Fleabag- A Tale of Love and Self-Discovery

I finished rewatching Fleabag for the fourth time last night and as always, I’m stuck thinking of all the heart-wrenching quotes from the show. Especially the “It’ll pass” scene.

Season two of Fleabag starts off with Fleabag telling the audience “This is a love story” and I love that you can interpret that in so many ways. Yes, it’s a love story between her and the priest but it’s also a love story between fleabag and her sister, her dad, herself and even the love between her and the audience and how we had to part ways at the end just like her and the priest. There’s so many love stories and not all of them have to be romantic. As Phoebe Waller-Bridge puts it

“I feel like I’m leaving it open for people to find, because I think whichever love story you think it is says something personal to you. So, I prefer you to choose it yourself. Who did you think the love story was between?”

Phoebe Waller-Bridge also does a great job of showing love and pain and how they can go hand in hand. You can love someone so much that it hurts when they’re gone and all you’re left with is grief. Even though she has a hard time showing it, Fleabag truly does deeply love the people in the her life. She cares for her sister Claire even though she can be uptight half the time. She cares for her father even though he’s with someone who always talks down to her.

One of the love stories in the show was between fleabag and herself. Waller-Bridge wrote her character in a way that’s scarily relatable. We’ve all been at a point in our lives where we don’t know what to do and wish that someone would just tell us what to do to make everything right. Fleabag encapsulates these feelings so well that you can’t help but see parts of yourself in her. She is truly the underdog that we’re all rooting for no matter how many times she messes up because we’ve all been her at one point or another. By walking away from the audience at the end of the series, it’s like she’s telling us she finally found herself and that everything’s going to be okay now. That she doesn’t need us anymore.

I think Fleabag really is one of the most brilliant shows ever made. As funny as the show is, it’s also deeply relatable on a personal level. In the end, we know she’s going be okay. In a way, it’s kind of telling us that we’re all going to be okay, no matter how bad things are because there’s always going to be people that love us no matter what.