IMO, Finch and Grace as a couple does not invalidate Finch and Ingram as a couple. We still don&rsqu
IMO, Finch and Grace as a couple does not invalidate Finch and Ingram as a couple. We still don’t know who Finch really is. This most recent episode was just more proof of that to me. All we truly know about Finch is that he is an incredibly private, paranoid man who has used multiple identities for most of his life. He kept his relationship with Grace and Nathan completely secret from each other. We don’t know if he truly loved Grace or if he just used to her set up one of the many secret identities he uses as part of the strange shell game he plays to hide his true self from everyone. I think it’s likely that he did love her … but not enough to tell her who he really was. She was a ‘safe’ person to love because she lived in an anachronistic little bubble of her own that would never cross over to any of the other identities that Finch maintains. (I suspect that he’s the guardian angel who steers magazine cover art gigs her way both out of affection and to keep her living in that isolated bubble.) He may also have loved Nathan, but again, not enough to trust Nathan with Grace. Finch compartmentalized both of these people and kept his relationship with each of them in separate, tidy boxes. From what we know so far, the person that Finch has known the longest is Nathan, not Grace, and he was close enough to Nathan to be referred to as “Uncle Harold” by Nathan’s son. His affection for Will Ingram is clearly genuine and warm (and as a side note, quite risky considering that Finch now regards himself as Patient Zero). Ecstasy!Finch is thinking about Nathan, not Grace. To me, that is a clue of how much Nathan meant to Finch. (We don’t yet know if Nathan felt the same towards Finch. Finch finds 'human interaction’ to be so difficult that perhaps he was never able to express his feelings for Nathan, which would be very tragic if true.) For all we know, Finch decided to start building this other life with Grace as an escape if things with Nathan (or Nathan’s associates) went sour because of the Machine. I don’t see this episode as any evidence of sloppy writing or 'retconning’ Finch. You can’t retcon a character that has virtually no actual filmed backstory yet, IMO. This wasn’t a retcon, it was a reveal. I’m sure that the writing team had the beats and big reveals of this season planned out right from the start. I don’t see it as any late game, intentional or subconscious attempt on the part of the writers to sink any fannish ships, and IMO it doesn’t affect any ships. The aspect of this that’s got me thinking is not about Grace vs. Nathan, but it’s about Will Ingram. If Finch truly sees himself as 'patient zero,’ isn’t he putting Will Ingram at risk by meeting with him? And, if the NSA is keeping tabs on Will Ingram (which is likely), isn’t Finch risking that he’ll draw too much attention to his 'Harold Wren’ identity if he’s seen with Will? -- source link