Fleabag made waves in 2019 with Phoebe Waller-Bridge lending us an insight into an extremely flawed main character. It swept at the Emmys, but what was it that made Fleabag so irresistible? Was it the witty fourth wall breaks? The all too relatable jokes about porn? Andrew Scott dressed up as a Hot Priest? Perhaps a mixture of all the above, but the heart and soul is Fleabag herself, and walking alongside her as she faces one of humanity’s biggest fears: intimacy.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge does an amazing job of hammering into one of the biggest conundrums we face in the human species. We have to be known to be loved. Poets, authors, and artists everywhere echo this statement. Going back to when George Orwell said, “perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood”. There is no love without understanding, and that is what Fleabag is so scared of. Someone getting it, and someone getting her. She fears someone will decide that she is not worthy of the love she craves.
It’s similar to talking to someone at a party and the conversation starts to get a little too intimate. You’re on the edge of accidentally getting vulnerable, so you make a joke to diffuse, and you both laugh as a silent promise that you won’t dig deeper. Waller-Bridge does the same thing in Fleabag, sharing her thoughts with us as an excuse to not share them with the other people in the scene, an exchange that would be all too personal.
Unfortunately, the walls that she’s put up begin to become less stable with the arrival of a new, likable character ‘The Hot Priest’. The Hot Priest provides a stark contrast to Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag with his morals and (slightly) unwavering faith, to Fleabag’s recklessness and love for messy drama.
We as an audience have gotten used to the fourth wall breaks the show has utilized to provide us insights into decisions or stark commentary that lets us feel like we’re in on the joke. The audience and Fleabag have their own relationship which we have gotten used to. Akin to gossiping with your best friend in the back of a classroom. It feels good to be part of an exclusive relationship, where we get to be better than anyone else. So when the Hot Priest and Fleabag are talking in the cafe, Fleabag doing her routine looks for the camera, letting us have a seat at the table, along with the two characters, we feel right at home. Suddenly, The Hot Priest catches something and starts questioning what she’s doing, and then BHAM. He looks right at us.
I once read a comment on a TikTok video about this scene that said “it was like being stripped naked”. Throughout the second season, we start seeing The Hot Priest get closer to Fleabag, seeing all the ugly parts of Fleabag that only we were allowed to look at. We see him notice things about Fleabag that the other characters don’t pick up on. Understanding her in a way that she gets scared of. We see him see her. So when he breaks the fourth wall with Fleabag we cannot help but feel all too selfish. Our sacred connection has been intercepted. In a way, Fleabag does not belong to only us.
Fleabag has a beautiful way of showcasing the fear of love, or more clearly, the fear of intimacy. This is highlighted in the exchange Fleabag has with her father in the last episode, where he says to her, “I think you know how to love better than any of us, that’s why you find it all so painful”. After he delivers one of the most soul-crushing lines I’ve ever heard on television, and then immediately exits the scene, Fleabag looks at us and says, “I don’t find it painful” in an unsuccessful way to convince us (and herself) that she doesn’t.
Fleabag finds it painful, she has spent the last season steering clear of anything that could hurt her, of anyone that could care for her. She refuses to be known, to be looked after. So when The Hot Priest enters the show and demands to do just that, the season forces us to realize that we have been scared of this intimacy along with her all this time. Unfortunately, as we come to the end of the show, we realize, there is no way to be loved without understanding.
This makes it all the harder with the last scene of the show where Fleabag and The Hot Priest know that they love each other and can’t do anything about it. The Hot Priest leaves and we get ready for it to just be us and Fleabag again, the relationship that we’re used to, the relationship that we have gotten comfortable with. But as Fleabag gets up from the bus station bench, just as we prepare to follow her like we always have, Fleabag turns around and… shakes her head? She no longer needs us.
This bitter goodbye comes with the realization that the audience and Fleabag have been using each other as a crutch. It’s a bittersweet ending that shows us that Fleabag is ready to stand on her own now. She no longer needs her funny, witty asides. With the Hot Priest, she allowed herself to be seen fully, no longer holding anything back. When Fleabag leaves we see that she is capable of letting someone in fully. She is allowing herself to be seen, and hopefully, to be loved, and isn’t that all we could hope for someone we care about?