Scylla and Anacostia are not hundreds of years old. They do not have a special connection with the Mother Mycelium or have special gifts of sight, they are not Stewards or among the most powerful witches that ever lived. Instead, they are the everywoman (every witch) characters. Neither of them would claim to be especially powerful or important witches. History will probably not remember them, but we certainly will.
What they are is knowledgeable, wise and very well trained. They are us in that alternate universe if things had worked out differently. More importantly they represent what each other could have become if our lives had taken other paths. They have a complicated relationship and recognise in each other that if their paths had turned out differently, they might be in each other’s shoes right now.
A key thing for both Scylla and Anacostia is that they both lost their parents when they were young. Both their parents died suddenly and together and left them alone in the world. Scylla and Anacostia both hold the army responsible for their parents’ deaths, but where Scylla blames the army for deliberately killing her parents, Anacostia does not blame the army. Her parents died by their choice in following the army rules about not using Work off base.
After suddenly becoming orphaned, Anacostia is immediately swept up into a new family as one of the Army Fosterling programme. She had a new family, people who loved her and raised her in the army values. They gave her a path and a set of values to make sense of her life. They made her who she is.
For Scylla, it was completely different. She was left alone in a dodger world, where there was no Fosterling programme. There was nobody to take her in, nobody to look out for her and raise her. Instead she was alone and vulnerable, which meant that she was easy prey for groups like the Spree, who would take her in and give her a sense of belonging and purpose. This is grooming and is how radicalisation starts. This radicalisation of young, isolated people is so common that it is something people are taught to look out for in things like the PREVENT anti-radicalisation strategy. She would have been taught off canon magic, taught who were the ‘real’ enemy and indoctrinated.
This difference in their paths shows up powerfully in their different reactions to General Alder. Anacostia sees Alder as a substitute mother figure, someone she looks up to and reveres. It is this reverence for Alder that makes her disillusionment at seeing things like Alder puppeting President Wade so difficult to handle. Her idol has feet of clay after all.
Scylla’s attitude and opinion of Alder are shown up when Alder comes to see her in the interrogation chamber. She blames Alder for the fact that witches have to surrender themselves to the military and fight wars whether they believe in them or not. She believes that she is fighting for the liberation of witches from some form of slavery. Despite everything she has gone through, she is strong enough and determined enough not to be cowed by Alder. All she has to fight back with are her words and beliefs, but fight back she does.
Anacostia recognises something of herself in Scylla. Their relationship prior to the Bellweather wedding had been a frosty, or even antagonistic one. She sees her own path so clearly, that whatever life journey Scylla had been on was something she did not understand, but wanted to. It was Anacostia’s unwillingness to give up on Scylla that eventually saved both their lives.
The relationship each of them had with Raelle complicated things. Now is not the place to think through all those strands. Anacostia knew that Raelle was Scylla’s weakness and she wanted to break her. She was willing to use Raelle as a tool to do that.
We don’t know the full extent of what Anacostia learned when she was able to probe Scylla’s mind. She clearly learned more than the flashback we saw because she knew Scylla had been responsible for the deaths at the mall.
After Scylla’s escape, the Anacostia – Scylla reunion at the Mall Memorial was where Anacostia pulled no punches in her condemnation of Scylla and her actions. Perhaps Anacostia thought she was trying to reach someone committed to the Spree cause. She had no idea at that point that things had changed. She didn’t know that Willa had changed the mission. As Scylla would say to Raelle after they had rescued her, that it was not about fighting conscription or liberation at any cost. It was about stopping the people who had hurt Raelle, ‘They are the only enemy that matters’. As they were about to part again, Scylla said she would ‘hunt down the Camarilla and make sure they don’t put any more of us in cages’.
They are both teachers. Anacostia has made that clear from the start that she is about getting the recruits to survive basic training. She trains them to be warriors. But we see Scylla sharing her Spree knowledge and teaching others some of the tricks and tactics she has learned. She taught Quinn when she was staying with Edwin in the Cession and clearly taught Anacostia things like how to take someone’s face and she, in turn, taught Sterling. Petra was very grateful for that bit of Spree magic when President Silver arrived unexpectedly.
As their paths grew together and intertwined, they influenced and changed each other. Their shared values grew and so did their respect for each other. Each sacrificed herself to save others, Anacostia died for others in the season 3 finale. Scylla sacrificed herself to save the councillors of the Great River by allowing herself to be captured so they had a chance to escape.
Two people, so different from each other at the start, found a path that allowed them to bring out the best in each other and to grow into their shared values. They each found a better path. A path that eventually allowed them to fight side by side to retake Fort Salem. One that we could all learn from and follow.
Therefore it is fitting that Scylla’s final words in season 3 were about Anacostia. She said ‘She saw the good in everyone.’
But Scylla’s final words were in a group tribute to Anacostia. A tribute that saw not just the respect for Anacostia and her path, but Scylla fully reintegrated as a member of the army and part of the unity. Paths that had started so far apart had come together and changed each other’s lives.
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