What do you think about Javier's fate post-RDR2? With the way things ended, I was left with the impression that something else must have happened to Javier between 1899 and 1911 for him to eventually turn into RDR1 Javier. Either something big happened to him between those years, or his life just went into a horrible downward spiral. I don't know, for Javier to eventually ask for protection from the man that abused his family doesn't seem like a thing RDR2 post-gang break up Javier would do.
Oh God, after RDR2, the more I think about Javier, and try to analyze him, the more it hurts. I swear, if I could retcon part of RDR1/RDR2 without stretching the logic too much, I would love to rescue Javier from his shitty future.And the more I look, I become more and more convinced that he and Arthur are kindred souls of a sort. Left to their own devices, their inner nature is kind, concerned for others, passionate, fiercely loyal, artistic, introspective. The trouble is that their stories are running in reverse of each other. Arthur’s is a story of redemption. Javier’s is a story of corruption. (I didn’t consider the angle that Javier went from Mexico to America, and Arthur goes from America to Mexico, when I started writing May the Sunrise, but sure, let’s just further support that theory here.)
Arthur begins RDR2 coming across as a cynical hellraising wrecking ball who doesn’t much care who gets hurt so long as he gets results to fulfill his perceived duties to Dutch and the gang as the highest good. Javier begins it in a much more appealing place: he’s thoughtful, compassionate, counseling concern for John, telling Arthur he basically needs to get over his judgmental attitude towards John, at least for long enough to go try to find him.Arthur ends RDR2 as a selfless man who’s chosen to guard and fight for others, having rejected blind loyalty and the cost it takes on innocent people. Granted, he can make that choice more easily, because as a man suffering from a very likely fatal illness, he has nothing to lose. Javier is too afraid to make the same choice, given he has things to lose. He’s far, far from home and believes he can never go back, and he’s in a country where most people aren’t going to be as kind to a brown-skinned man as his gang family have been. So he chooses what feels like security with Dutch, and his loyalty to the man he believes he owes everything to still.
I do think that choice was the one Javier felt he had to make, the only one he could make. But given how hesitant he was to do it, I think the regret ate at him. It seems implied that he drifted apart from Bill and Dutch not too long after, and I suspect his confused feelings may have been a part of that. And we know he eventually went back to Mexico. So he gave up the family he supposedly chose, and ran from them, and I think he never got over knowing that he’d made the wrong choice. Plus he’s in Mexico again, seeing all of its problems, and feeling helpless to do anything about them, because all he can do is fight, and this isn’t an enemy he can shoot. And so over the years he becomes more and more disillusioned and jaded. He loses the best in himself, and becomes what Arthur was, but even worse–the callous attack dog, the strong right arm doing a powerful man’s dirty work, asking no questions. He’s sold what was best in him, and all he can claim now is lethality and loyalty, so he’ll cling to those, knowing he’s become the worst possible version of himself to the point he’s working for the very man he would have loved to kill 15 years ago. But he probably feels like he deserves no better.
