Help for the Heelers

The benevolent butterfly effect in Bluey’s season finale.

From Mockingbird

Mockingbird connects the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life.

A cartoon dog family stand in their kitchen

Bluey and family.

Ludo Studio.

Written by Bryan J. This article first appeared in Mockingbird, 23 April 2024. By kind permission.

“Daddy, there’s no God in Bluey’s world, is there?” No joke, my precocious four-year-old PK [Pastor’s Kid] son asked me this question after watching the new Bluey season finale, titled “The Sign.” It’s a deep question, one that comes from a place of honest curiosity — “The Sign” is, without a doubt, one of the most spiritually significant episodes of a series that is known to offer big questions to little kids. The Heeler family is presented with a life-changing decision with no guarantee of a happy ending, and the whole of the episode features the family wrestling the unknown of the future. The fact that my son could pick up on the high stakes of the episode, the philosophical questions about the goodness of providence, and the impossibility of knowing whether the future was bright or not … let’s just say it justifies the tears that come every time I watch the episode with him.

Which is five times now. I have watched the finale five times and wept every time. Isn’t this show made for preschoolers?

“The Sign” reveals a family in transition. After offering a number of hints earlier in the season, we discover that the Heeler family dad, Bandit, has accepted a job offer that pays a lot more money, but will require him to move. Chili (aka Mum) agrees with the choice to move and take the new job, but she has sincere concerns about leaving family, friends, neighbors, city, and a beloved house behind. Bluey, of course, has trouble coming to terms with the idea, as any preschooler would, and Bingo remains blissfully ignorant of the big changes coming her way. The preparations to move coincide with preparations for Uncle Rad’s marriage to family friend (and Bluey’s godmother) Frisky, with the family’s four preschool girls joining in as flower girls.

Big changes bring big questions, of course. Nowhere is this more evident than in Bluey’s preschool classroom. Calypso, the teacher, models a zen-like spirituality for Bluey and her friends. At the end of story time, Bluey asks her teacher “Why do stories always have happy endings?” Her teacher responds, “Well, I guess ’cause life will give us enough sad ones.” (Is this a kid’s show?) This inspires a host of sad stories from Bluey’s peers: a guinea pig that ran away, a divorce, a lonely dad. It’s now that Bluey announces her not-so-happy ending, telling her friends that she is moving. To help the class cope with their sadness, Calypso reads her students a parable of a farmer, who approaches all of life’s good luck and bad luck moments with the simple attitude of “we’ll see.” It’s a story without a happy ending (or without any ending, really), and the kids don’t buy it. “Is that it?” asks one, disappointed. “What happens next?” asks another. “Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to, Bluey” says Calypso with kindness, which Bluey takes to mean that their family house won’t sell (which it does, in the next scene).

Big questions also mean big feelings. An enraged and fearful Frisky, dismayed to discover her fiancé expects her to move out west where he works, runs away the morning of the wedding. Chili hops in the car, with four preschoolers in tow, to track her down. A series of events, which can be only described as providential, take place along the way. Chili, Bluey, Bingo, and cousins run into just the right person, spill juice cups at just the right moment, and make pit stops at the precisely needed spot, to find Frisky in quiet reflection at a local hilltop park. Groom-to-be Rad shows up, too. Frisky and Rad talk through their concerns and move on with the wedding, announcing there that they’ve chosen not to move west as planned. It’s a lovely wedding, with dancing and family and fun and a host of easter eggs for eagle-eyed viewers to enjoy. “You’re having a happy ending!” announces Bluey to her godmother, before turning to her mother and asking “Do you think we’ll have a happy ending too?” “I don’t know,” replies Chili, “But I’m done trying to figure it out. I just wanna dance.” Queue the happy dance montage.

Still, providence has not finished working with the Heelers. On moving day, a whole host of minor events from previous episodes collide to cancel the sale of the Heeler’s beloved house. It’s hard to describe every little flap of the butterfly’s wing that impacted this outcome — a combination of stuck coins, romantic encounters at the drugstore, inchworms saved from being squished on the slip-and-slide, and overzealous real estate agents all played their part. In a moving montage, Bandit takes the call about the canceled sale of the home, changes his mind about the new job, symbolically rips the for-sale sign out of his front yard, and is tackled by a loving family who realize they don’t have to move anymore. The family sits on boxes in their empty kitchen floor eating takeout cheeseburgers, relieved of the anxiety of moving, while the show rolls to credits. The song playing in the background is called “Lazarus Drug,” sung by the same voice actor who plays preschool teacher Calypso. It’s a song about love drawing someone back to life, perhaps a nod to the love of Bandit’s family drawing him back to the reality that they may already have a great life, and money wouldn’t make it any better. The Heelers get their happy ending, too.

The Greeks were the first to use the storytelling tool we know by its Latin name: deus ex machina, God from the machine. In Greek drama, at the climax of a seemingly unsolvable problem, a machine (usually a trap door or crane) would lift or lower an actor onto the stage portraying one of the gods of the Greek pantheon. These gods would step in and provide a solution to a drama’s seemingly unsolvable and complex problem. Nowadays, the term is derisive, an insult that implies lazy writing or poor storytelling. At the time, however, the audience loved these deus ex machina solutions. At the risk of psychoanalyzing the past, one imagines they would have been quite happy to imagine that the Gods cared enough in the affairs of humans to intervene for a happy ending.

Deus ex machina is a criticism that can be leveled at this season finale. After all the adults tell the precocious preschooler that life gives out happy and sad endings, we are not given any sad endings. The only way to navigate change, according to the wisdom of the world, is sit back, embrace a sort of desireless “zen” regarding the future, and say “we’ll see,” but everyone nonetheless gets a happy ending. After bending over backwards to lay out how the future is fickle and unknowable, the show still insists on showing how everything lined up just perfectly for Bluey’s “prayers” to be answered. It’s not just her either. Aunt Brandy’s desire for a child comes to fulfillment, after we are told numerous times that it is not meant to be (S3E31). Winton’s divorced and depressed father meets the mother of the terrier triplets (S3E45), and the two come together and form a new family. The shaggy hair dogs get their house with a pool. Everything works out just fine. Despite the look of a Greek tragedy, in which everything ends poorly for the protagonists, things end up turning out fine, just like every Greek comedy. Or, to put it in Elizabethan terms, what starts out like Hamlet becomes A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream.

In Bluey’s world, the happy endings are real. The parents always muster enough energy to play with their kids. The right parenting lesson is always on hand, and handed down with pithy aphorisms. Hurt feelings are acknowledged and reconciled with emotionally intelligent strategies. The love shown between friendships and family members is realistic and optimistic. Moreover, in this square dog world of Brisbane, Australia, when parents and grandparents are at the end of their ropes, providence steps in to help guide the way. Happy endings are not so much earned in Bluey’s world as they are a given, or perhaps gifted, sometimes by tired and exhausted parents, but also, by an unseen benevolence watching over them. What is grace, after all, if not an unexpected happy ending?

So how did I respond to my son’s question? “Yes,” I told him, “there is a God in Bluey’s world. Who do you think made all those happy endings come true?” It’s not an answer I should have come up with so quickly. I’m not usually one to offer a succinct one-liner that sums up decades of media study and theology in a bite sized nugget for my four-year-old. Perhaps, instead, it was providence that gave the answer for me.

Article

Community

Culture

Film & TV

Identity

22 September 2025

5 min read

What makes us human?

We've more in common with our ancient ancestors than we might like to think

Claire Williams

Claire Williams is a theologian investigating women’s spirituality and practice. She lecturers at Regents Theological College.

A re-enactment of an ancient 'caveman' family sitting around a camp fire.

A dramatic reconstruction of a Neanderthal family.

BBC Studios.

I recently caught up on iPlayer with the excellent BBC series Human. In it, the paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi explores 300,000 years of human evolution over five beautifully shot, evocatively presented episodes. I was transfixed by the story of these ancient human societies - of Homo habilis; Homo erectus; the hobbit-like Homo floresiensis - and of the ways that paleoanthropologists and archaeologists study the multiple human species. They walk barefoot in deep pits with what look like tiny paint brushes to dust off their finds. They are endlessly patient, and delighted at tiny scraps that I would overlook as rubbish. They see in these fragments stories of ancient lives that lived, ate, loved and died so long ago.

Take a set of footsteps fossilised into the ground in White Sands, New Mexico, discernible through their impact and weight distribution. They are thought to be those of a woman walking at speed, probably, scholars think, carrying a child. Now and again these footsteps appear to stop and stand, and in-between the right and the left foot are a small set of footprints. The mother appears to have put down the child for a moment before picking him or her back up and starting again.

This was so familiar to me, a mother of four. It reminded me of all the times I’d carried toddlers around on my hip before giving up, plonking them on the floor and then switching sides. This very human urge to care for our children, and to get tired by them, echoed through time. Although luckily for me I did not have a giant sloth chasing me, as this ancient mother seems to have done.

But the flip side of the ability to love is the ability to also reject. And the series highlighted that this less pleasant human habit – the exclusion of others – appears to be an equally core part of our existence.

Al-Shamahi asks,

‘what must it have been like to have been a hybrid child... Did these children feel like they belonged or were they teased and ostracised?’

Behind her question is a sense of deep concern about the hybrid children’s welfare all those millenia ago.

Fast forward thousands of years. Most of us went to school and know what it feels like to either be different or see someone else who is different. Imagine if a modern-day Homo sapien/neanderthalensis hybrid turned up the local primary school, would it be okay? Unlikely. We don’t look after difference particularly well. The question Al-Shamahi posed seems pertinent today as well as in palaeoanthropology terms, what would it be like to grow up a hybrid? For us today the question is similar, how do we judge what is human? Is our human status founded in the horror and aversion to difference?

The drive to surround ourselves with similarity and force others to fit is sometimes called ‘the cult of normalcy’. This behaviour only tolerates people who look, act, and represent what is familiar to you. I experience this as a neurodivergent person struggling at times to feel ‘normal’. That is why the story of hybrid children is affectively impactful. Their struggle is easy to imagine, how do they fit in?. What makes them and us human?

The little story of a mother and a child being carried (minus the sloth part) is enchanting. Is it this love for children that makes the ancient people count as human? Is it the presence of a relationship and the assumed communication between individuals that makes them human?

The risk here is to say that all people who are in families, who are parents, are the prime example of humanity and that does not fit with many lives that we would want to count as human. Love may be essential, but it cannot be a prescriptive type or circumstance. Nevertheless, the allure of love and community is strong in Human and my response to it. That familiarity with the feeling of exclusion of the hybrid child and the story of the mother and child are common. They are experiences that we can relate to concerning community and care. The series shows these human species in relationship groups, with evidence of successful community and unsuccessful community (again a familiar trait). So far, that ability to love is also the same ability to reject, to cast out the hybrid or the different human. That is unsatisfactory as the trait of what is core to humans despite the likelihood of it being at the heart of the human story.

What, then of religion? These ancient peoples who lived before language and writing yet still worshipped – their practices evident from paintings found on the walls of caves. Is this what it means to be finally human? Was it, I thought, when they demonstrated language? Was it the early signs of religion and worship? Was it to do with thinking and rationalising, deciding upon a set of gods and the rules about them? However, this cannot be. For there are people today who do not speak through choice or disability. There are those who cannot demonstrate their ability to worship, for the same reasons. Rationalising cannot be the way in which we determine humanity, for then are children, or the intellectually disabled not human? If awareness of the sacred is what makes us human, then that limits those whose cognitive abilities are different.

Christians believe that what makes us human is the image of God in us. But what is that image? It is given to humans when God made them right at the beginning of things. It is the divine something that sets us apart from trees and plants, even animals. It is a quality that God gives to humans in the creative act of making them. It is not something that humans do for themselves but something they receive from God. Could it be applied to Neanderthals or early human species? I think so. Although these early species were very different in some respects to us, they had the features of humanity that count. They had relationships, the capacity to experience awe and wonder and they loved one another (like the mother and child). The image of God could be many things but one thing is certain, it a gift from God because of his love for humans. The need for love, community and worship that is in all of us points back to this. We love one another because we are first loved by God and that is what makes us human.

Human Trailer - The Untold Story of our Human Origins - BBC

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

Pledge now