I still think that a good 32% or so of the support for Supergirl x Lena Luthor as a ship was a reaction to just how aggressively the show pushed that Daxomite douchebag down our throats.
Just finished Horizon: Zero Dawn and boy do I have some thoughts about why (psychologically) Ted Faro did THAT THING.
I think Ted couldn’t handle feeling unimportant and what he did at GAIA Prime was a tantrum in reaction to his feelings of irrelevance... a way to demonstrate how powerful he still was. This was his final “I’m the boss” moment when it dawned on him truly that he was no longer the boss of anything at all.
Story SPOILERS below.
So when Ted Faro used his Omega Access to lock the other project Alphas out of the system, purge APOLLO, and then kill them... he presents his reasons as darkly altruistic. He says he fears humankind 2.0 will repeat the mistakes of the past if they are given APOLLO’s knowledge. He says he’s saving them from themselves. BS, obviously, but he probably believed it on some level.
Some have suggested that he purged APOLLO as a way of erasing his evil deeds from history as well as erasing Elisabet’s accomplishments from the records (he was always jealous of her, even in his eulogy note). And there’s probably some truth in that too.
But I think the ultimate reason for his actions was even PETTIER than that.
Consider that after the end of the world Ted Faro— once the most wealthy and influential person on Earth, for better or worse— became completely irrelevant as a human being. Ted was a not a brilliant scientist. He didn’t even personally create the machines that destroyed the world. He was a ruthless businessman but that meant nothing after the end of the humanity. He no longer had anything to contribute... not even his money.
The ZD project Alphas were the future of humanity. The best minds of a generation were working together, safeguarding the future together and they no longer needed him. They were truly important and he was not.
After Elisabet died he constantly harassed them for updates about things he had no understanding of and the Alphas were clearly annoyed by his continued existence. But he had access to the system since his money built it, and so they had to put up with him. And he knew it.
Ted Faro wasn’t important to the future of humanity. He wasn’t even important to the few humans who were left on Earth. He funded the project that would save the world but Zero Dawn was never his and it never would be. The only decision he ever contributed to the project was the creation of the Master Override, and even then Elisabet only did it when GAIA agreed to it. An AI’s decisions carried more weight with Elisabet than his.
Now, after the end of the world, he was just some rich douche in a private bunker pestering the real heroes with calls. He wasn’t the one calling the shots. He wasn’t at their level and they didn’t need him. No one needed him any more. And he couldn’t handle it.
Purging APOLLO was his way of proving he still had power, that he still had relevance to the future of humanity, that his decisions still carried weight... even if that meant dooming them to ignorance. Ted’s decision to erase the collective knowledge of human civilization, his final act in playing God, was the petty tantrum of a rich man who couldn’t handle no longer being in charge.
