I really feel like in some ways, Grimm is Juliette’s origin story. Whether that’s a villain origin story or not depends on your perspective, but plenty of fans put her in that box long before she actually fit it simply because she committed the cardinal sin of being a love interest who had thoughts, goals, desires, and feelings that weren’t 100% about propping up the white male protagonist’s ego and validating all of his choices. Even though she rarely acted on them.
Juliette went through more betrayal, suffering, and evolution than any other character on the show, and she did the hardest parts almost entirely alone. From being lied to and gaslit for years by the man who claimed to love her, to having all her friends desert her and turn on her when she needed them most, to being brainwashed and robbed of her emotions, to being given those emotions back when she wasn’t sure she wanted them. Juliette’s mind, body, and agency were violated again and again, often by people she called friends.
And that’s what makes her descent into villainy in season 4 so compelling to me. Juliette as a hexenbiest doesn’t just lash out at random. Every destructive act is purposeful, targeted. All of it was a way of exorcising the pain she feels over being lied to, gaslit, used, betrayed, attacked, and abandoned, over and over and over again, for the sake of Nick’s journey as a grimm. She rocked Team Grimm to their core, and in some ways she was a much-needed wake-up call for Nick thar I wish they show had explored more than just with one speech made by Rosalee.
She goes after the trailer because it’s the symbolic source of all her problems: the day that thing appeared in her yard was the day her happy, relatively peaceful life with Nick was over. She targets Monroe and Rosalee because they’re the first Wesen friends Nick made, and were key players in keeping her in the dark as long as she was. She targets Adalind…well, do I really need to even explain that one?
I’m not saying the things Juliette did as a hexenbiest were right, or good. But they are understandable to me. For years I watched her quash her anger, set her pain aside, forgive the unforgivable, and ignore her own needs in favor of being there for her friends and her boyfriend and what they all needed. And I was screaming on the inside “WHY AREN’T YOU ANGRY?!”
That level of selflessness is not sustainable, nor is it healthy. Something was bound to break eventually. It’s just luck (and maybe karma on Nick’s part) that what becoming a hexenbiest broke was her bullshit tolerance and not her spirit.
I felt vindicated watching Juliette on her rampage. I did a fist-pump when she laughed in Nick’s face after he tried to use “I love you” to solve all their problems. She was finally letting herself be angry for years of being last priority and last to know and first to make a sacrifice. And though the romantic in me was heartbroken watching all her sweetness and selflessness turn to violence and rage, a much bigger part of me was nodding and saying “good for her.”
FYeahNickBurkhardt (Tumblr Backup) 