Locke & Key: 5 Times We Felt Bad For Kinsey (& 5 Times We Hated Her)

The Locke family arrive in Matheson broken after the loss of their father. The children are forced to leave everything they knew in search of a new start. However, this new start changed them, sometimes for the better but other times it was for the worst. Kinsey Locke is the character who goes through the most amount of change and trauma during the first season of the TV adaptation of Locke & Key. She desperately searches for herself and with the help of the keys, she finds some ugly parts she would rather bury. Due to these ugly parts finally being revealed, Kinsey makes some questionable decisions to ‘fix’ herself and alter the way she is, leaving many viewers disliking her.

However, most of these decisions can be forgiven as they often come from a loving place after promising that she would react differently if her traumatic past should ever arise again. For most viewers, the first season of Locke & Key is watching Kinsey go from one good decision to one bad one, with many feeling terrible for her along the way. However, it all leaves anyone watching just desperate for season 2.

10 Felt Bad: Death Of Her Father

It would be wrong to not mention such a tragic and pivotal event in Kinsey’s life. It changed who she is and severely affected her choices and mental health for a long time.

She constantly wrestled with her doubts and beat herself up about how she handled the situation. Thankfully she somewhat gets the chance to redeem that once her father’s killer reappears looking for the keys. Nevertheless, viewers can’t help but feel terrible for the Locke family as well as Kinsey after such a tragic and traumatic experience.

9 Hated Her: Removing Her Fear

Once obtaining the Head Key, Kinsey and Tyler find the source of her fear. It resides in the memory of the day that her father was murdered, as she protects Bode from any harm but doesn’t try to fight Sam Lesser. She wrestles with her doubts but eventually finds the manifestation of her fear and kills it, quite literally burying it in the real world.

The reason most viewers end up hating her for this decision is because of how arrogant, cocky, and mean she becomes. She causes more problems than she solves and it just eliminates a vital part of her personality.

8 Felt Bad: Her Breakdowns

Most of what makes Kinsey recognizable is her pain and suffering that she puts herself through after her father’s death. However, there are instances in which all viewers feel terrible for her.

These breakdowns mainly occur at the beginning of the season, they are often spurred on by blood or acts of violence and are pretty hard to watch. When Kinsey was staring in Scots film she froze in terror. This was challenging to watch without feeling terrible for her as she is forced to remember an event that no one wants to go through.

7 Hated Her: Treatment Of Bode

As much as it makes sense, it is still rather frustrating when Kinsey and Tyler shut Bode down so often.

Kinsey is extremely protective of Bode, saving his life on more than one occasion. However, she often ignores him and treats him like a dumb child when in fact if she had listened to him then maybe they wouldn’t have been in the mess they ended up in.

6 Felt Bad: The Return Of Sam Lesser

After hours of watching Kinsey struggle with having to deal with the loss of her father and wrestle with doubts about what she could have done, it all came flooding back.

Once Sam Lesser arrived at the Key House, anyone watching began to panic. It’s clear how traumatic that experience was and the audience can’t help but feel bad for Kinsey as she is forced to relive that. Luckily she no longer has her fear and it interestingly saves her life.

5 Hated Her: Bullying Eden

Eden never exactly shows Kinsey kindness, but she didn’t deserve to be met with the humiliation that Kinsey and Gabe forced upon her.

Using the Music Box Key, Kinsey gets her own back on the bully of the school Eden. However, it comes to a point where both the viewers and Scot realize that enough is enough and she has taken it too far. She turned herself into a bully and had no remorse, which left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.

4 Felt Bad: Seeing Her Father In A Different Light

Although it was thankfully not true, watching the memory in which Rendell lock violently murdered Lucas forced anyone to feel terrible for Kinsey and her brother.

Whilst it was thought to be true Kinsey struggled with the notion that her father wasn’t who he seemed which forced her to withdraw into herself and question everything. It was difficult to watch her go through such pain again, even if most viewers knew it wouldn’t be true.

3 Hated Her: Nearly Drowning

This was by far the most irresponsible thing that Kinsey did. She knew the dangers of the cave yet knowingly led her group of friends down with expensive equipment so she could look at a door.

She put the whole group in danger for her own selfish needs without thinking that she could have repeated what she thought at the time was the fate of her father’s friends. Everyone involved, aside from Gabe, fell out with her, and rightly so.

2 Felt Bad: Gabe

It should be noted that this was only revealed in the last 5 minutes of the final episode, but nevertheless forces the audience to feel terrible for Kinsey in advance as you await her heartbreak.

When it is revealed that Gabe is, in fact, Dodge, it is extremely shocking. However, what jumps to viewers’ minds is the fate of Kinsey and how betrayed and distraught she is going to be when she finds out the truth and realizes that they didn’t push Dodge into the door.

1 Hated Her: Standing Scot Up

Scot shows her nothing but kindness when she first joins the school and eats alone. He spends most of his time being lovely to her family and welcoming Kinsey into his group.

So when she stands him up after they flirted and he asked her on a date, many viewers were both confused and irritated. They seemed like the perfect couple yet she didn’t give him a chance, leaving him standing alone outside the concert venue.

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