WARNING: This article contains spoilers for episode four of American Gods.
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When author Neil Gaiman admitted that his favorite episode of Starz’s American Gods, based on his wildly popular novel, was episode four, which focused exclusively on Laura Moon (Emily Browning), the wife of protagonist Shadow (Ricky Whittle), many fans were surprised. In the novel, Laura is a prickly character who often inspires derision from readers who find her unrepentant coldness towards her husband tough to stomach, even after she’s dead. As last week’s episode left viewers eagerly waiting for the result of the Moon reunion, showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green admitted they were keen to develop Laura further and show fans her side of the story. With episode four, ent itled Git Gone, Laura got the opportunity to show just how deep her complexities ran.
When we first meet Laura, it is at work in a tacky ancient Egypt themed casino in Indiana where she deals blackjack with little enthusiasm. Her home life consists of the same boring routine, including an equally disinterested cat, and toying with suicide by bug spray. When Shadow enters the casino, his original plan is to case the joint and rob it, which Laura catches wind of and advises against. Later, when he catches up with her and suggests the pair work together on a heist, she rejects him, but invites him to her place when he simply asks to go home with her. There, sex ensues, but Laura only takes real interest when the proceedings get rough. Following on from Bilquis and the Jinn, American Gods continues to use sex in interesting thematic ways, with Laura’s desperation for excitement in her life symbolized by how her sexual relationship with Shadow evolves. The first encounter, when the pair are practically strangers and she knows him only as a thief, are fierce and unpredictable. As they settle down and Shadow happily takes on a cozy suburban husband role, things develop into a routine and Laura stops caring.
We find out that Shadow’s fate is sealed by Laura’s yearning for excitement, as it is ultimately her idea to rob the casino after all, a decision that sees him sent to jail for six years. Laura offers to make a deal so the pair of them can serve shorter sentences - possibly another act of desperation for an apathetic woman - which Shadow refuses. All he asks of her is that she wait for him. Of course, knowing her ultimate demise, the audience is aware that she doesn’t plan on doing that.
Quickly exasperated by the humdrum routine of waiting for Shadow to call from jail, Laura accepts the advances of Robbie (Dane Cook), Shadow’s best friend and the husband of Laura’s own friend, Audrey (Betty Gilpin). Their affair is torrid and not especially passionate. While Robbie hopes the pair will be together as a proper couple one day, Laura is insistent that the affair remains what it is: a fun time-waster that Robbie can one day look back on as a thrilling little secret. To bring the affair to a pleasant end, Laura goes down on Robbie as he is driving, which ends messily.
Looking down at her own corpse, we see the first signs of shock in Laura – ironically, death makes her care. Thanks to her cat and her grandmother’s stories of feline power, her journey to the afterlife is guided by Anubis (Chris Obi), who we meet in the previous episode. This time around, his companion is far less willing, and Laura refuses to let Anubis weigh her heart. Previously, the nihilistic Laura admitted to Shadow that she believes in nothing beyond this world except that we will all rot. But her cat, and her grandmother’s sharing of those stories is enough to bind her to Anubis in the next life, much like the deceased Egyptian woman of episode 3. After refusing to be judged on her life’s misdeeds – she knows how bad she has been and makes no excuses for her behavior – Anubis is ready to guide her into darkness, which she refuses. When Mad Sweeney’s gold coin, left on her grave by Shadow, pulls her back from death, she goes after her husband, not necessarily because she loves him – she claims she does but her actions always seem apathetic – but because he adores her so much, and his steadfast dedication to her is like worship. He becomes the literal light of her life.
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Before she goes on her journey to reclaim Shadow, she sees him hanging from the tree, lynched by the faceless Droog-style goons of Technical Boy (Bruce Langley), as witnessed in the pilot. In a fit of passion, Laura single-handedly rips them limb from limb in a blood-stained display of vengeance. It’s the most emotional and active we see Laura in the entire episode, and it is in an act of defense of her husband. Until now, she has viewed him almost out of pity, calling him “puppy” because he follows her around adoringly, but her massacre brings clarity to her life, and so she goes forward to find Shadow once again, but not before she has her dismembered arm sewn back on by a terrified and bitter Audrey.
On the journey to find Shadow, guided by the blinding light he omits that only Laura can see, she is stopped on the road by Anubis and Mr Ibis (Demore Barnes), the Egyptian god Thoth. They take her back to the funeral parlor they run and help make her look less corpse-like in a moment that evokes the black comedy Death Becomes Her. Even as she lies naked on a mortuary slab, watching a stranger sew her arm back on and paint her skin, she is mentally detached from the proceedings. Anubis promises that one day he will finish the job he started and guide her to the next life, but Laura has other plans first. The episode ends as the previous one did, with Laura in Shadow’s hotel room, waiting.
Even in the prestige TV era, it is rare to see female characters defined so abrasively and explicitly as unlikeable. It’s a word often used to dismiss characters unfairly – such as Skyler in Breaking Bad – but with Laura Moon, her disinterest in the “shitty life” she led and fight to make it worth something is developed beautifully by her refusal to fit narrow definitions of likable. She is a passive passenger in her own life, and it is only in death that she desires to hop into the driver's seat, offering an intriguing subversion of the “women in refrigerators” trope. Her death is a means for her to tell her own story – her death is her character development, not Shadow’s.
Laura is the epitome of modern millennial apathy – the perpetually dissatisfied and bored stiff young woman who finds no relish in her mediocre career and feels undeserving of the husband who loves her. Suburbia holds no charm, and she doesn’t even lust after Robbie, the man she cheats with. She’s just relieved to have someone who wants to take a risk with her. Hers is not a story of redemption or pity – she doesn’t seem truly repentant for her misdeeds, even when she apologizes to her former best friend Audrey – and it may not even be one of love. She simply hungers for something that isn’t death or the life of mundane purgatory she lived during Shadow’s incarceration. For someone who has spent her life looking for a reason to care, Laura may have finally found something worth living for.
Laura plays a major part in the novel of American Gods, and will undoubtedly do so in the rest of the season. Emily Browning will also play Essie Tregowan, the Irish immigrant who brings Mad Sweeney (Pablo Schreiber) to the new world, offering a fun parallel with Laura given that her lucky revival from the dead is partly his doing. Now that Laura is reunited with her husband, she will be a crucial cog in the unraveling tapestry of the upcoming battle of the gods old and new. For Shadow, that war may pale in comparison to the difficulties of his own marriage.