‘Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’ Has the Best Version of Knives Chau

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.

The Big Picture

• Knives Chau’s problematic characterization, particularly her young age and ethnicity, are resolved in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.
• In the original comic and movie, Knives is portrayed as obsessed with Scott and her entire universe revolves around him.
• Scott Pilgrim Takes Off gives Knives her own storyline, allowing her to find herself, become a music genius, and process her pain in healthier ways.

Played in the 2010 movie and in the recent Netflix series by Ellen Wong, Knives Chau is by far one of the most interesting characters created by Bryan Lee O’Malley for his Scott Pilgrim universe. A high school girl whose heart is destroyed by an emotionally irresponsible twenty-something, Knives shows us the beginning of the string of broken hearts that fill the late adolescence and the early adult years of basically everyone. She’s needy, petty, overeager, and just generally cringe-inducing, but through no fault of her own: her feelings are merely a reflection of her young age, as well as of the previously unknown suffering that she has been through. She’s easily the only person we actually feel sorry for while reading the 2004 Scott Pilgrim comic series or watching Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems with her characterization — problems that are not exactly addressed, but solved throughout the eight episodes of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.

Written by O’Malley himself alongside BenDavid Grabinski and directed by Abel Góngora, this new adaptation of the now classic story of Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) gives us a whole new take on basically all of its characters. While the original comic series and movie used the plot of a young man having to defeat his girlfriend’s seven evil exes as a backdrop for a tale about growing up and becoming a better person, the Netflix show has Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) looking for Scott after he is presumed dead when he loses the fight against her middle school boyfriend. In this new version of the story, characters from Young Neil (Johnny Simmons) to the evil exes are transformed entirely and developed well beyond their wildest dreams. And baby Knives is no exception to this rule.

From an obsessed ex-girlfriend to a kid who is actually allowed to move on from her first big heartbreak, from a girl with no other real interests apart from the dude who cowardly misled her to a musical genius, Knives Chau changes and blossoms into herself in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. It’s a breath of fresh air considering how many years we got of her simply pining for Scott and blaming Ramona for everything bad that happened to her. It also works as a sort of course correction. After all, despite being interesting, Knives’ characterization has some seriously problematic points — which are largely absent from Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.

Knives Chau Had Some Problematic Aspects to Her Characterization

We are, of course, talking about the fetishization of certain aspects of Knives as a character, particularly her young age and her ethnicity. Scott Pilgrim, in both its comic book and movie versions, begins with the very simple statement that its titular character is dating a high schooler. This fact is deemed somewhat cool by Scott’s straight male friends, Young Neil and Stephen Stills (Mark Webber), but immediately called out as wrong and even evil by his bandmate and former girlfriend, Kim Pine (Alison Pill), and by his gay roommate, Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin). But Knives isn’t just a high schooler: she’s a Chinese high schooler attending a Catholic school, “with the uniform and everything.” Again, this is seen as very cool by Young Neil and Stephen Stills, but treated as a pathetic cliché by Scott’s sister, Stacey (Anna Kendrick).

Now, of course, both O’Malley and Wright are pointing at a problem within Scott’s friend group and poking fun at it. Both Scott Pilgrim and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World recognize that Scott, Young Neil, and Stephen Stills are all kind of horrible people for fetishizing Knives’ existence. However, this works better in some respects than others. While it becomes clear pretty easily, at least for those not reading the comics or watching the movie through Scott’s own lenses, that it is indeed bizarre for a 22-year-old to have the hots for a high school kid — especially one as immature as Knives, who timidly admits that she has never kissed a boy — the way the story treats the character’s Asian-ness is another matter entirely. From Knives’ dad in the comics attacking Scott with a katana to Gideon (Jason Schwartzman) calling her “Kung Pao chicken” in the movie, her ethnicity is othered, not just by the characters in the story, but by the story itself. Her Chinese background is brought up more often than is comfortable, and usually with something to mark it as strange attached.

All of this is thankfully absent from Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, in which Knives’ heritage is never brought up in a context that sets her apart from the other characters in the show. Instead of being an other whose position was constantly reminded of by the narrative, Knives is allowed to be her own person. From the moment that Scott “dies” — or, you know, takes off — she becomes just another member of the gang. Not a member that they enjoy themselves laughing at while they feed alcohol to despite her young age, but an equal. And therein lies the secret of how Scott Pilgrim Takes Off manages to do Knives Chau justice.

In the Comics and Movie, Knives Is Just a Girl Obsessed with Scott

The original Knives Chau is a teenage girl who falls in love with an older young man not exactly because of who he is, but because of what he represents. Scott, in her eyes, is a doorway to a world completely different from her own, a world in which people not that older than her strive to make ends meet on their own terms and join rock bands instead of depending on their parents and playing piano as an after-school activity. A world with fewer yearbook committees and more hangouts at dingy pubs. It is clear from the get-go, from the moment that Knives fawns over Kim for playing the drums, that it is not so much Scott that she is in love with, but everything that surrounds him.

Still, that doesn’t mean that Knives’ heart isn’t broken when Scott cheats on her with Ramona and then carelessly dumps her — after she tells him that she loves him, nonetheless. For Knives’ young, inexperienced mind, what she feels for Scott’s universe and what she feels for Scott are completely inseparable from one another. So, she becomes obsessed with Scott, stalking him, threatening and attacking Ramona, and even entering a relationship with Young Neil as a way to get back at him. While, in the comics, we are treated to Knives’ process of getting over Scott, with pages upon pages dedicated to how her feelings towards him change, her entire arc revolves around being the girl that got dumped. Don’t get us wrong, she’s still fascinating in how she moves through the different stages of grief, but there is little to her character beyond that.

This, however, doesn’t exactly translate well into the movie. In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Knives’ role in the story is reduced to a point that we barely get to see the full extent of the damage that Scott has caused in her life. She’s mostly played for laughs, shown watching Scott and Ramona from outside a window or getting punched by an evil ex for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Her pain only gets to really shine through at the end of the film, in which she briefly attacks Ramona with, well, knives, and then joins forces with Scott to fight Gideon, the last and the evilest of the evil exes. Her grieving process is resolved in a matter of seconds by Scott owning up to his mistakes and apologizing before quickly turning around to exchange a few more punches with Gideon. Again, Knives never gets to have anything of her own: her entire universe is centered around Scott.

‘Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’ Gives Knives Chau Her Own Precious Little Life

Things play out very differently in the newest adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s comics, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. With Scott seemingly dying at the end of the series’ first episode, “Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life,” Knives gets to experience true grief and find a life of her own. She’s still bitter about everything that happened to her. She blames Ramona for it and screams at her during Scott’s funeral. Upon receiving the news that she will have to talk to Ramona once more in order to help her find Scott, her face melts, and she devolves into a child. When Scott comes back from being kidnapped by his future self, she’s still hurt when he finally finds the nerve to tell her the truth and break up with her for real.

In between these things, though, Knives also gets to find herself and join the world that she always dreamed of belonging to — the world that she fell in love with when she believed she was falling in love with Scott. With her two-timing ex-boyfriend out of the way, she is embraced by his group of friends and gets to hang out with them as an equal instead of the funny little stalker who really shouldn’t be drinking but is. Once accepted by Kim and Stephen Stills as part of their clique, she reveals herself to be a once-in-a-generation music genius, learning in a matter of minutes how to play the bass and the piano. Thus, she becomes a member of Sex Bob-omb, Scott’s band of which she was previously the only fan. More than that, she also becomes sort of a manager, negotiating with Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha) to get her and Stephen Stills musical project — an adaptation of Young Neil’s screenplay about Scott Pilgrim’s fight against the evil exes — on the stage.

It’s a completely different story from the one that we were originally given. But, in a way, it’s also a story about the same thing: while, in the comics, O’Malley purported to tell us how a bright young girl’s entire personality was obliterated by this one horrible relationship, in the show, he and Grabinski aim to show us how the same girl can blossom into herself without the constant influence of her evil ex. It’s kind of a reverse It’s a Wonderful Life scenario. And, in the end, this version of the story gives us the best possible version of Knives Chau. It gives us a Knives Chau who is living her life to the fullest and actually processing her pain in healthy ways, i.e., through art instead of stalking. It’s a version of the character that improves on her already promising outline and that eliminates a lot of what made Knives’ original characterization questionable. It’s a Knives that, despite not being the lead in the show, gets to be the protagonist in her own story. And she even gets to kick Even Older Scott in the face.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is available to stream on Netflix.

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