Who Is Jenna and What is Her Route About?
(Reposted from Twitter)
Jenna’s Route is a highlight for many: arguably the happiest ending and the one most people recommend playing last. It’s also controversial, not just because Jenna is one of the more polarizing characters, but because people feel it doesn't focus enough on her.
I’ve seen multiple people comment that they still didn’t really know who Jenna was after playing her route. That kind of makes sense, since it has a large focus on Leo, which I think distracts people from what is going on with Jenna.
It doesn’t help that she is canonically the most enigmatic and guarded character, with Chase even commenting that he feels like there is extra meaning to what she says but he’s not smart enough to figure it out. So, who is Jenna and what is the point of her route?
Thankfully, the game has Flynn tell us exactly what each route is about. Carl’s is about his anxiety, fear of the future, and lack of confidence in himself. Leo’s is about his obsession with the past, inability to move forward, and projecting all of that onto Chase.
What about Jenna’s? Flynn’s comments to her are arguably the cruelest, and he even says as much. We know Jenna’s family were abusive towards her and that she had good reason to leave and never come back. Flynn knows this, he and Leo dealt with her family the most and its implied that after Leo and Chase started dating he was left to help her by himself. He never has anything positive to say about any of her family and seems to despise all of them. Why would he care about what happens to them or her relationship with them? The answer is, he doesn’t.
Flynn isn’t talking about how Jenna treats her biological family, he’s talking about her found family, our main characters. As he points out, Carl and Leo are both in very dark places (and we see him trying to help both of them, in his own way) and could really use her help.
Chase, who went to Pueblo on Jenna’s advice, seems lost and unsure of what to do with his life. Jenna’s on the same campus as him, and they’ve hardly talked. To be clear, Jenna isn’t obligated to sort their shit out, but it’s easy to see why Flynn thinks she abandoned them.
Flynn also accuses her of thinking she’s better than them because she left Echo, and he’s absolutely right. Why do I think that? Let’s look at everyone’s reactions to Sydney’s death. In Carl’s Route, Leo talks about how everyone changed after that.
Carl became more anxious and depressed, Leo became overprotective, Flynn became bitter, and TJ was obviously keeping a traumatizing secret. So, what about Jenna? What did she “learn” from Sydney’s death? Jenna learned that if you stay in Echo, it will FUCKING KILL YOU.
Jenna saw what the town did to her family, how it killed her brother, Sydney and countless others and she decided to leave before it killed her as well. We see her try to convince Chase, Carl, and even Leo to leave Echo, because she thinks the town will ruin them if they don’t.
That’s why she shows disdain towards Janice for still working at the diner and to various other people, because it’s obvious to her that the town breaks people and if they were smarter they would know they should leave; if they were stronger or just tried harder they could leave.
Jenna tells Chase as much, that the difference between her and Jeremy was “temperament”. Her “nature” was strong enough to overcome her “nurture”. She talks about how Heather “made herself a victim”, which is in contrast to Jenna, who does her best to not talk about her abuse.
Jenna needs to believe that she got out of Echo through sheer force of will; that she is better, tougher than everyone who stayed, because if that wasn’t the reason, what does that mean for everyone still there? What does it mean for her family? For her?
And the reason she shows disdain towards Flynn is not only because he’s still in Echo, but because he knows the truth of the lie Jenna tells herself: she didn’t survive Echo because of her temperament, she survived Echo because of her friends, her found family.
To get her good ending, you have Chase tell her “We kept each other sane”; we’re supposed to understand that “we” isn’t just Chase and Jenna, it’s all of them. Chase even says he could have become like Jeremy and Clint if he didn’t have Jenna, Leo, and the rest of the group.
Deep down, Jenna knows this. Before the temperament line she says that it was falling in with Clint that made Jeremy the (awful) person he is; that if things had been different, he, or she, could have been different.
In Jenna’s route Leo expresses a similar sentiment, saying he should have been there for Micha, should have introduced him to the group, that if he had, maybe things would have turned out better for the bat. In Route 65 he says that his friends are why he didn’t turn out like the people at the party.
That’s why Jenna’s good ending is what it is. You, as Chase, convince her that people can change, can be better, and that they can help each other survive, that you don’t have to do it on your own. Jenna talks Heather down because she realizes she could have been like Heather, if not for her found family keeping her sane and supporting her through the worst parts of her life.
(This is also LITERALLY true, in that she could not have physically left Echo if one of her friends, Chase, hadn't given her a ride out of town.)
It’s also why the Socketman is so prominent in the route; it’s what helped her survive her abusive childhood until she could meet Chase, Leo, and everyone else.
(I have another thread I could write about Jenna, Flynn and the Socketman, but this has already gone on too long.)
That’s why she doesn’t actually talk to Jeremy, another common complaint. Jeremy makes his choice when he sells her, and the people she cares most about, out to Brian. It’s not him she needs to talk to, it’s them. Her route is the only one where they’re all together at the end.
Jenna is a tough, talented person, and it wasn’t just luck that got her out of Echo and where she is; she put in the work. But admitting that she was lucky, that her found family, for all their flaws were, and are, still there for her, that there was some good in the hellhole that is Echo, that’s what allows her to save the people in the town, to save Heather, and leads to (arguably) the happiest ending in Echo. That’s why I love the writing for Jenna and her route so much. There’s so much under the surface and so many layers to explore.
(You, obviously, don’t have to agree with all or any of what I’ve said here, and I’d love people to tell me what they think or if I’m full of shit. I just wanted to put my thoughts out there, since I’ve seen people talking about it, and give another way to look at things.)
(I wanted to write a thread about Leo and Conservatism, but to write that I needed to write a thread about Leo, Jenna and College in Echo, and to write THAT I needed to explore Jenna’s character and what motivates her. Let me know if you would want to read either of those.)
