10th Anniversary Death

Spoilers for Grimm Fairy Tales’ 10th Anniversary Death special. The Death anniversary special takes Keres and puts her in a position where she actually has to experience what she's been doing to other people. She's brought before the Court of the Dead and made to live through human lives and human deaths. At the beginning, she's doing what she thinks she should be doing. She finds people who have done horrible things and punishes them. In her mind, they deserve it, so she doesn't see why anybody would have a problem with her killing them. But that's exactly what the court calls her on. She's taking people before their allotted time. Whether she personally thinks they're evil doesn't give her permission to decide when they die. Abaddon brings her before the court, and the sentence is that she has to experience human life and death until she understands the emotions involved. Ankou begins the process, and Keres gets sent through one life after another. She experiences being elderly and dying in a care home. She's a man being drowned. She's a prisoner put in a situation where surviving would mean killing somebody else. And the issue shows more deaths beyond those. I'll get into the individual experiences separately, because there's a lot there worth going through. But the experience that really changes what she's asking for is Tara's life. Tara is a mother with a little girl named Lisa. Keres gets to spend time taking care of her, being with her, and feeling what that relationship means. It gives her something she wants to hold on to. Then Tara's abusive boyfriend, Shawn, turns that home into a place where neither of them is safe. When he hurts Lisa, Tara fights back. He kills Tara, and Keres is pulled away knowing that the little girl is still there with him. That's what she begs to go back for. She wants to save Lisa. She's experienced all these deaths, but now she's also experienced being a mother and having somebody depend on her. Dying means leaving that child behind, and she can't just walk away from it. The court accepts that she's learned something. Abaddon is more suspicious and asks whether she actually means it or whether she's saying what she knows they want to hear. Her answer leaves room for both, which is pretty fitting for Keres. She gets sent back and appears as a police officer before Tara is murdered. This time Tara speaks up about the abuse, and Keres has a chance to change what happens to her and Lisa. But the ending makes it clear she's still perfectly capable of being Keres. Shawn ends up dead, pinned to a tree with knives, while she's singing “Perfect Day.” After everything she went through, she hasn't suddenly become gentle. What changed was that she found people she wanted to save. She got to feel that relationship between a mother and her daughter and understand why being taken away from somebody can be so much more than the moment of dying. That gives the ending a lot to think about. The court wanted her to understand human emotion, and she does come back with something she didn't have before. But whether she's going to use that understanding the way they intended is another matter. She's learned to care, and she still has her own ideas about what people deserve.