theorising… i’ve already seen a lot of people say that jax in this scene intentionally pushes the red button to keep the gang in the circus forever, because he doesn’t want to go back to his real life and he’s willing to keep everybody else there with him to avoid it - which absolutely is a possibility. but i think there’s also something to be said for the possibility that he was aiming for the blue button.
jax hates the circus. for all his bullshit about not caring, about how it’s just a silly wacky cartoon world, we know he hates it. and in this episode, it’s only gotten worse for him, with an almost abstraction, and these constant flashes of something other, something that he can’t quite place and that are dark and creepy and unsettling and that he wants to stop. so i think there’s a real chance he was aiming for the blue button - not because he necessarily wants to leave, but because he wants whatever’s happening to him to stop, and leaving the circus is the only way to achieve that. he’s terrified, he’s in pain, he’s losing his grip on the world he’s in and the magic button to make it stop forever is right there. there’s a few shots that i think support this possibility, too:
for one, when jax is running to the console, the blue button is the one that stays in his line of sight the entire time. while this could just be coincidence because of the side of the room he’s on, i do find it interesting that he doesn’t seem to either look behind pomni at the red button, or shove her out of the way like he does to zooble.
second, after he’s pressed the button, his eyes kind of… flick between the two of them. which yes, is likely partially out of shock he pressed either of them at all, but i do think it’s also because the one he pressed is not the one he was intending to.
and third, the big one: the immediate anger at caine for messing with their minds. the first part alone, “you got in my head,” i originally read as jax being angry that, despite all his cynicism, caine gave him the first glimmer of hope he’s had in ages. but with the second part, the absolute fury of “you can mess with our minds too, can’t you?” makes me think of caine being a puppeteer rather than a manipulator. it’s not just that he messed with jax’s emotions, it’s that he shifted his brain (and his hand) to picking the opposite choice - not the one jax wants, but the choice that caine wants - for the gang to stay with him, for the gang to want to stay with him. the ending where a member of the team likes their life with him, because even if it’s by force, caine can lie to himself that jax chose it. it doesn’t matter to caine how the stay button gets pressed, only that it does.
all in all, i think there’s a strong chance that rather than keeping everyone in the circus to avoid his real life, jax was making an attempt to get them - or rather, himself - out of the circus, if only to force his abstraction/visions to stop, only to have his hand forcibly swayed by caine.
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