'Love Life' Episode 6 Preview: Is Darby's relationship with Magnus Lund headed for disaster?
Spoilers for 'Love Life' Episode 6
In the last episode titled 'Luke Ducharme', we got to see Darby Carter's (Anna Kendrick) first experience with "rejection" in her high school days. A quick recap of what an awful teenager she was - Ducharme (John Gallagher Jr) broke her heart and slept with her roommate Grace, prompting Darby to have an emotional breakdown. When asked if she was okay because she was hysterically crying, Darby told Grace she was upset because she had cancer. Bad taste? Yup, we thought so too. The episode took a deep dive into how Darby sees herself, she doesn't think she's worthy of being loved. Using the detour of her past, the series badly attempted to justify Darby's inability to stand up for herself in her current relationship with Magnus Lund (Nick Thune).
The next episode titled 'Magnus Lund Part 2' will hopefully show us the struggle in the relationship, giving us some sort of reason as to why Darby has accepted Lund's proposal after he went AWOL for over 24 hours. Her emotional growth seems to be stunted instead of showing progress in the last episode when she gives up therapy. She gave up because "digging deeper would require her to upend her entire life which was built on the carefully constructed fantasy that getting married was some sort of proof once and for all that she was loveable." She had obviously accepted Lund's proposal as she was shown with a ring while in a grocery store with Lund at the end of Episode 5, but we're hoping since the next episode brings us back to Lund, ditching the series' 'new man every episode' pattern, could there be a spicy twist coming up?
We're speculating that the Lund chapter is closer to an 'end' and seems to be in no shape to bring a marriage to fruition but we may be thrown for a loop. That backstory with Darby and her lies about cancer seemed way too forced and drastic of an attempt to make a character interesting, so we're hoping that should a 'situation' come up between the couple in Episode 6, it would hopefully complement the narrative realistically. Most importantly, we speculate to see Darby get out of her shell and use the anger she expressed and stand up for herself; it's getting tiring to see her embody the metaphor of sheep around Lund.
What do you think Darby will do? Considering she accepted the proposal, she might want to desperately make it work but if she's learned anything from her past relationships, she would do one of two things - end it with Lund or express her feelings regardless of the outcome of their relationship. Her fear of rejection has put her in an emotional hole and while the career aspect of her life seems to be flourishing, she's regressing to her teenage self that desperately broke down weeping to her parents saying, "I'm sad" when asked why she lied about having cancer.
This episode we think will bring us into the depths of the Lund and Darby dynamic and we're also hoping the 'comedy' aspect is kicked up a notch. New episodes of 'Love Life' will be released every Thursday on HBO Max.