wearing the Nemesis mask to Isabel.

Then there’s Oscar. He provides opposition as well primarily because he represents a period of Isabel’s past she has tried to forget, indeed, has run off halfway around the world to try to escape it. Now face to face with her former lover, he is forcing her by his mere presence to confront that past. I would argue some of their scenes involve him donning the Nemesis mask.

Even Grace can be seen to provide a Nemesis function in the early scenes with Isabel once it’s revealed that Isabel is her mother and gave her up as a baby. Again, Isabel is trying to run away from that dark past (as I noted previously, I suspect she works in an orphanage in part to assuage her feelings of guilt in this regard), but Grace won’t allow that.

Ultimately, Theresa hopes that Isabel will have a Protagonist-Attractor relationship with both Oscar and Grace (as well as the twins). The ending is unclear as to whether that will happen or not, although it does feel like that is Isabel’s path forward if she has any chance of moving toward Unity by confronting and integrating her Past into her Present and Future.

You both raise a really interesting point about Theresa’s cancer as a kind of Nemesis dynamic. Certainly with regard to Theresa that feels accurate: Theresa wants to live. The cancer opposes that goal. However, it is interesting to think about how Isabel has this thing eating away at her inside her psyche, the shadow of the past. She may think she’s free of it, but clearly she is not, even though she’s put thousands of miles and nearly two decades distance from the traumatic event of giving up her baby. So what if we ask this question: What would Isabel’s future be had she not received the Call To Adventure to go to NYC and meet with Theresa, setting off the chain of ensuing events? Perhaps one could look at Theresa’s cancer as a metaphor for how by NOT dealing with her past, Isabel’s mental and perhaps physical health would be ‘eaten away’ by the psychological ‘cancer’ caused by the internal impact of her shadow being left to fester and stew inside.

As I say, interesting observation and thanks for your comments!