November 15, 2025 • 15 mins
Featuring multiple chapters narrated alternately by Tris and Tobias (Four). These passages detail the immediate aftermath of the previous book, focusing on the protagonists' escape from the city ruled by Evelyn and the factionless, and their journey to the Bureau of Genetic Welfare outside the city walls. The narrative explores personal relationships—especially the strained dynamic between Tris and Tobias, and their interactions with friends like Christina and Uriah—alongside major plot revelations concerning the origins of the faction system, genetic experimentation, and the true purpose of their society. Key events include Tris's discovery of her mother's past at the Bureau, Tobias's struggle with the revelation that he is "genetically damaged" (not Divergent), and their involvement with an attempted rebellion led by Nita that ultimately results in a tragic outcome for Uriah.
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You can listen and download our episodes for free on more than 10 different platforms:
https://linktr.ee/book_shelter
Get the Book now from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Allegiant-Divergent-Veronica-Roth/dp/0062024078?&linkCode=ll1&tag=cvthunderx-20&linkId=a1cfac9008794e19771b790f3495d6a6&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl
Produced by:
https://www.podcaistudio.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the deep dive. Today. We are tackling
a really dense one, the Vinyl book in the Divergent trilogy, Allegiant.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Yeah, it's complex, definitely.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
So if you need the full story, like every key
detail laid out is a narrative, not just bullet points,
well this is for you. We're going to trace Trace
and Tobias from the ruins of Chicago out into this
shocking new reality.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's quite the journey. Our mission here is really to
map that path survival, these huge revelations and the ultimate
cost of what the outside world calls genetic correction.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Right, and the sources cover everything from Evelyn's takeover right
after Insurgent, the escape the bureau and that that ending.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
That ending. Yeah, we have a lot to unpack.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay, let's dive in. So we pick up right after
the faction system is basically dismantled. Evelyn Johnson, Tobias's mother,
is in charge with the factionless.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
And it's not exactly peaceful Triz Christina Kara, they're basically
prisoners in the old erudite HQ.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Chris is already thinking about her identities and she seeing
her as this ancestor's inheritance inherently antifaction.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Right exactly, and it's fueling this intense, almost obsessive need.
She has to find out what's really beyond the fence.
She has to know.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
But Evelyn's putting the clams down.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
No one leaves, not if she can help it. It's
presented as being about safety, but Tobias sees right through it.
He knows it's about her holding onto power. If people
leave her, whole regime kind of falls apart.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
And Tobias is in such a difficult position here. He's
Evelyn's son, so he has status. Where's the factionless symbol?
But he desperately wants out with Trees.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
It forces him into this terrible deception. He visits Trees,
they know they have to leave, but then he goes
to his mother and lies the lie.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
About being afraid about not being able to hold a
gun after shooting Will.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, he plays on her perception of his trauma from insurgent,
and she buys it. It gives him the cover he
needs to start planning their escape from what he calls
the prison of the city.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
And even before they leave, car makes an observation about Tree,
something about her biol.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Kara, being the ex erudite, notices Teres's resistance to Serum's
is off the charts, even for a divergent. She calls
her atypical a little bit, foreshadowing there a huge bit.
It's the first hint that Trace isn't just divergent in
the way they understood it inside the city. She's something
else entirely, which becomes well central to everything outside.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Okay, so planning the escape, it seems like Trace and
Tobias needed to clear the air first. There's that scene
where they climbed the metal structure.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Oh yeah, the exploded aluminum can near the Dauntless pit.
It's a really important moment. Tobias finally confronts her about
working with his dad, Marcus, whom he despises.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
They needed to sort that out, rebuild that trust.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Absolutely, because the escape plan is incredibly risky. They joined
this group, the Allegiance, led by Johanna and Kara, and.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
The team itself is interesting. Trees, Tobias, Christina, Uriah, Peter, Peter.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, the inclusion of Peter is a major shock, but
it turns out he was the one who gave them
the tech to fake tre death. Back an insurgent. He
actually saved her life in a twisted way, so.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
They kind of owe him, or at least need him.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Seems that way. Tory Wu is also part of the
initial group, but Zeke, you're Riyah's brother. He backs out
last minute. He can't leave Seana behind, adds another layer
of tension.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
And there's another complication. Caleb, Chris's brother, the Trader.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Right Evelyn has some scheduled for execution. Tobias knows Tris
can't leave him, so he has to stage a rescue.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
This involves a fight with Zeke.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, it's intense. Tobias picks a fight with Zeke, makes
it look real, even hits him hard in the jaw,
creating a diversion.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
All they get Caleb out exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
He drags Caleb outside the fence, tells him exile is
more fitting than death, A cold kind of mercy maybe.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
But the escape itself isn't clean.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
No, it's tragic. As they're leaving, tory Wu gets shot
by factionless guards, killed right there.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Oh Man, after everything she went through to find out
about her brother.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And she dies just as they reach freedom, leaving her
brother George behind in the city. It just casts this
immediate shadow over their escape freedom, but at a terrible cost.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Okay. So they make it past the fence and they
find this sign.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Bureau of Genetic Welfare BGF, and suddenly the world expands massively.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
They're met by people Zoe and someone Tobias.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Knows, Amar, his dauntless initiation instructor, the one Tobias thought
was dead, executed for being divergent.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
WHOA, He's alive.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Alive and working security for the bureau. Imagine Tobias as shock.
It's the first major sign that everything they knew was wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And then they meet the boss, David.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yes, David, and he lays it all out, the great
deception you could call it, which is the city Chicago
wasn't just a city. It was an experiment for genetic healing.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Genetic healing, what does that even mean?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Okay, So, according to David, centuries ago there was a
purity war. Attempts to remove bad traits through genetic modification
went horribly wrong, causing widespread genetic damage.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Damage meaning behavioral issues, violence, cowardice, things the factions were
meant to suppress.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Exactly the factions were, in David's words, the behavioral modification portion,
the nurture side of the experiment, trying to correct this
inherited genetic damage. The ultimate goal was to heal the
genome to produce genetically pure people again.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
So GP and GD genetically pure and genetically damaged. That's
the new.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Divide, that's the framework for this whole new world and
the Bureau, the GP descendants living outside, have been running
these city experiments like Chicago, trying to fix the.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Gds and watching them content constantly.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
David confirms they saw everything Tris's first kiss, her parents' deaths,
Peter attacking her, and dauntless initiation, all recorded surveillance on
an unimaginable scale.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
That's horrifying. Yeah, and then Tris finds out about her mother, Natalie.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Oh, this is huge for Tris. Natalie Pryor wasn't originally
from the city. She was genetically pure, raised outside by
the Bureau.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
She was sent in on him, yes, sent in by
David actually to retrieve divergent genes and help fix the
problem in the experiment. But then she fell in love.
She fell in love with Andrew Pryor, Tris's father. She
shows abnegation, shows love, effectively defying David's mission. Tris finds
her mother's journal, her file, a SE's Natalie's own words,
love before faction, always.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Wow, undermining the entire basis of the Bureau's cold clinical
project completely. It gives Tris this anchor, this connection to
her mother's choices, right when her own identity is being
redefined by genetics.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
So the Bureau runs tests on Tris and Tobias, and
the results.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
They hit hard, devastatingly hard. Especially for Tobias. Tris is
confirmed as genetically pure, truly divergent, the successful outcome of
the experiment in their eyes.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
But Tobias, despite everything his resistance to simulations.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Officially he's genetically damaged GD. He has this rare anomaly
that allows him simulation awareness, which is unusual for a GD.
But the label.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Sticks damn and that just destroys him. Right after everything
he's thought against being defined by his father's cruelty, now
he's labeled damage by his genes.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
It feeds right into his deepest insecurities, makes him feel
fundamentally broken, and that vulnerability makes.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Him a target for Nita, the ged activist Exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Nita works at the Bureau. She's ged herself and she
recruits to Bias into a rebellion. The plan, she says,
is to steal the Bureau's memory serum.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
The memory serum, what's that for?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
It's a weapon the Bureau has. It can wipe entire
population's memories. Nita claims she wants to use it to
inoculate the GDS against memory wipes to protect them from
the Bureau's control.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Okay, but Tobias has to keep this secret from Tris.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, more secrets. He feels alienated by the GPGD divide.
It feels like Tris can't understand because she's pure, so
he joins Nita's cause.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
But Nita's plan isn't just about inoculation.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
No, tris working with Matthew as sympathetic scientist that the
Bureau figures out the truth. Nita wasn't just after the
memory serum. She was also going for the death serius.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Death Seerum, like the Dawnless Initiation.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
One potentially even worse and explosives. Nita is planning a
full blown, violent uprising, a war against the BGF, who
she sees as genetic oppressors, and.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
This plan has immediate terrible consequences.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Horrific during the raid, NITA engineers using diversionary explosions. Uriah
gets caught in one.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Oh no, not Uriyah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
He suffers catastrophic brain damage. They say he has no
brain waves. He's essentially gone. He won't wake up. Christina
is just shattered. It's another brutal loss, a direct result
of this internal conflict.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Meanwhile, the Bureau is planning its own move against the city.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yes, things are escalating back in Chicago too, with the
Allegiant and the factionless on the brink of civil war.
David and the BGF decide the experiment is too unstable.
They're going to deploy the Memory Serum weapon to wipe
the entire city, reset.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Everyone, just to raise Chicago.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Everyone's memories, history, allegiances start over.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
And Caleb steps up to stop it.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Caleb, Yes, riddled with guilt over his past betrayals, he
volunteers for what is essentially a suicide mission, break into
the weapons lab and deploy the Memory Serum against the
Bureau members before they can launch it at Chicago.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
He wants to atone, he asks Tris if she's forgiven him.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
First, though, he does a really raw moment. He needs
to know Chris she can't give him a simple yes,
it's too.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Complicated, but she makes a decision.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
She does. She realizes Caleb actually deserves a chance to
live to perhaps find redemption, so she decides she has
to go instead of him. It mirrors her mother's path
of sacrifice.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So Tris goes to the weapons lab.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yes, she confronts David, uses him as a human shield,
gets shot arm head, but somehow, through sheer will or
maybe that atypical resistance.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Karen noted, she doesn't die instantly.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
No, she manages to activate and release the memory serum,
exposing the Bureau compound, including David. She saves the city
from the immediate memory white threat.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
And as she's dying, she has.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
This vision or hallucination of her mother reaching for her,
a sense of completion, maybe understanding her mother's choices as
she makes her own final one.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Okay, so Tris succeeds, but she dies the memory erum
is released at the Bureau. What happens next, Well.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
The aftermath is messy. Tobias finds Peter wandering around completely broken.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Peter, what's his deal now?
Speaker 2 (10:22):
He confesses he's just sick of himself, sick of doing
bad things. And liking it is how he puts it.
He basically asks Tobias to a raise him.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
With the memory serum. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Tobias struggles with it, but ultimately he gives Peter the serum,
watches his personality, his memories just vanish. Peter gets a reset,
a chance to start over completely blank.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Does Tobias help him afterwards?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
He does. He calls Peter later, finds him disoriented and
guides him, telling him his name, helping him take the
first steps into a new, unknown life. A strange act
of mercy.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Maybe. Then Tobias has to go back to Chicago to
face Evelyn.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yes, he confronts his mother and he gives her this
imput possible choice power leading the factionless against the Allegiant,
probably into a bloody civil war, or him.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Her son, and she chooses.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
She chooses Tobias. She says, let them have the city
and everything in it. It's a massive turning point for
her character. Love over power.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Finally that prevents the civil war.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
It does, it allows for peace. Talks Evelyn, with Tobias
beside her, meets Johanna, who's now leading the Allegiant after
Marcus was basically sidelined.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Good, Marcus shouldn't be in charge.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Agreed, they signed a treaty. Evelyn steps down peacefully. They
agree to hold democratic elections for new leadership, and crucially,
Marcus is explicitly banned from ever holding power again.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So the city finds a path forward. But Tobias, he
still has grief to deal with. Euryah.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, the doctors confirm Uriah won't recover. They're gonna unplug
his life support. Tobias has to be the one to
tell Zeke and Uriah's.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Mother, Hannah, Ah, that's awful.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
It's heartbreaking. He goes to them, apologizes for failing to
protect Uriah, and it's only then, in that moment of
shared grief, that he learns the full truth about Tris.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
He didn't know she died. He thought she might have survived.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
He'd been holding onto hope. He learns definitively that she
was shot in the weapons lab and didn't make it.
The finality of it just absolutely shatters him.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
So the story jumps forward.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Two years later. Tobias is living outside Chicago in what
they called the Fourth City. He's still processing everything, carrying
Tris's ashes in an urn. Has he found some peace
he's working on it. The text talks about mending. He
credits his friends, especially Christina, with pulling him back from
the brink. She convinced him not to use the memory serum.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
On himself because Tris wouldn't have wanted that exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
She reminded him he couldn't become someone Tris would hate.
He had to live with the pain, with the memories,
both good.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
And bad, and the ending the zipline.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, the final scene is incredibly poignant. Tobias decides to
finally face one of his biggest fears, the zipline from
the Hancock Building, something Trice would have loved, but he
was always too.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Scared, as a tribute to her.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
As a tribute and maybe as a final step in
his own healing, Zeke straps him in, calls him four
Dauntless legend, acknowledging his past, his identity, and he does it.
He does it. He flies across the city, skyline scatters,
trusses ashes into the wind. He lands not alone, but
with his friends Christina, Caleb, who seems to be finding
his own path, and Amar ready to face the future together.
(13:26):
Mended hashtag tac tag outro of wow.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Okay that is quite a story. We went from that
claustrophobic lockdown utter Evelyn all the way through the Bureau's
massive deceptions about genetics, to well to loss, but also
to a kind of piece.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
A hard one piece. It really is a journey from confinement,
both physical and ideological, to facing these really brutal truths
about identity, manipulation and sacrifice.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
And the cost was immense Tris's life.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yourah's absolutely, But there's that core idea that comes through
so strongly at the end, that paradox of destruction and healing.
The book itself says it right. Life damages us everyone.
We can't escape that damage.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
But now I am also learning this We can be mended.
We mend each other exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
It's about human connection, rebuilding what's been broken, which.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Brings us to a final thought for you listening. The
Bureau tried so hard to define people by their genes,
by these labels GDGP. They wanted to control behavior, predict outcomes.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
But ultimately the story seems to argue that it's the
choices that matter more. Trist choosing sacrifice, Evelyn choosing her
son over power, Tobias choosing to live with his damage,
and his memories, not erase them.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
These acts of love of will, they defy those nat
genetic boxes. So make you think about this. Are there
institutions or systems or even just ideas in your own
life that try to define your damage or your purity?
And how do you choose actively choose to define yourself instead?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
A powerful question. It really pushes back against letting external
labels dictate our worth or our path. Thanks for diving
deep with us into Allegiance.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah, thanks for joining us. We'll catch on the next
DA dive
Welcome back to the deep dive. Today. We are tackling
a really dense one, the Vinyl book in the Divergent trilogy, Allegiant.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Yeah, it's complex, definitely.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
So if you need the full story, like every key
detail laid out is a narrative, not just bullet points,
well this is for you. We're going to trace Trace
and Tobias from the ruins of Chicago out into this
shocking new reality.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's quite the journey. Our mission here is really to
map that path survival, these huge revelations and the ultimate
cost of what the outside world calls genetic correction.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Right, and the sources cover everything from Evelyn's takeover right
after Insurgent, the escape the bureau and that that ending.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
That ending. Yeah, we have a lot to unpack.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay, let's dive in. So we pick up right after
the faction system is basically dismantled. Evelyn Johnson, Tobias's mother,
is in charge with the factionless.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
And it's not exactly peaceful Triz Christina Kara, they're basically
prisoners in the old erudite HQ.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Chris is already thinking about her identities and she seeing
her as this ancestor's inheritance inherently antifaction.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Right exactly, and it's fueling this intense, almost obsessive need.
She has to find out what's really beyond the fence.
She has to know.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
But Evelyn's putting the clams down.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
No one leaves, not if she can help it. It's
presented as being about safety, but Tobias sees right through it.
He knows it's about her holding onto power. If people
leave her, whole regime kind of falls apart.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
And Tobias is in such a difficult position here. He's
Evelyn's son, so he has status. Where's the factionless symbol?
But he desperately wants out with Trees.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
It forces him into this terrible deception. He visits Trees,
they know they have to leave, but then he goes
to his mother and lies the lie.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
About being afraid about not being able to hold a
gun after shooting Will.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, he plays on her perception of his trauma from insurgent,
and she buys it. It gives him the cover he
needs to start planning their escape from what he calls
the prison of the city.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
And even before they leave, car makes an observation about Tree,
something about her biol.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Kara, being the ex erudite, notices Teres's resistance to Serum's
is off the charts, even for a divergent. She calls
her atypical a little bit, foreshadowing there a huge bit.
It's the first hint that Trace isn't just divergent in
the way they understood it inside the city. She's something
else entirely, which becomes well central to everything outside.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Okay, so planning the escape, it seems like Trace and
Tobias needed to clear the air first. There's that scene
where they climbed the metal structure.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Oh yeah, the exploded aluminum can near the Dauntless pit.
It's a really important moment. Tobias finally confronts her about
working with his dad, Marcus, whom he despises.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
They needed to sort that out, rebuild that trust.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Absolutely, because the escape plan is incredibly risky. They joined
this group, the Allegiance, led by Johanna and Kara, and.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
The team itself is interesting. Trees, Tobias, Christina, Uriah, Peter, Peter.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, the inclusion of Peter is a major shock, but
it turns out he was the one who gave them
the tech to fake tre death. Back an insurgent. He
actually saved her life in a twisted way, so.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
They kind of owe him, or at least need him.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Seems that way. Tory Wu is also part of the
initial group, but Zeke, you're Riyah's brother. He backs out
last minute. He can't leave Seana behind, adds another layer
of tension.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
And there's another complication. Caleb, Chris's brother, the Trader.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Right Evelyn has some scheduled for execution. Tobias knows Tris
can't leave him, so he has to stage a rescue.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
This involves a fight with Zeke.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, it's intense. Tobias picks a fight with Zeke, makes
it look real, even hits him hard in the jaw,
creating a diversion.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
All they get Caleb out exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
He drags Caleb outside the fence, tells him exile is
more fitting than death, A cold kind of mercy maybe.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
But the escape itself isn't clean.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
No, it's tragic. As they're leaving, tory Wu gets shot
by factionless guards, killed right there.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Oh Man, after everything she went through to find out
about her brother.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And she dies just as they reach freedom, leaving her
brother George behind in the city. It just casts this
immediate shadow over their escape freedom, but at a terrible cost.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Okay. So they make it past the fence and they
find this sign.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Bureau of Genetic Welfare BGF, and suddenly the world expands massively.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
They're met by people Zoe and someone Tobias.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Knows, Amar, his dauntless initiation instructor, the one Tobias thought
was dead, executed for being divergent.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
WHOA, He's alive.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Alive and working security for the bureau. Imagine Tobias as shock.
It's the first major sign that everything they knew was wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And then they meet the boss, David.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yes, David, and he lays it all out, the great
deception you could call it, which is the city Chicago
wasn't just a city. It was an experiment for genetic healing.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Genetic healing, what does that even mean?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Okay, So, according to David, centuries ago there was a
purity war. Attempts to remove bad traits through genetic modification
went horribly wrong, causing widespread genetic damage.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Damage meaning behavioral issues, violence, cowardice, things the factions were
meant to suppress.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Exactly the factions were, in David's words, the behavioral modification portion,
the nurture side of the experiment, trying to correct this
inherited genetic damage. The ultimate goal was to heal the
genome to produce genetically pure people again.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
So GP and GD genetically pure and genetically damaged. That's
the new.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Divide, that's the framework for this whole new world and
the Bureau, the GP descendants living outside, have been running
these city experiments like Chicago, trying to fix the.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Gds and watching them content constantly.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
David confirms they saw everything Tris's first kiss, her parents' deaths,
Peter attacking her, and dauntless initiation, all recorded surveillance on
an unimaginable scale.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
That's horrifying. Yeah, and then Tris finds out about her mother, Natalie.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Oh, this is huge for Tris. Natalie Pryor wasn't originally
from the city. She was genetically pure, raised outside by
the Bureau.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
She was sent in on him, yes, sent in by
David actually to retrieve divergent genes and help fix the
problem in the experiment. But then she fell in love.
She fell in love with Andrew Pryor, Tris's father. She
shows abnegation, shows love, effectively defying David's mission. Tris finds
her mother's journal, her file, a SE's Natalie's own words,
love before faction, always.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Wow, undermining the entire basis of the Bureau's cold clinical
project completely. It gives Tris this anchor, this connection to
her mother's choices, right when her own identity is being
redefined by genetics.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
So the Bureau runs tests on Tris and Tobias, and
the results.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
They hit hard, devastatingly hard. Especially for Tobias. Tris is
confirmed as genetically pure, truly divergent, the successful outcome of
the experiment in their eyes.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
But Tobias, despite everything his resistance to simulations.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Officially he's genetically damaged GD. He has this rare anomaly
that allows him simulation awareness, which is unusual for a GD.
But the label.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Sticks damn and that just destroys him. Right after everything
he's thought against being defined by his father's cruelty, now
he's labeled damage by his genes.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
It feeds right into his deepest insecurities, makes him feel
fundamentally broken, and that vulnerability makes.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Him a target for Nita, the ged activist Exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Nita works at the Bureau. She's ged herself and she
recruits to Bias into a rebellion. The plan, she says,
is to steal the Bureau's memory serum.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
The memory serum, what's that for?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
It's a weapon the Bureau has. It can wipe entire
population's memories. Nita claims she wants to use it to
inoculate the GDS against memory wipes to protect them from
the Bureau's control.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Okay, but Tobias has to keep this secret from Tris.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, more secrets. He feels alienated by the GPGD divide.
It feels like Tris can't understand because she's pure, so
he joins Nita's cause.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
But Nita's plan isn't just about inoculation.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
No, tris working with Matthew as sympathetic scientist that the
Bureau figures out the truth. Nita wasn't just after the
memory serum. She was also going for the death serius.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Death Seerum, like the Dawnless Initiation.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
One potentially even worse and explosives. Nita is planning a
full blown, violent uprising, a war against the BGF, who
she sees as genetic oppressors, and.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
This plan has immediate terrible consequences.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Horrific during the raid, NITA engineers using diversionary explosions. Uriah
gets caught in one.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Oh no, not Uriyah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
He suffers catastrophic brain damage. They say he has no
brain waves. He's essentially gone. He won't wake up. Christina
is just shattered. It's another brutal loss, a direct result
of this internal conflict.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Meanwhile, the Bureau is planning its own move against the city.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yes, things are escalating back in Chicago too, with the
Allegiant and the factionless on the brink of civil war.
David and the BGF decide the experiment is too unstable.
They're going to deploy the Memory Serum weapon to wipe
the entire city, reset.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Everyone, just to raise Chicago.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Everyone's memories, history, allegiances start over.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
And Caleb steps up to stop it.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Caleb, Yes, riddled with guilt over his past betrayals, he
volunteers for what is essentially a suicide mission, break into
the weapons lab and deploy the Memory Serum against the
Bureau members before they can launch it at Chicago.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
He wants to atone, he asks Tris if she's forgiven him.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
First, though, he does a really raw moment. He needs
to know Chris she can't give him a simple yes,
it's too.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Complicated, but she makes a decision.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
She does. She realizes Caleb actually deserves a chance to
live to perhaps find redemption, so she decides she has
to go instead of him. It mirrors her mother's path
of sacrifice.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So Tris goes to the weapons lab.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yes, she confronts David, uses him as a human shield,
gets shot arm head, but somehow, through sheer will or
maybe that atypical resistance.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Karen noted, she doesn't die instantly.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
No, she manages to activate and release the memory serum,
exposing the Bureau compound, including David. She saves the city
from the immediate memory white threat.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
And as she's dying, she has.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
This vision or hallucination of her mother reaching for her,
a sense of completion, maybe understanding her mother's choices as
she makes her own final one.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Okay, so Tris succeeds, but she dies the memory erum
is released at the Bureau. What happens next, Well.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
The aftermath is messy. Tobias finds Peter wandering around completely broken.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Peter, what's his deal now?
Speaker 2 (10:22):
He confesses he's just sick of himself, sick of doing
bad things. And liking it is how he puts it.
He basically asks Tobias to a raise him.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
With the memory serum. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Tobias struggles with it, but ultimately he gives Peter the serum,
watches his personality, his memories just vanish. Peter gets a reset,
a chance to start over completely blank.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Does Tobias help him afterwards?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
He does. He calls Peter later, finds him disoriented and
guides him, telling him his name, helping him take the
first steps into a new, unknown life. A strange act
of mercy.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Maybe. Then Tobias has to go back to Chicago to
face Evelyn.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yes, he confronts his mother and he gives her this
imput possible choice power leading the factionless against the Allegiant,
probably into a bloody civil war, or him.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Her son, and she chooses.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
She chooses Tobias. She says, let them have the city
and everything in it. It's a massive turning point for
her character. Love over power.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Finally that prevents the civil war.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
It does, it allows for peace. Talks Evelyn, with Tobias
beside her, meets Johanna, who's now leading the Allegiant after
Marcus was basically sidelined.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Good, Marcus shouldn't be in charge.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Agreed, they signed a treaty. Evelyn steps down peacefully. They
agree to hold democratic elections for new leadership, and crucially,
Marcus is explicitly banned from ever holding power again.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So the city finds a path forward. But Tobias, he
still has grief to deal with. Euryah.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, the doctors confirm Uriah won't recover. They're gonna unplug
his life support. Tobias has to be the one to
tell Zeke and Uriah's.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Mother, Hannah, Ah, that's awful.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
It's heartbreaking. He goes to them, apologizes for failing to
protect Uriah, and it's only then, in that moment of
shared grief, that he learns the full truth about Tris.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
He didn't know she died. He thought she might have survived.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
He'd been holding onto hope. He learns definitively that she
was shot in the weapons lab and didn't make it.
The finality of it just absolutely shatters him.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
So the story jumps forward.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Two years later. Tobias is living outside Chicago in what
they called the Fourth City. He's still processing everything, carrying
Tris's ashes in an urn. Has he found some peace
he's working on it. The text talks about mending. He
credits his friends, especially Christina, with pulling him back from
the brink. She convinced him not to use the memory serum.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
On himself because Tris wouldn't have wanted that exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
She reminded him he couldn't become someone Tris would hate.
He had to live with the pain, with the memories,
both good.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
And bad, and the ending the zipline.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, the final scene is incredibly poignant. Tobias decides to
finally face one of his biggest fears, the zipline from
the Hancock Building, something Trice would have loved, but he
was always too.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Scared, as a tribute to her.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
As a tribute and maybe as a final step in
his own healing, Zeke straps him in, calls him four
Dauntless legend, acknowledging his past, his identity, and he does it.
He does it. He flies across the city, skyline scatters,
trusses ashes into the wind. He lands not alone, but
with his friends Christina, Caleb, who seems to be finding
his own path, and Amar ready to face the future together.
(13:26):
Mended hashtag tac tag outro of wow.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Okay that is quite a story. We went from that
claustrophobic lockdown utter Evelyn all the way through the Bureau's
massive deceptions about genetics, to well to loss, but also
to a kind of piece.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
A hard one piece. It really is a journey from confinement,
both physical and ideological, to facing these really brutal truths
about identity, manipulation and sacrifice.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
And the cost was immense Tris's life.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yourah's absolutely, But there's that core idea that comes through
so strongly at the end, that paradox of destruction and healing.
The book itself says it right. Life damages us everyone.
We can't escape that damage.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
But now I am also learning this We can be mended.
We mend each other exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
It's about human connection, rebuilding what's been broken, which.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Brings us to a final thought for you listening. The
Bureau tried so hard to define people by their genes,
by these labels GDGP. They wanted to control behavior, predict outcomes.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
But ultimately the story seems to argue that it's the
choices that matter more. Trist choosing sacrifice, Evelyn choosing her
son over power, Tobias choosing to live with his damage,
and his memories, not erase them.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
These acts of love of will, they defy those nat
genetic boxes. So make you think about this. Are there
institutions or systems or even just ideas in your own
life that try to define your damage or your purity?
And how do you choose actively choose to define yourself instead?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
A powerful question. It really pushes back against letting external
labels dictate our worth or our path. Thanks for diving
deep with us into Allegiance.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah, thanks for joining us. We'll catch on the next
DA dive
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