John Walker Appreciation Week, Bonus: What made you love John?
Holy lore dump time (the context is VERY necessary 🗣️). Mainly for future me whenever someone inevitably asks me this question.
If you want to skip the seven paragraphs of long ass backstory, I left a TLDR at the bottom.
I was in middle school when FATWS came out (this made me EXTREMELY influenceable lmaooo). Obviously I was sat and seated for Bucky and mainly Bucky. So they throw John into the mix and I don't really think anything of it except for the fact that he looks stupid in his helmet. Bucky and Sam continuously hating on John for almost no reason? I was a very stupid middle schooler and thought "yeah, okay, that tracks." I thought it was kind of funny.
Fast forward to episode 4. I was actually really sad when Lemar died (in relation to how much I cared for John back then). Except the shield scene REALLY threw me off (as it did for basically everyone), and the fight scene afterwards (because I was mad at John for ripping Sam's wings and tossing Bucky around like a ragdoll). That compounded with people online complaining about how trash of a character John was made me believe that yes, we had to hate John. Then the second the show finished and Loki came out, I completely forgot about everything.
Fast forward again to when Thunderbolts released. I'm at the tail end of senior year and I was supposed to watch the movie with a group of friends. However, since I was very depressed and had a falling out with said group of friends, I watched the movie alone. Going in, I had a vague recollection that John even existed, that he had a backstory. He shows up in the Vault scene, and I'm still thinking he looks stupid with his helmet on. And I also think he's being very annoying.
However things start to change the SECOND he takes off his helmet and I realize he looks soooooo fine (sorry) without that stupid shit on his face. No, that wasn't the main reason I started liking him. It was partially his shame room scene, but mainly the scene right after when he looks down the elevator shaft. Let's just say I related with that on an unhealthy level (don't worry, I'm better-ish now).
As I'm watching him becoming less annoying to the rest of the Vault Crew, I'm starting to realize he's not "bad" like I remembered. I will NOT be detailing how much I cried during the scene where they hold back Bob, but I will say seeing John being the first person after Yelena to go after Bob did something to me. (I blame this on the fact that I would graduate 2 weeks after watching the movie and my emotions were definitely all over the place).
Throughout the summer and into August, I got back into ficwriting (which I hadn't touched since before high school), and used that as an opportunity to explore John (and the rest of the Bolts') charcters. On top of that, I rewatched every project the Bolts (minus Bucky) showed up in (AMATW, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and of course, FATWS). It was during my rewatch that I was able to see everything in a different (and more mature) light. The scenes that stood out to me the most were from Episode 5: John collapsing to the ground as he realizes what he's done, the fight scene, the scene of him in the courtroom, him going to Lemar's family. It was basically here where I finally figured out what made him relatable (to me): he had a shit ton of expectations dropped on him, and when he couldn't live up to them, he got hated for it. This and the fact that he lost Lemar, his literal brother, made me feel deeply for him. I'm very sure that developed a whole bunch of self-doubt within him, along with god knows what other tormenting thoughts. Though my situation is nowhere near as severe as John's, if you've ever been someone going through the college application process...yeah...
(Long story short my mother is. Well. Expects the unrealistic. When I didn't get into certain colleges, I could feel the disappointment and that did not do anything good for me and gave me a really bad time.)
...
And now we're here lol where I spend my entire day simping and crying over him and/or Wyatt and/or any other characters Wyatt plays. I'm really grateful that I have him as my favorite character, and that I was reintroduced to Lemar and Olivia tangentially. And also, screw the college application process, now I go to school in Georgia (John's state!!). Sorry for the lore dump but. Now you know!
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TLDR: John is much finer than he once was (lol), but since my frontal lobe is developing and will continue to develop, I've realized that he's so much more human and deep and complex than middle school me would ever realize. And this makes him the most relatable for me.