The toxin makes you protect what you love, not kill it *6x02 SPOILERS*
Everyone keeps saying how the toxin in the air in 6x02 makes you kill the people you love, but they are all wrong. It makes you want to protect the things you love most, even if that means killing them too(seems counter productive but think of yanderes).
It’s been shown and said many times that Clarke hates herself with a passion, thinks she’s a monster. If the toxin makes you kill people you love she wouldn’t be trying to kill herself, she would be trying to kill Bellamy(if Madi were on the planet it would be her). Instead she tries to kill herself to protect Madi and the rest of them from the death and tragedy she thinks follows her.
When Bellamy is drowning Murphy he yells that he “will keep her safe” supposedly talking about Clarke because that’s actually the only person he could be talking about in that moment. He wants to kill Murphy because in his mind Murphy is a threat that is going to kill them. I don’t know why he goes and tries to kill Clarke later or tells her he doesn’t need her, but it could be because she was preventing him from doing what he thinks he has to.
Murphy cares for his friends, probably even loves them, and he doesn’t want to be alone. He doesn’t get homocidal because he doesn’t want them dead at all, he sees no good coming from their deaths because they’re the best thing he’s got. The only threat that is possible in his mind is the toxin making them kill each other so that’s the thing he has to defeat. He could’ve 100% shot Clarke or Bellamy but he missed on purpose, we know all of them have good shots, they don’t just miss. The only reason he escaped and grabbed the gun is because the best protection, you can’t just run at a guy with a gun, you can make other people run though.
Jackson and Miller start hallicinating a big got inside of Miller. Jackson obviously wants to protect Miller, he cares for him deeply, so he justifies cutting into Miller with trying to cut out the bug that doesn’t exist. Miller lets him because he trusts Jackson and doesn’t want to die from the bug which he believes is his biggest threat. If they would have let this all continue instead of tranquilizing them, Jackson would have kept cutting until he found the bug, but he never would have found it which would cause Miller to die.
I actually have no idea what’s going on with Echo, but the main thing I saw was her trying to figure out how to protect everyone and herself. She knew that the toxin would probably be effecting her though so she didn’t trust herself. This is why she tranquilized herself, it was the only way to make sure she didn’t actively make the wrong descision. She was probably the least effected out of all of the group.
With Emori, I’m not completely certain but the main thing she’s probably trying to protect is herself. Yes she cares for everyone in spacekru, but she’s always put herself first because that’s how it’s always been, how she’s always survived, and stuff like that sticks with you. She probably attacks Murphy first because he was the first to betray her when they were still in the Ring and he was the closest, she see’s him as the immediate threat. She tries to harm the others as well, trying to protect herself from them.
Unless the toxin effects everyone differently, making some kill what they love and making others kill for what they love, then I think this is the most likely thing for what the toxin does to people. Yes the toxin makes you kill people you love, but it’s only to protect the thing you love the most.
