It all felt SO natural, definitely not played for the usual hacky reasons. Like, in the first one, dead mom wasn't her Tragic Backstory, it was just another reason for her to hate her birthday and give context to the stuff with her dad (which she SOLD so it WORKED), and her birthday sucking was... the point of the whole movie, really. Then when the second one comes around and they start playing with alternate universes, well, OF COURSE you bring the mom in, that's the most obvious and natural development (and yet still caught me off guard) and then they handle it so satisfactorily, just ugh.

The female relationships in general were super satisfying, actually! When she got the big beautiful closure scene with her mom, I assumed they wouldn't bother doing much else with Lori, that was more than enough emotional resonance for such a ridiculous movie, but then they still got their bittersweet 'what could have been' moments in the end! They gave time to that!

trilogy plz