More RvB posting because I have 10 goddamn years of opinions on this shit I haven’t been able to voice to anyone that listens but you all understand me!
Today’s topic on the wheel of tragedy; Agent Maine, because holy shit for a character with like maybe 2 spoken lines there’s a LOT to unpack with this guy.
(Speaking of the wheel, maybe I should actually make one if I keep this up, or do requests or something)
From the bat, Maine’s physical size by comparison to the other freelancers already sets him apart as a bad motherfucker, which both sets up his later threat as the Meta, but also gives potentially some insight as to his origins.
Going off the concept that RvB is an alt universe connected to the original Halo timeline, I think Maine’s size and his voice hint at him being a Spartan-II, and one of the “rejects” at that due to damage to his vocal cords. Even before his injuries in the program, his voice is inherently growly and hard to understand, hinting at something going wrong during the experimental process? And we know from later lore that Project Freelancer was often a “last-chance” position, accepting those who did not fit in with the rest of the UNSC.
So already, we can see Maine as being an outsider, but this doesn’t make him dangerous. If anything, Maine is an excellent team player with communication issues, if a slightly looser grasp on morality, the primary examples being his willingness to use his terrifying presence as a distraction tactic during the Skyscraper heist, but also his live-fire attack on Tex during the training mission. Unlike Wyoming, who is inherently a bastard and/or tricky, I think Maine was following orders, and his time as a Spartan-II already made him primed for dangerous training methods.
As for the team player part, we do see he has good camaraderie with Wash, and even banters with Carolina a bit about his dislike of heights. We also see him taking multiple bullets to protect her and his other teammates during that same heist.
It’s only after his ability to speak is taken from him that he starts to truly give in to Sigma and the Meta, becoming less “himself” and more of a puppet for the AI, who feeds on his bitterness and potential isolation in the wake of his injury to get what he wants. While it’s easy to conflate the two, I think “Meta” Maine is practically an entirely new character, no longer who he once was despite similar behaviors.
From a certain point of view, Maine is very much like Carolina and Tex as being the closest thing Project Freelancer had to a success; a perfect merge of AI and Agent, a super soldier with the best equipment and the unstoppability of a Spartan. However, in typical Freelancer fashion, they yet again failed to acknowledge the humanity of their agent, in this case Sigma moreso than Maine, leading to losing control over them.
Project Freelancer wanted a weapon, and Maine, most likely, wanted a place to belong. And unfortunately, the Meta was more than happy to offer him what his employers could not.
