I also love how they used Jaune and our perspective on him to warp the audience’s view of the Cat.
At first, the Cat is genuinely helpful, and doesn’t really gain anything from helping besides knowledge that satisfies their curiosity. They’re cleverer than the average Afteran, have more freedom, but they seem good.
Jaune enters and casts doubt on that, especially when he brings up Alyx and Lewis. But…we don’t believe him for long. Because he’s so clearly unhinged, so clearly resents the entirety of the Ever After when we’ve seen good in it from Little and the Paper Pleasers. It becomes likelier than Jaune is being irrational, that his distrust and hate for the Cat is just another form of his trauma and paranoia.
And then Chapter 8. There’s one brief moment where it seems that the Cat really does care for Ruby, really does intend to help….
But no. They try to hollow her out and possess her, and when it succeeds on Neo it’s horrifying. Jaune was right not to trust them. We just didn’t realize that, because we couldn’t trust Jaune.
It’s a good observation.
Even now WBY and some viewers were still on the fence of whether to trust Jaune or the Ever After. Jaune’s lost of sanity is one of the key contributors that convinced Ruby to give up. What happened to the Paper Pleasers also allowed us to trust that Jaune’s lost of sanity is (possibly) the Ever After’s purpose for Ruby.
