Erik: The Man Sela Was Still Trying to Bring Home

Erik: The Man Sela Was Still Trying to Bring Home Erik is one of those characters whose situation can get buried under everything happening around him. There are kingdoms falling apart, the Dark One making his moves, and eventually the Dream Eater threatening practically everyone. Meanwhile, Sela is trying to get back a man she loved, a relationship she couldn't fully remember, and a part of her life that other people had taken from her. I wanted to give him his own space because reducing him to the man who turned against Sela leaves out what the story actually shows us. His actions in #50 are frightening, but they aren't happening freely. And what happens to him afterward isn't as simple as somebody being killed in a fight. Spoilers for Grimm Fairy Tales #49–64 and the Dream Eater Saga. This is a look at Erik during that stretch, not a claim that it covers every later chapter of his life. When Sela and Erik are together in #49, there is already a familiarity between them that she can't entirely account for. She remembers seeing him during the winter, but the separation feels much longer. Erik tells her that, in some ways, it has been. He remembers a relationship she has lost access to. His explanation is that Belinda took away Sela's painful memories, and the memories of him went with them. They had been deeply in love. He was taken from her, and she believed servants of the Dark Horde had killed him. Sela begins recognizing that there was more to the loss than she remembers, but Erik doesn't tell her everything at once. He says those memories could hurt her and asks her to trust him. Later, she remembers being pregnant. That isn't a new pregnancy from their reunion. It's a memory coming back, and her reaction is to wonder why Erik didn't tell her. There is a whole shared history here that Sela is having to recover in pieces while the man who remembers it is right in front of her. Then the story turns on her again. By #50, Erik is attacking the people around Sela and acting in the Dark One's name. If you stopped there, it would be easy to read him as a traitor. But the issue doesn't stop there. He hesitates, drops his sword, and the Piper comments on the interference of true love before using his music against him. Erik collapses. The person controlling the situation is standing there with a very direct way to override him. That hesitation matters to me more than another page of fighting would have. Sela is not simply looking at an enemy who happens to have the face of someone she loved. There is still resistance in him. The Piper's response is to crush it. The threat that Erik will never wake up sounds final, and Sela has every reason to be devastated. But the next part of the story is careful about what that means. Nissa doesn't treat the apparent loss as a straightforward answer. In #51, Kozak can't restore him because the problem is beyond his ability to heal: Erik's soul is absent. The glass coffin is meant to preserve his body so there can still be a return if his soul is brought back. That's a different situation from an injury that needs more time to heal. Within the story's supernatural rules, keeping the body intact and recovering the person are two separate jobs. The coffin handles one of them. It doesn't do the other. I wouldn't describe that as medical suspended animation or try to turn it into a real-world treatment. The comic is explicitly dealing with a soul that is somewhere else. From there, Erik becomes one of the reasons Sela keeps searching. Gaia offers the possibility of help, but that help is not immediate. By #62, Gaia explains that Sela has the energy needed and that she can direct it to free Erik's soul from Limbo. It sounds as though they are finally close enough to do something about it. Then Belinda takes Sela away, and the attempt never happens in that scene. That interruption is important. Being told someone can be rescued isn't the same thing as rescuing him. Even in #64, Sela is still talking about freeing Erik and then finding her stolen child. The Dream Eater crisis has pulled her into a fight she can't ignore, but her own family hasn't stopped mattering because the threat got bigger. The end of that crossover doesn't quietly solve Erik's situation either. Sela survives the confrontation and promises the dying Belinda that she will find their children. Erik's restoration is not shown. I don't want to turn the end of one crisis into a happy ending for another one that the pages haven't given us. What stays with me about Erik in this stretch is how much of his life has been taken out of his hands. Sela is made to believe he's dead. Their history is taken from her memory. He's used against people he cares about, and then his body is left behind while his soul is trapped elsewhere. Sela keeps looking for him through all of it. Giving him a proper place in that story means remembering the man she is trying to reach, not just the weapon someone else briefly made out of him.