More rambling about Spoke’s potentially non-existent villain arc.
I think the biggest theme we’ve seen emerging from Spoke’s POV is the cycle of villains.
The usual counterargument I see in media against the whole ‘there will always be another villain’ thing is that there will always be people to keep said villain in check. It’s a cycle, yes, but with enough resistance and determination, villains will always be defeated. We see this with Spoke going up against Ash, and kind of Jamato going up against Spoke.
Spoke defeated Ash, but accidentally continued the cycle by being enabled by people like (sorry) Mapicc. Now Jamato’s back, trying to take Spoke down like Spoke did Ash, but the circumstances are extremely different.
If Jamato’s actions turn Spoke into a villain, I think that Spoke and Ash’s stories need to be handled differently. In my opinion Spoke is by far the more sympathetic villain out of the two, not only because we have his POV, but also because he genuinely believes that he’s protecting the server and his friends. Ash was defeated after he lost his source of power: the mafia. He may come back, but so far we have no evidence that he’s cooking up any evil plans off-screen. On the contrary, we’ve seen Spoke lose what’s most important to him (Mapicc) and instead of backing down, he literally almost bombed Capital City.
So yeah, Ash gets defeated when he loses his army, but Spoke only gets more desperate and damaging, so I think if Spoke becomes a villain next, it’ll have to be handled differently than how Ash was. Ash was defeated because his power was stripped away, but Spoke’s villainy is more of an internal battle. Jamato is trying to defeat Spoke the wrong way by taking everything he loves, when it’s already proven that doesn’t cause Spoke to stop.
I think the biggest question for Spoke’s villain arc is if he’s self-aware or not. We’ve been waiting for so long for someone like Jamato to come by and hit him with the realization that he’s been destroying everything, so him choosing to be a villain even after becoming self-aware would disrupt with the cycle of sparing villains to defeat them. Spoke is clearly very motivated because he thinks he’s in the right, so I don’t think him deciding to go against his morals and become a self-aware villain like Ash would work for his character. As much as he hates Jamato, the only reason he’s trying to kill him is because in some twisted way he thinks it’s protecting him and Mapicc from a villain. I think Spoke’s villain arc would be motivated like all of his other crimes have been: thinking he’s in the right, and going way too far.
That’s why I think Mapicc will have to be a big player if Spoke ever outright rejects his morals and chooses to become a villain. Mapicc is the one who reinvigorated Spoke’s determination to defeat Ash after killing IMajesticRose. Mapicc is the one who stood by Spoke as he spared Ash. Mapicc is basically Spoke’s entire moral compass, so if Spoke ever becomes a villain, Mapicc is his only chance at forgiving himself and choosing to be better. If Mapicc never forgives Spoke, I don’t think Spoke will survive his villain arc.
But the problem with this is that Mapicc started out keeping Spoke in check but then it slipped away from him, and now Spoke is obsessively manipulating Mapicc onto his side until recently when Spoke slipped up and now Mapicc hates him. If Spoke became a villain, would Mapicc remember how Spoke spared Ash and do the same for him? Because Mapicc literally almost killed Spoke after learning how Spoke manipulated him. The Spoke and Mapicc that spared Ash are gone, and while I think it’s a neat circle for Spoke to spare Ash and then be spared after be becomes a villain himself, the circumstances are so different that even if it’s proven to be the end of the cycle, it really depends if the characters can remember back to when they were morally good.
(And about the whole Mapicc being an enabler—after the mafia arc, Mapicc didn’t seem to have any qualms about killing their enemies. In the last episode of the mafia arc when they’re trying to warn surrounding kingdoms of Ash’s approaching mafia, Spoke and his group are betrayed. Spoke almost kills them but Mapicc steps in. This is the last time Mapicc stands up for their enemies. Why didn’t he think of the diamond players while Spoke was fighting them in the void? Why didn’t he think of the BAT members they killed in battle? So yeah, Mapicc corrected Spoke once, but since then he’s only gone along with him. Admittedly, Spoke choosing to keep secrets of his crimes behind Mapicc’s back proves that Spoke thinks Mapicc is more ethical than him, but even then Spoke’s morality is incredibly dependent on Mapicc, like how devastated Spoke was after his and Mapicc’s fight. Even if Mapicc and Spoke have both become less moral, Mapicc is still the key that could change Spoke for the better.)
This is probably a whole lot of nothing :P
