Greetings, Skyen! I'm a big fan of your video analyses, so I couldn't resist asking you a question. With the end of TADC approaching, I wonder what you think about the possibility of Jax starting his path towards redemption? That Jax is mentally ill and has unresolved issues with himself is obvious. But I want to hear what you think will happen to his character by the final episode. Will he take the first step towards redemption? Will he manage to heal all the way through until the episode ends? Will his change be subtle and shown through a timelapse of the circus after a long time...? I want to hear your opinion on the matter.
I mean, I don't know that "redemption" is the most satisfying or interesting place for Jax's story to go, necessarily. If TADC is operating on a kind of inversion of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, well, in IHNMIMS the Jax analogue, Ted, is the only human who survives, so in TADC, perhaps he is the only human who doesn't?
Jax is someone who has repeatedly had the opportunity to reach out, to open up, to let himself be vulnerable, to trust. The other characters in the Circus, over and over and over again, have extended him far more grace than he has earned, and every single time he has rejected them and responded with hostility, or even with outright betrayal.
He is, as the Scottish play goes, "in blood Stepp'd so far that, should I wade no more; Returning were as tedious as go o'er."
Jax certainly seems to believe this. He seems to bitterly hate himself, and be deeply mired in survivor's guilt and identity crisis. I don't think he believes there is any redemption for him. I think he believes that for him, he can either be his archetype (his mask, his rabbit skin suit), or else he can be nothing and die/abstract.
That fragile, toxic identity is all he has, and the more the other members of the Circus try to reach out and help him, the more he panics and lashes out and spirals deeper into his neurosis, because every offer of help is a threat to that identity. For Jax, being vulnerable and open and honest is not uncomfortable, it is dangerous. He responds to Pomni's empathy and care with anger and threats, because in his hurting psyche, he is defending the only self he has available to cling to.
In an optimistic narrative—certainly in a children's cartoon—the resolution to that kind of character arc is catharsis and healing. Our tragic hero hits rock bottom, from which the empathy and care of his friends finally can lift him up, and, wounded but beginning to heal, he can step into a new day with the promise of a brighter future ahead.
But in a tragic narrative (and, sometimes, in life), the end point of a self-destructive character arc is... well, self-destruction. Sometimes, a person who is violently opposed to receiving the help they need, will be destroyed by that opposition. And there is value to telling those stories, too. There is emotional truth there.
I am personally 50/50 on what I think should happen to Jax. I very much want him to get better, to be pulled off the very brink at the last minute, in part because I have at certain times and in certain ways been self-destructive in exactly the same ways he is. If he is saved before the end (and perhaps if he finally tries the estrogen), I will not be mad or unsatisfied.
On the other hand, if the theme the show is building towards is that in an absurd and stagnant world, the only things we can truly hold on to is each other, and that only care and community can save us, and that we must find the strength to be vulnerable with one another, and the strength to accept the hand that is offered us...
Well, that theme hits a lot harder if the story is willing to show why the thing it is arguing is important. "You must find it in yourself to reach out, in spite of everything to be vulnerable, in spite of everything to be brave... or else this will be your fate."
As I've talked about before, I think the shape of a great tragedy is a knife's edge. I think a tragedy becomes compelling when you know, every step of the way, how it could have been averted; if you can see crystal clear in your mind the world where it never needed to happen.
I can see that knife's edge for Jax. I can see all the moments where his spiral could have been ended, where he could have caught himself before the fall. If his story ends in tragedy, I think it will be a good tragedy. I think it will be a satisfying tragedy. I think it will make a good story.
If Jax was a real person, he would deserve all the help and healing he could possibly need, same as anyone who is hurting. He would deserve every chance at forgiveness and redemption, he would deserve to be caught before he goes over the edge, he would deserve catharsis and the opportunity of a better future.
But fictional characters deserve nothing, except perhaps an ending. I want Jax to have an ending that is interesting, that is meaningful, that communicates something. A tragic ending would be that, I think.
