Last Twilight 1×11 Review: Episode 11

I hope you don’t need your heart, because Last Twilight episode 11 will rip it out of your chest. I was not expecting quite the level of angst and anxiety that we got this week, and I’m sort of reeling from it. And I thought the most recent episode of Cooking Crush was an emotional rollercoaster. It was nothing compared to this.

Where to even start with this episode? I guess it makes sense to start at the beginning. Last week’s episode ended on the cliffhanger that the hospital had called, and there was an eye donor for Day. The episode starts with Day going into surgery – and Mhok comforting Day’s mom outside the OR – and then after the credits, the surgery has already happened.

Mhok is attempting to skillfully avoid Day’s mother when he comes to visit Day in recovery. Yet nothing seems to have happened between the two of them since Mhok quit his caretaker position. I think a lot of it must be that he knows that she doesn’t approve of him. They have a conversation after she discovers him in Day’s room, and judging by the score I believe it’s meant to be a touching scene, but I couldn’t help but be annoyed by some of the things she said. She said something like, “I bet you think I’m the kind of mother who won’t let her son date someone.” Um, you took away his phone!

In the end, the surgery is unsuccessful. Last week I said that I thought Day might be OK with this result because he has mostly accepted the loss of his sight. That was horribly naïve of me. The surgery he was getting had an extremely high success rate; of course, he would have been hopeful, as would everyone else. The moment when they took off the bandages and he still couldn’t see was heartbreaking. Everyone did a fabulous job in this scene. I cried, but then, y’all should know by now that I cry at everything.

Months go by, and apparently, only just now is Day’s mother beginning to accept Mhok as Day’s boyfriend, which is signified by her inviting him to dinner. Over dinner, Mhok reveals that Singha, Aon’s friend with the hotel in Songkhla, has invited Mhok to help cook at an event the hotel is having. Day wants to accompany him, which his mother allows. Mhok learns from Night that their mother will be using this as a test to see if they can live together – something Mhok brought up to Day earlier.

The event goes well, but there were several “jump scare” moments while the pair is in Songkhla. The first is when Mhok is in the kitchen and one of the other cooks mentions that a guest was hit by a car. Mhok panics, believing that it was Day; he runs outside to check and of course, it wasn’t Day. The second is not that long after, when Mhok returns to the room and finds Day gone, his phone still on the bedside table. Turns out that he’s just outside, playing with some kids. After the wretchedness of Day not regaining his eyesight, I did not need those moments of heart-pounding anxiety.

Both of these moments follow Mhok having a dream about the night he learned his sister died. Because as I’ve mentioned before, Mhok still hasn’t properly dealt with his feelings of guilt over not being there when his sister needed him. I had hoped that this was something that would come back, but I also hoped that it would involve Day comforting Mhok in the way that Mhok has been there for Day. I was wrong – but we’ll get to that.

This episode was all about insecurities. Before Day had his bandages removed, he worried that Mhok would abandon him if he got his sight back, as that happened in all the movies. I think Day has that backwards – many people leave their partners when they become ill or disabled, not when they recover. He’s worried about being pitied so much that it essentially becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You see, the event at Singha’s hotel was kind of an audition for him staffing his new resort in Hawaii. When Mhok mentions it to Day, he suggests that – if he gets the job – Day move to Hawaii with him. Day, however, talks about how he can totally do long-distance. So when Mhok is offered the job, he lies to Day and says he didn’t get it, because he doesn’t want to leave Day. The last time he wasn’t there for someone he loved, she died, and he doesn’t want that to happen again.

But Day can only focus on the lies. He thinks that Mhok lied because he pities him, and that if he weren’t blind, Mhok would have told the truth. And so when his boyfriend is breaking down in front of him, admitting that he holds himself responsible for his sister’s death, Day can only think of himself. He is still focused on his insecurities and his issues about the way people perceive him and his blindness.

In the end, Last Twilight is the latest series to give us the episode 11 “curse”. Day breaks up with Mhok, seemingly over the lies. I don’t think it’s that, though. I think he believes that he’s holding Mhok back, as he later asks his mother if he did the right thing. This is presumably a great opportunity that Mhok is passing up, and Day doesn’t want to be the reason he misses out on it. And Mhok, ever accommodating, goes along with the breakup, because he thinks it’s what Day wants.

Honestly, this is one of the thinnest pretenses for a breakup ever, but it’s such a common trope. There’s almost always someone breaking up with someone else for their safety, or for their own good. These two used to be so good at communicating, but for some reason they can’t talk about this. It’s really frustrating that Day can’t seem to grasp that this is all about Mhok’s guilt about his sister’s death. But it’s equally frustrating that Mhok can’t seem to verbalize that. And then Day is able to be comforted by his mother and Night, while Mhok cries alone outside.

But then, we saw what would happen if they were on their own on their trip to Songkhla. It was a test, and Mhok failed, because he hasn’t dealt with his trauma yet. Those two times he thought something had happened to Day, he could have used those as lead-ins to bring up his fears. He never mentioned his nightmare. He just acted like everything was OK when it wasn’t. Day will be fine if they’re on their own; Mhok will constantly be a nervous wreck. Would they really last with that kind of dynamic?

There was, like, one ray of sunshine that happened, which is that Porjai had her baby. And while standing at her bedside, Mhok commented that something was weird between Porjai and Night. Really, Mhok? Really? Night named the baby. Are these two not dating yet, or are they not telling people? Because there’s no way a woman lets some random dude name her baby. They have to be together by now, it’s been months.

We’re down to the wire, now. Only one episode left. The trailer for the final episode indicates that we have yet another time skip, as Day is graduating from college and it seems that he and Mhok have been apart for some time. There’s also the implication of an unhappy, or at least bittersweet, ending. I still trust P’Aof – he gave us Moonlight Chicken and Bad Buddy, I don’t think he’ll do us wrong. But I must admit, I’m approaching this last episode with a little more trepidation than I was before.

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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