It was the gif set of Mirco talking to Madani about how to beat these guys you have to become like them & how in the middle gif he looked SO SAD like he knew he was once like madani, trying to do everything right, by the book, but it wasn’t enough so he became like the ones he was trying to stop & how from the middle gif to the bottom one he got this rock-hardness in his eyes like he knew he did bad shit to protect people & he was not at all sorry about it & he didn’t regret it. I LOVE HIM HELP
I LOVE HIM TOO AND YOUR OBSERVATIONS ARE SO GOOD! Let’s talk about this gifset and about this gifset some more, shall we?
David, at his core, is very much an idealist with a very strong moral code that is not easily influenced/swayed by anything external. I think this is best described in the quote I used in this gifset, in which Sarah and David are talking about what to do with the Zubair video and David goes on to say that he essentially won’t be able to look his children in the eye anymore if he doesn’t act on what he has seen. He believes so strongly in the values that Sarah and he try to instill in Zach and Leo that he chooses to live by example: he wants to be that parent who will do the right thing, even when doing it is hard, and who will teach his kids what he thinks is ‘the right way to live’ by actually showing them through how he chooses to live his own life.
Thing is, David used to live a pretty cushion-y life. He had a good family around him and he wasn’t stuck writing apps in Silicon Valley, haha. He took the job with the NSA because he believed in what the system was doing. He believed all of it. He took the job because he wanted to do work that mattered, because he wanted his kids to know that dad was doing something important, because it wasn’t enough for him to earn quick and good money (let’s face it: he would’ve aced Silicon Valley from a pure technical perspective because he’s just that good with computers) and he wanted to do something that appealed to his.. I don’t know.. his humanitarian sensibilities? I think David is very much that guy who wants to do right by the world and wants life to be fair to everyone and wants to give all people equal ground to stand on. He’s idealistic to his very core, but what is really rare about it (and such a strong character trait of his) is the fact that he doesn’t relinquish any of those ideas when he is threatened and in real danger of getting killed over them. If anything, it makes him fight that much harder for what he knows is true and fair.
He could’ve looked the other way with the Zubair video. He could have walked away from all of it. He could have found a way to get back to Sarah and the kids somehow, even, and rebuild his life elsewhere where people didn’t know about the NSA-analyst-turned-traitor. With his knowledge and his resourcefulness, I have no doubt he could’ve done exactly that somehow. Instead, though, we get him walking that really hard path of sticking to his guns and standing up for what he knows is right. We get him practically manipulating Frank into helping him on that path, get him seeking out Madani against Frank’s wishes when it looks like Frank is getting sidetracked (oh the meta I could write lol), get him faking his own death in front of his own family again just to bring this to a close, and get him calling the shots in his interview with Madani.
That interview is Micro at his most honest, if you pay close attention to his eyes and his voice and to his choice of words. This is who David became in a little more than a year’s time. This is not the soft-spoken gentle father who joined the NSA out of some idealistic belief in the system and the need to do right by his kids. No. This is the man I have previously described as ‘cutthroat’, who’ll do anything necessary to make the world work in his favour, who was canonically acknowledged as someone who scares the bejeezus out of the Punisher. This is still an idealist, make no mistake, but he’s an idealist who is no longer a part of the system. He stops Madani almost right away when she starts with the interview, saying “this isn’t going to be some by-the-book Q&A, okay?” and then taking full control over how the rest of the interview goes. He acknowledges that Madani and he fundamentally want the same things, but states that his priority is his family and their safety. (Which may very well be true, because David genuinely loves Sarah and the kids so much, but I think it’s something he uses as a bargaining chip on purpose here as well.)
I think that Micro is near-prophetic when he speaks to Madani. He realises that she is much like how he used to be, and he warns her. He says he has learned different -- and looks saddened by that, as though this isn’t how he wanted things to go at all. He essentially says that the system failed him, and that there is no such thing as justice. But isn’t justice, to a degree, exactly what his partnership with Frank was all about? It’s just not the system’s idea of justice that he is after, now, and it shows. He says to Madani that the only way to defeat these assholes is to become like them. When she claims she doesn’t believe him, he simply states “you will, in the end” -- because Micro has been to that end, has hit rock bottom on his belief in the system, and he’s still standing because he chose to act on his own moral code and his own sense of truth/justice/etc. He chose to become Micro and operates outside the law willingly. He tells Frank “yeah, I can live with that” when Frank’s only condition for joining forces is that he gets to kill whoever’s responsible for this shitstorm they’re in. In Frank’s company, Micro gets his hands dirty. He’s all-in, all the fucking way home, and he finds a new kind of strength in that.
That rock-hardness in his eyes that you describe is something I get giddy about every time I see it, because that is the calculating and hardened gaze of someone who’ll do anything to make the world work the way he thinks it should. He still operates on ideals and strong beliefs about truth/justice/etc, but nobody is lord and master over him anymore. Micro decides for himself what he can live with. He decides for himself how far he’s willing to go (and the answer is “very fucking far”) and he calculates all of the risks to the point where his paranoia makes him create back-up plans for his back-up plans. He is razorsharp in his focus and absolutely cold about his methods. Yes, he’s done bad shit. He’d do worse if he had to. He protects those deserving of his protection, but doesn’t let his huge love for people get in the way of the mission he’s set for himself. His conscience is clean. I really think that he doesn’t regret a damn thing about anything he’s done to see this through to its end.
And then, well, then you get people saying they’re so glad he’s back with his family.. and believe me when I say I am too.. but I’m silently going “how does this man compute with family life and how does he assimilate back into the very society that is so separate from his own moral compass and character strengths?”. I have this terrible hunch that we are going to see more of Micro in future seasons simply because he is no longer capable of staying out of trouble and looking the other way when he perceives injustices. He’s never been good at looking the other way before. Standing up for what he believed to be right cost him almost everything before, and yet I feel like he would do it all over again in a heartbeat because doing anything less would mean not being true to who he is as a human being.
