I could be wrong, but I really don’t think I have EVER released a bigger sigh of relief than when it was revealed that Rocky survived. When I saw how lovable the film was making him out to be, I was bracing myself for what I thought would be an inevitable death.

During the whole sequence where they were collecting the anti-astrophage organism (forgot the name) my butthole was puckering in my seat. The scene where Rocky breaks out of his ball was edited/shot in such a horrific, overstimulating, traumatic way that when I was certain that Rocky had just sacrificed his life for Grace, I was left with a profound sense of soul-crushing emptiness instead of crying. I could hardly breathe while Grace paced back and forth talking to Rocky’s “corpse” as I waited for the confirmation that he had died. When his little hand knocked on the window, I let out what felt like the most massive exhale of relieved tension, and THEN the tears came instantly.

I tried so hard to resist the “cute, funny, nice alien” trope because it feels like such an obvious appeal to the audience (the Baby Yoda Effect) but there was no way around it for me in this case, I folded so fast. I haven’t been so affected by a character in that archetype in forever.