Knightfall Season 1 Finale: Threading the Needle

The Kightfall Season 1 finale very carefully threaded the needle of miracle or natural event with Joan in the forest, speaking of drinking in the blues of the sky, in Landry's arms.

She's dying - from the sword the King thrust into her - and the doctor tells Landry it's hopeless.  As a last attempt to somehow save her life, when the end of is nigh, he remembers that she has the Grail.  He fills it with water and bids her to drink.  Which she does - but to no apparent avail.  Landry, furious with the Grail which didn't come through for him, throws it against a tree where it smashes.

But the miracle occurs.  Her baby is still alive, and the doctor is able to deliver it - a girl - via caesarean.  Joan dies, but their daughter miraculously lives.  Will this be enough to restore Landry's faith?

Probably.  But where was the miracle in what happened?  We know with our science that it's possible to deliver a live baby from a mother who has died via caesarean section.  So, what seems like a miracle to Landry is just quick thinking and knowledge from "Syria" on the part of the doctor, after Landry felt the baby moving in his deceased Joan.

The Templars and thus Knightfall are all about God and miracles.  Just before Joan's death, De Molay saves the day by riding in with reinforcements and beating back the red knights.  Tancrede, quoting Dylan from more than half a millennium later, says earlier and repeatedly that the Templars fight with God on their side.  But was De Molay's appearance with his men an act of God or the result a guilty conscience, clear thinking, and fast action by De Molay on behalf of his brethren?

We face questions like that today, as the world did in the thirteen-hundreds, and as human beings, trying to understand the word around them, the good and the bad and what may or may not be fate, always will.   Faith and science are always in the eye of the beholder.

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A final thought about the finale: The death of Joan and the birth of her and Landry's daughter echoes the death of Padme and the birth of Leia, and is consistent with the resonance between the Templars and the Jedi that ran through this season.  Joan and Landry's daughter could almost be Joan of Arc, but she appeared about a century after the time being depicted in Knightfall.

I enjoyed this first season and look forward to beholding more.

See also: Knightfall 1.1: Possibilities ... Knightfall 1.2: Grail and Tinder ... Knightfall 1.3: Baby ... Knightfall 1.4: Parentage ... Knightfall 1.5: Shrewd De Nogaret ... Knightfall 1.6: Turn of Fortunes ... Knightfall 1.7: Landry's Mother ... Knightfall 1.8: Crucial Moves ... Knightfall 1.9: "More Than You Think"