Haha I don't think most people will like my answer to this question.
What redemption?
Idk if it's just Keith Szarabajka's amazing vocal performance or if our dicks and pussies are doing the thinking for us, but when I look at Joshua content I feel like I must have played a different game entirely given the general fandom view of him.
Bc the Joshua I met is not redeemed.
A wonderful article on the subject of redemption in fiction
You, the Courier, are required to be his moral compass. He is unable/unwilling to choose the morally correct path and WILL turn the tribes of Zion into the Legion 2.0 if he is left unchecked.
So no, Joshua, as a character left to his own devices will not choose correctly. If you wish to see it as a divine test by God or just a moral dilemma he's faced with, he fails.
If he is left unbothered and with no large tests and just chilled with his family in New Canaan for the rest of his days, he probably would be fine. He wants to change, no doubt about it. But HAS he changed?
He can change post-canon thanks to the Courier making his moral choices for him, but he has not done that work himself prior.
Let me preface the stuff under the cut by saying I'm not coming at anyone's enjoyment. This is fandom, we're all here to have fun. I have a ton of fun writing crack of Vulpes being Caesar and Joshua's emo furry son. Not everything needs to be accurate.
Having said that, sometimes I wonder if I played the same game. Joshua is at no point redeemed in the narrative of HH.
Do I think he WANTS redemption? Absolutely.
Do I think he putting in the hard work to be redeemed? No. That's what your role is in the dlc. To be his moral compass to keep him from fully regressing.
Firstly, Joshua was kicked out of the Legion. He didn't leave of his own accord.
While he lived in New Canaan causing no issues to our knowledge, there isn't any mention of moral dilemmas that he faced there. I think its pretty safe to say that in the company of other Canaanites, trying to live a Canaanite life, he was more or less content to seek the 'right' path.
But then his tribe is brutally slaughtered and scattered by the White legs. Even if we look at it through a vaguely Christian lens, this is Joshua's first real trial. Testing whether that change was something real.
Obviously, having your family and loved ones killed and hunted (because of YOU, at that) would be hard on anyone. I'm not a good person and I'm happy to admit I would be planning my revenge too.
But I'm also not a ruthless war criminal in recovery.
Joshua is perpetuating the cycle of violence, using the Old Covenant to justify his bloodlust and revenge behind scripture. He is aware of this when you call him out on it, but if you don't push back, he'll just eat his own rhetoric.
"I want to have my revenge. Against him. Against Caesar. I want to call it my own, to make my anger God's anger. To justify the things I've done."
Joshua is well aware that he is a violent warlord. Keeping in mind for THIRTY YEARS from the age of 19ish-50ish HE WAS THE MOST FEARED MAN IN THE LEGION WITH A MYTHOS THAT SPREAD ACROSS THE ENTIRE WEST.
This goes into my next point:
I believe that he is fully aware that he is using God to justify his own bloodlust, even his aversion to ever specifying his wrongs outside of vaguely calling them "mistakes".
The thing that bothers me most about his 'redemption' is that he holds very little accountability. He will say that he has made mistakes and he has changed.
An abuser will say the same thing and continue on abusing. This is no different.
Joshua is aware that the type of violence he wages is evil, yet he is blinded by either grief or simple opportunity to repeat his actions.
People who have genuinely worked through their flaws acknowledge their past and the bad, or even downright evil choices they've made.
Because that is what it is CHOICES. Joshua chose every day for pretty much his entire adulthood to raise a fascist empire and prop up evil like rape, colonialism, slavery and misogyny.
But he doesn't ever say that part out loud. He'll call Caesar evil and a sinner (he is ofc) but the most you will get out of Joshua is him specifically acknowledging his mistranslation and the rest is just vague 'mistakes'.
Watering down creating, raising, enforcing and perpetuating a fascist slave empire as "small mistakes" is laughable. Yet so many people take this at face value. Running the Legion for 30 years, slaving, raping and killing your way through multiple states is an active choice every day to be evil.
I don't personally believe either of them began as evil. I just can't believe a 19 and 20yo have the capacity to be truly evil that young. But I do think every choice they made for 30+ years is what made them evil.
I have very complex thoughts of the issue of accountability in religion, to save you the ramble I've found this to be the most concise way to put my thoughts on the matter:
Vertical Absolution vs. Horizontal Repair: The individual reduces morality to a strictly private transaction between themselves and a deity, cutting the harmed party entirely out of the equation. Resolving guilt vertically bypasses the messy, uncomfortable work of facing victims, accepting consequences, and offering restitution in the material world.
He can say he is absolved and wants nothing but peace, but his actions speak otherwise.
And finally, what makes him my favorite character.
I understand why he's angry. I understand why he wants to get revenge. I understand why he'd cling to his religion to justify getting that revenge.
His tribe was slaughtered and hunted because of him.
I can't imagine the complex grief that comes from being such an evil person, your family accepting you back home with open arms and love. To try to live a normal life with them, only for your past actions to lead to the brutal slaughter of the people you love by the very framework that you created.
That's fucked.
When you stop him, he acknowledges what all of this is. Simple revenge.
It's not God. it's not defense. It's revenge.
My parting thoughts
Joshua, on a surface level, accepts that what he did in the Legion was wrong. But there is no real accountability. He won't even name just what it is that he did wrong. Calling everything he's done "small mistakes" is antithetical to redemption.
The Courier convincing him to spare Salt-Upon-Wounds is jut another step in his redemption arc. It is not redemption itself. Again, back to this:
He is still on the long path to redemption. Narrowly saved from going off course completely by someone standing up to him before he crossed that line. If left unchecked, he'll spiral completely back into the Legate he once was.
Sparing one enemy is not nearly enough to atone for everything he has done. Nor has he truly digested just WHAT he has done. he needs to take accountability, make reparations where he can, actively choose every day to live his life for good. He has a long road ahead of him.
One day I hope Joshua is faced with another trail and he can decide on his own not to regress. But that is not HH.
I do not think Joshua has been redeemed, but I love seeing his road TO seeking redemption. It is his complexity as a character that I love most and I wish more people looked critically at the character we meet bc the story there is far better than watering him down to a poor victim of Edward Sallow who is living a righteous and just life now.
Let him be a self righteous hypocrite that has the capacity to be better one day.
Everything in fallout 4 has to be built fitting the historical neighborhood character. The historical neighborhood character in this case being abandoned bombed out skyscraper.
Fallout TV really need more ghoul characters. Give us a ghoul who is the opposite of Cooper, who can show the audience that unlike him, plenty of pre-war ghouls have managed to hold on to their humanity despite everything. There's plenty of ghouls among the NCR Rangers for example. Have one of them be a returning character on the show. I really miss seeing more ghouls in my Fallout. </3
ONE YEAR AGO TODAY. Head fallout 4 “writer” Emil Pagilarulo made a tweet so iconic, so ridiculed, so important to our group chat that we knew we had to celebrate. so my boyfriend and i got a cake printed. happy birthday the event he has dubbed. NATEGATE
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