I am excited enough to hear y'all's thoughts on this that I was willing to listen to a podcast on Spotify to do so. Greatly enjoyed the whole thing!
It's always interesting to see what stories and plot devices a writer will re-use throughout their career, and how that's someone that equally applies to very good and very bad writers. It reveals so much about how they view the world, and how their perspective as an artist grows alongside their work.
In this case, Whedon's consistent pattern of reducing powerful women to a mind wiped state in which they are a "confused innocent child-woman" or a "bimbo cave-woman" (to greater or lesser extent) is present throughout his career, dating back to what he did with Ellen Ripley in 1997's Alien Resurrection, through Faith on Buffy and River on Firefly, and climaxing with this show where it's a core conceit of the premise definitely says something.
It's definitely a bold feminist statement. Not a fetish thing. Definitely not misogynist.
