So I just got out of my first Saw X rewatch and I wanted to ramble about something I noticed.
If this has already been talked about by someone, I'm sorry <3 Didn't mean to steal ideas, just wanna talk about it.
It stood out to me both times how Valentina, Diego, Gabriela and Mateo had much more of a chance than Cecilia and Parker. Considering the revelation at the end, I'm guessing there's a reason for that.
The four of them are, in their own way, victims of Cecilia. John knew this. He wasn't testing them for what they did, he was testing them for being complicit in Cecilia's plan. This is highlighted by the design of their tests.
"This isn't a retribution, it's a reawakening" wasn't for Cecilia, it was for Valentina, Mateo and Gabriela.
Valentina was strapped to a cross - very loaded imagery. Her test would have concluded with her tearing herself away from that cross Cecilia's actions put her on. An opportunity to save herself from theoretically dying for Cecilia's sins.
Mateo's mask was near identical to the statue Diego had showed John on his tour (Tlāloc from my research? Please let me know if that's wrong). Diego told John and his later taxi guests that people would tear the hearts out of sacrifices there and display them in their homes (much like the pictures of the patients on Cecilia's walls). Mateo's failed test features him being locked inside the head of that statue - complicit in seeing Cecilia's brutal actions taking place right in front of him.
Gabriela's test featured her quite literally breaking chains she had been put into - potentially representative of both her addiction that led her to Cecilia and how she had been locked into Cecilia's scheme.
John tells Cecilia and Parker that they had been the marks all along. This is because the other tests weren't about what had happened to him. They were about how they'd allowed Cecilia to drag them into her plot under the false hope of life changing money.
I'm not too sure how Diego's trap would fit into this because brain fizzy - please let me know if you have any ideas
Just thought the imagery was super interesting and telling of John's motivations