TW: mention of violence, substance abuse and mental disorders.
This article includes spoilers from Season 1 to 3 of BoJack Horseman.
Sarah Lynn’s last words were “I wanna be an architect”.
She never got what she wanted.
Perhaps one of the most conflicting yet similar pairs of characters in the animated sitcom BoJack Horseman is BoJack himself and Sarah Lynn, his younger co-star and pretend-daughter-figure in the show they both star in—Horsing Around. Before we begin, here’s some context about the show.
Set primarily in Hollywoo(d), the story is focused on the spiralling, self-destructing, anthropomorphic BoJack Horseman, a washed-up TV star from the 90s. BoJack, along with Sarah Lynn, hit stardom in the sitcom Horsing Around, where they both grow to form a cataclysmic bond. The show is famous for its realistic takes on sexual assault, racism, sexism, sexuality, and addiction, and the devastating consequences that follow. With heavy topics disguised in humour, it’s a perfect show to think profoundly about world issues while staying entertained.
Young, innocent and sweet, Sarah Lynn played Sabrina in Horsing Around, the adopted child of BoJack’s character. This allowed the both of them to form a superficial father-daughter bond that filled Sarah Lynn’s gaping daddy issues and BoJack’s constant need for validation from women. One notable line that Sarah Lynn says when she’s a child is: “I wanna be an architect…”. As a young girl surrounded with fame and having little to no guidance growing up, she turned out to completely dominate her sexuality as a woman and becomes one of the world’s biggest sex teen icons on the show. It is also hinted that Sarah Lynn’s father sexually abused her, which intensifies her connection with BoJack.
In her first music video, ‘Prickly Muffin’, it depicted her barely clothed with sexual suggestions, symbolising that she was completely open with her body. In Sarah Lynn’s case, she made her body image the only focus of herself. People only want to be around her if they want something, whether it be drugs, her body, or her fame. Stardom takes a toll on her, and when BoJack visits her for the first time in years, she opens up to him, assuming that he’s just here for a regular visit. She is ‘this close to falling off the deep end’, and BoJack is the only one there to listen, but much like his character, he disappoints her: he’s only here to convince her to join his new show. The incident, further convincing her that she’s alone for the rest of her life, pushed her to downfall and long-standing alcohol and substance addiction.
From season 1, it is clear that Sarah Lynn has a substance addiction and is incredibly unstable. She stabs herself during a public mental breakdown with her boyfriend and downs more pills, leaving her alone with no place to stay—until BoJack takes her in, and this is where the real destruction begins.
Sarah Lynn begins to take advantage of BoJack: throwing parties every other day, drinking, and doing drugs. Clearly, BoJack is too busy wallowing in his own self-destruction to care about his former co-star, and parties with her instead. The cycle is endless. They end up having sex, catalysing both of their unattended, crippling self image issues, and falling into the habit of substance abuse. They are both at the lowest points of their lives, pretending to care about each other, yet too consumed in their problems to actually do anything about it. Just like two parasites, they leech off of each others’ downfall, their lives so hopelessly intertwined yet parallel. A cobweb of illusion where death would be the only thing to relieve them from endless pain.
But perhaps one of the most painful things about their relationship is how Bojack was the sole cause of Sarah Lynn’s death and how easily it could have been avoided. In season 3, Sarah Lynn is actually nine months sober and thriving with the absence of substances, but she’s just another piece of glass in the show that BoJack shatters beyond repair. After BoJack enters a low point in his life, he calls her, telling her that he’s ready to party, and Sarah Lynn immediately relapses into her old patterns. She begins to wear the same clothes she did at her lowest: she never really changed, seeing from how willing she is to resume to her old lifestyle. Sarah Lynn constantly wears a noose around her neck, and Bojack is the one to kick the stool. BoJack never really cared about her: he only wanted her there to make himself feel better, because when they were together, he had the comfort of knowing that he wasn’t the worst one in the room. He had the comfort of knowing that he was better than her, but was he really?
Their drug-fueled bender lasts for weeks, maybe even months, taking them to different locations and BoJack ‘apologising’ to different people, perhaps symbolising his last acts with Sarah Lynn as a goodbye. What’s ironic about this is that BoJack had the decency to apologise to everyone he’s ruined, all except for Sarah Lynn, because he doesn’t even realise he was killing her.
In a series of blackouts, BoJack tells Sarah Lynn that she’s the only one who can understand him, which is correct, as they’re essentially the same person. But what BoJack gets wrong is: ‘but you and me, we don’t want anything from each other. I could never figure out what love meant, but right now I don’t need to figure out anything. I just feel it. I love you, Sarah Lynn.’ And maybe he did love her, but not enough to see that he was corrupting her. BoJack was like home to Sarah Lynn, reminding her of a time in her life when there was still hope for the both of them. She feeds off this false sense of hope, this senseless longing, because she wanted it to be true so badly. This is what they want from each other: for Sarah Lynn, a father figure to fill her pit of daddy issues and a false sense of security, and for BoJack, someone whom he can look at and fully feel as though he were better than them—because as much as he hated himself, he saw that Sarah Lynn hated herself even more.
In a hotel room where Sarah Lynn finds out she’s won an Oscar award, she admits to him: “BoJack, I don’t like anything about me. None of this is me. The only reason I wear this shirt is because some company paid me $8,000 to wear it. I just liked that someone still wanted me to wear their shirt”. At this moment, she’s vulnerable. Her self-pity and destruction is all she ever is, and this bender of drugs and alcohol is just a selfish attempt to distract herself from it. Upon hearing this, BoJack empathises with her and takes her to the planetarium.
Arriving at the planetarium, they both sit as silhouettes, gazing at the artificial stars. Inspired by the narrator’s words, BoJack goes on to say: “It doesn’t matter what we did in the past, or how we’ll be remembered. The only thing that matters is right now, this moment, this one spectacular moment we are sharing together”. He then probes for her response, but she’s already dead, and this was probably the last thing she ever heard. These last words of flawed hope were spoken by the person she thought would save her from the bullet that is herself but is in fact the one behind the trigger. And maybe this last moment that they shared together really was the only thing that mattered to her. All she wanted was a sense of fulfillment, that real connection with BoJack, and in this moment, she could pretend it was the relationship she always wanted with her father. Which is also why, in this moment, Sarah Lynn’s death was perfect. She died gazing at a sky full of fake stars: no matter how badly she wanted it to be real, it was never going to be.
At the end of it all, BoJack and Sarah Lynn were exactly the same person. They both hated themselves and were too busy spiralling to truly see each other. What was sad about their relationship was that they really could have helped one another. Because they were so similar, they could have brought each other out of their self-deprecation, but instead brought out the worst in each other. BoJack and Sarah Lynn were star-crossed lovers and so much more than that: they were like two negative magnets, having the same label but opposing forces, never touching but always conflicting.