While looking for screenshots I had a thought. Apart from the Silver Eyed warriors, why was Oscar the last one to be affected by the Apathy? Qrow, Yang, Weiss, and Blake all started showing signs of it when they got there in ch5, but it took Oscar until the following morning in ch6 to be affected.
Even earlier in this same chapter he was still kickin’, chatting with Maria non-apathetically
He, Ruby, and Maria were the only ones still behaving normally up until the next morning. After we see Oscar feeling the effects outside, we see it slowly affect Ruby, and only when Maria’s right next to the Apathy is she affected.
“Hey, yeah, maybe even a car.”
Oscar’s not the most optimistic of people, per se, but he is hopeful, and very pragmatic. It makes sense he’d be willing to help find a way out of the situation, while still being susceptible to the Apathy’s influence. He’s definitely been shown to linger in negative or uncomfortable emotions, but Apathy is the lack of emotion. It drains the part of you that cares. And that’s where Oscar loses his power against it. His proclivity for examining the negative is usually balanced by his fear, opportunism, and long-term thinking. But here?
“We signed up to try and save the world, not just... delay the inevitable.”
What does the long term matter if the end is set? What’s there to fear or fight when you already know it’s futile? These thoughts didn’t get him before, though. Up until now, he’d expressed plenty of fear and concern even at Brunswick, long after the others had lost it.
Once the Apathy had time to get to him as he slept, that’s gone. And that lack of fear, of worry, of capacity to care -- that’s what breaks him. He’s spent his whole life dreaming of change, holding onto the idea his life could change, that he could change the world for the better. Then he was told he just can’t, and somehow, he still chose to press on.
Until the Apathy drained his fear, just like it tried to drain Ruby’s hope. Those are the things that allowed them to combat the Apathy in their own ways for so long. Hope inspires change; fear demands it. Without either, the inevitable will keep its name.