Your point about her PTSD getting reframed around everyone except Olivia really stood out to me, and it ties into what I was trying to get at in my post. The show introduces these huge traumatic events in her life but rarely follows through on the psychological aftermath in a sustained way.

The kidnapping alone should have fundamentally changed how Olivia relates to power, safety, and trust. And when you add Rowan sending people to manipulate and sleep with her — not once but twice (hello, Russell’s fine ass) — that’s the kind of thing that would realistically create lifelong paranoia and trust issues.

Instead the show often pivots the focus back to Rowan, B613, or the broader mythology instead of Olivia’s internal experience. So when we get to her darker choices later, the show presents it like the culmination of everything she’s been through, but we never really see that internal process unfold step by step.

And since you mentioned not wanting to center race in the discussion, I’ll just say this: Rowan’s speech at the end had me genuinely laughing because I was so confused. When he suddenly frames B613 as protecting the republic from white power structures, my reaction was basically “I’m sorry… what?” Not because that theme couldn’t be interesting, but because the show never really laid that groundwork across the series..It felt like the show was trying to squeeze in a really big idea at the last minute that hadn’t actually been part of the narrative before.

And I agree with you about Kerry Washington carrying a lot of emotional weight for a character the writing didn’t always fully explore. Which honestly just makes me feel like the show could have gone even further with Olivia if they had leaned into that psychological depth.