Find it so strange how in a show with so many great characters, somehow Silco is the one that I’m still thinking about (besides Jinx, of course).
Like, this guy had a full-blown arc that was completely overshadowed but literally everybody else's in the show, and is also the most important for the ending.
He’s a manipulative, murdering, drug lord who doesn’t even seem to care if children are used in his experimentations with Shimmer. He willingly threatens people’s lives and even the lives of people’s child.
He let a cat get eaten
He’s the direct cause for a widespread shimmer drug epidemic in his own city, an doesn’t show a single care about that.
So clearly he doesn’t care about the chaos ensuing around him so long as he stays in power and successfully gets his way with the upper city. He does whatever he needs to to get what he needs.
He also doesn’t care about the chaos Jinx brings to the table unless it directly affects something he’s working on. He knows she’s cracked and brittle, and that she’s incredibly traumatized.
I think he sees himself in her-- betrayed and abandoned and traumatized by it. They both fear betrayal again-- especially Jinx in her unstable emotional state.
He lets her do what she feels she needs to do. he doesn’t even grow angry when she stabs him repeatedly with his eye poke...thingy.
He doesn’t even grow angry when she shoots him...kills him.
He assures her that he would never betray her-- something she doesn’t trust anyone about. And you can tell in the way he says it in this intimate moment that he means it.
He has nothing to gain by saying this. He’s dead either way.
And even more, knowing he's telling the truth, he was willing to lose EVERYTHING he ever hoped to achieve with independence and an end from the uppercity's tyranny for this one girl he cares for like a daughter.
EXACTLY the motivation Vander had for the same things.
He doesn'y gain anything by saying this, either.
He says these things because he knows because of his own and Jinx’s betrayals and abandonments that this is what she needs to hear in order to find herself.
The last time, she killed her family and was abandoned by her sister (not entirely, but you get it). She was taunted for being imperfect while she was younger, and told that she could be fixed by Vi currently.
He tells her that he wouldn’t betray and abandon her in his last breaths after she fatally shot him, and then tells her she’s exactly how she’s meant to be-- perfect. Something no one has ever told her. They’ve always wanted to change her in some way, and he accepts her wholeheartedly and loyally despite everything he had hoped to achieve with the uppercity and being shot by her.
This is what gets Jinx to accept herself as Jinx.
And he’s the only voice she hears when she chooses her path.
He wasn’t redeemed at all since him and Jinx aren’t some good vs. bad situation. Not even his character is redeemed.
What he is is exactly who Jinx needed her whole life while being exactly what the undercity was practically destroyed by. And honestly, he’s pribably the only type of person who could wholeheartedly accept Jinx in the environment they’re in.
He’s the very epitome of a villain who has a big soft spot which just so happens to be more important than anything else to him. And he gets killed by her, and doesn’t blame her for it.
And I just find his arc so brilliantly done in the grand scheme of things.
