The Purpose of Carina’s Video at the End of Three Words

Hi Robert,
Thank you for the kind words.

To answer your first question, think of Sarah’s relationship with Shaw as a mirror of Chuck’s relationship with Lou in season 1. Did Chuck love Sarah in season 1? Absolutely, but she shut him down in 1.08 Truth (she chose duty over love), so he tried to have a real relationship with Lou. Did he love Lou? No. Did he care about her and did he hope to find real with her? Yes. Did he go back to Sarah as soon as she showed him real feelings for him? Absolutely.

same with Sarah and Shaw in season 3, which is the reversal of the first two seasons, so that Chuck and Sarah can see things from each other’s perspective. Does Sarah love Chuck in season 3? Absolutely, but he shuts her down and chooses duty over love, so she tries to have a real relationship with Shaw. Does she love Shaw? No. Does she care about hm and hope to find real with him? Yes. Does she go back to Chuck as soon as he asks for her back? Absolutely.

It’s not by chance that Shaw is made to be the male version of season-1 Sarah with a hint of Chuck. In fact, even YS mentioned that in an interview with Mo Ryan:

Yvonne: The journey this season was kind of more complicated. She wanted to [run off] and Chuck rejected that idea, and I don’t think she was expecting that at all. That was a big, giant slap in the face. I think she wanted to open up but that kind of stopped her and she went back to square one. After [Chuck vs. the Other Guy], it was a relief for her. She tried to find something else with Shaw, but it’s just not the same. They both realized that whatever they were trying to look for in other people, they’re never going to find it because it’s right there in front of them.

Why is Sarah with Shaw?

Yvonne: [S]he doesn’t know how to be a normal person, and normal people I guess don’t appeal to her because she’s not really around them. To me as an actor, what I sort of rode on was the fact that they both lost people who were really important to them in the spy world. He had lost his wife, and I had lost Bryce. They had an emotional understanding about each other.

Season-3 Sarah looks for real, for commitment. So, Shaw is a spy who, like Sarah, lost a loved one to the spy life, a spy who understands long-term commitments. And just like Chuck, he hates guns but knows how to use them. Shaw, just like Hannah for Chuck, is there to show Sarah that she will never find real with anyone else but Chuck. Not even the closest spy to her and Chuck can replace Chuck.

The reason Sarah can’t be with Chuck before 3.11 Final Exam is that his feelings for her are a liability. This is made evident in 3.02 Three Words when he jeopardizes the mission at Karl’s house because he can’t control his feelings. His feelings master him at this stage of his spy journey. So when he finally sees what happens to suckers in love like Karl in the spy life, he realizes he must shut down his feelings, including his feelings for Sarah. He will try until the end of 3.08 Fake Name to be an emotionless spy like Casey and Shaw and Carina according to the conventional wisdom of the cardinal rule (spies don’t fall in love). Now, Sarah is on the opposite journey. She thinks feelings are not always a liability (she tells Chuck so by the fountain at the end of 3.02 Three Words), but she accepts the fact that Chuck pulls back from her because he is duty-bound and wants to become a spy for the greater good, and his feelings are a liability at this stage (his words to her by the fountain at the end of 3.02). So, even though Sarah loves Chuck desperately, she pulls back because she wants him to succeed as a spy. She tells him so at the end of 3.07 Mask (she doesn’t want to get in his way, and not just professionally) and again in 3.10 Tic Tac (she knows what he has sacrificed to become the perfect spy—his love for her).

Now, in 3.11 when Chuck is about to become a spy and Sarah hasn’t stood in his way, and Chuck has changed his mind about not pursuing Sarah (thanks to the conversations with Ellie and Casey at the end of 3.10 Tic Tac), she is more than ready to go back to him when he asks for her back. She had to “wait it out,” her theme song in 3.01 Pink Slip. She had to wait for Chuck to stop wanting to become a spy like all others (3.06 to 3.08), accept his feelings (3.09 Beard), and master them (3.10 to 3.13).

Notice that when I say that she had to wait it out, I don’t mean that she knows that all this must and will unfold. She has no clue. As far she knows, she thinks that Chuck has chosen duty over love and this may be forever, just as Chuck thought and told Sarah in S1 and S2 that they would never be together. So when she loses hope to be with Chuck in 3.08 Fake Name, she hopes to find something real with Shaw, whom she even tries to see as a poor-man’s version of Chuck—she tells him her real name because Chuck had asked for it, she brings him Chuck-related food and crockpot at the end of 3.08, she compares him to Chuck (her “It’s different than with you” in 3.11).

The mistake that many viewers make when watching season 3a is to think that Sarah rejects Chuck from 3.02 to 3.11. She doesn’t. After watching Carina’s video, Sarah is a goner and loves Chuck unreservedly. She just can’t be with him because his feelings for her are a liability, and she sacrifices her heart’s desire so that he can have his (becoming the perfect spy). She pulls back out of love and tries to settle for “James Bond” Shaw, but it’s not the same.

As for your second question, yes, Sarah would totally be with Chuck between 3.03 and 3.10 if she could. Watch the way she looks at Chuck while sitting at the table with Ellie during the gala in 3.03 Angel de la Muerte. Watch the way she looks at him at the end of 3.04 Operation Awesome, when she walks in and then when she sits at the table. The girl is a goner. Watch the way she smiles in 3.06 when she remembers the day when she first met him. Watch her jealousy of him and Hannah at the beginning of 3.07 Mask. or the way she looks at him in 3.08 Fake Name when he walks in dressed like Rafe—she gasps with desire. Or watch the way she looks through the monitors in castle at him and Hannah having dinner in 3.08 Fake Name. Even in 3.12 American Hero, when she is furious with him, all he has to do is ask for a secret and a lie during the interrupted dinner, and her whole demeanor changes on the spot. By the time Devon and Shaw crash through the window, she is spellbound. The girl is unequivocally in love, and desperately so. Just like Chuck in the first two seasons.