Hoo boy, I disagree with like 90% of this and it's gonna take me all night to articulate why.
I accept these premises because they're interesting:
There was no guarantee that the treatment IYS denied would have saved Sam's life.
In that scenario, the worst-case outcome is that Nate would have self-destructed in an implosion of grief with no direction for his fury to result in Leverage.
But what about the best-case outcome? Not for Sam, but for Nate?
Here's the crux of my feelings: IYS denying the treatment or not is the difference between Nate burning all his bridges and going off the map alone in the intervening time before Leverage S1E1 versus him keeping his connections with his family, friends, coworkers, and other acquaintances who form his support network.
Dubenich in the pilot put it best, right in the cold open: "I know, for example, when you found that stolen Monet painting in Florence, you probably saved your insurance company, what, 20-25 million dollars? Then there was the identity theft thing, you saved your insurance company I don't even know how many millions of dollars. But I know that when you needed them... What happened to your family was the kind of thing-"
"You know this part of the conversation where I punch you in the neck nine or ten times - we're coming up on that pretty quick."
Dubenich, schemer and manipulator that he turned out to be, stabbed right to the heart of the problem: Nate's work as a legendary insurance investigator didn't earn him what he felt entitled to, which was the credit to exchange those 8-9 figures of value and savings for his company over many years, above and beyond the duty called by his salary and benefits, into a mere pittance of 6-7 figures to buy some hope for his ailing son.
(I know, I know, in 2026, it seems absolutely foolish to expect a company to do a goddamn thing for its employees. But any millennial who grew up in the '90s and '00s can remember living in a fantasy world where the system can be trusted and labor is actually ennobling and truly means something to capital beyond a cost to cut. Nate is old enough to have lived in that worldview with the rest of us.)
Imagine Blackpoole's sneering face and smug voice as I summarize how Nate took IYS's response, because that's what Nate certainly imagined every day for years: "No. Your son dies, done and certain. It doesn't matter that we're a multi-million dollar company. It doesn't matter that you're one of our best employees. We looked at the price tag of giving one boy hope and turned up our nose at it. None of the work you did was worth that much, even though it's a penny on the dollar you earned us. As a matter of fact, you were an absolute and utter fool to give us so much value if that was what you were hoping for. What a moron you were, for thinking that just by being an exceptional worker that we'd have your back when the chips are down. Face it, Nate: You backed the wrong horse, from the beginning, and it's all your fault for being such a fool."
IYS's final rejection was an indictment on Nate's entire life and work ethic, and he internalized it. That's why he went off the grid to stew in his own fury. Some of the people he was close to even thought he was dead. And yes, when he pulled himself together for Leverage, that synthesized into a direct and focused hatred for IYS and the corporate systems that incentivized that horrible rejection.
But if IYS paid for the treatments and Sam still died, what changes?
Nate's trust wouldn't have been betrayed. He would still have been heartbroken and destroyed when the treatments failed and Sam died, still consumed by anguish and guilt - that particular brand of Catholic guilt that Eliot points out in Redemption. But he wouldn't have been forced to reckon with his entire life being wrong and leading up to this ultimate failure to provide any hope to his son, because at least it would have gotten him every chance to try for his son's sake. And without that extreme mental breakdown, he might not have gone completely off the map.
Sure, worst-case scenario from this point forward, Nate drinks himself to death. But he's still got one thing that canon-path Nate doesn't - his support network. And with them - with Maggie, with close friend Sterling, with all his genuine friends and positive acquaintances in the accounting department as shown in Redemption - there might have been the slightest chance he could have pulled through.
Best-case scenario still isn't great. His marriage probably doesn't survive, he probably still leaves his career in insurance, he still holds a grudge against the world in general for taking away his only son. But with at least some friends and loved ones to be nearby in his darkest moments, there's a chance that he gets some of the help he needs and finds a way to process what happened and come to terms with it.
I'm not saying it's a guarantee. Goodness no. The worst-case outcome could still happen in this scenario. But by at least keeping his connections, there was a chance for him to recover with the help of, y'know, other human beings.
So no, I don't think IYS did Nate a favor by turning the defining tragedy of his life into a crusade. That's not how mental and emotional breakdowns work - as someone who's been through a few.
What gets robbed in that situation is not just hope for the future; you also lose any trust in anything you've worked at and built up and connected with and sacrificed for having ever meant a damn thing.
