Some thoughts on teddypine's vulnerability and their love languages
I have had so many thoughts about them this week they're insaneeee
Starting with the shed scene.
There are guards literally right outside the door, or they're pretty damn close. Teddy and Jonathan are not surrounded by solid walls here, either. It's literally just a ramshackle shed with wooden beams and GAPS. SO MANY GAPS!!! it really scared me when I watched this for the first time cause I was like ... surely they're gonna be heard. It's already a high stress & risk situation, and to make it even more so, they are literally talking about fooling Roper and (to me) faith to get out of this alive. WHERE PEOPLE CAN HEAR THEM. They are literally having a very emotional and intimate one to one goodbye wound tending scene asking for trust and faith. !!???? And if they are heard, Teddy and Jonathan are dead. No doubt. Like, this is not a safe space for them to be doing what they're doing and saying what they're saying. Granted this whole situation is NOT a safe space and maybe that’s the point, narratively putting them at the focal point of danger and all.
But they make each other weaker. They care. They care so deeply, which makes them susceptible.
We have seen vulnerability with them before, probably what makes them so drawn to each other. There's the church scene, the dance scene (which is whole other crazy levels of physical and emotional intimacy), the boat scene, the Cartagena office scene.
And then the cliff scene where they talk about said Cartegena office scene with such aching tenderness from Jonathan’s side and a hesitation yet a clear YEARNING to let someone in from Teddy’s. But he can't. He's closing himself off a little I feel here, because Teddy is no longer untouchable within the operation. He is very much in danger. He is facing the reality and difficult feelings from sending his father down, the only person he has ever looked up to and loved, and who he thought loved him back.
He wants someone to see Eduardo Vidal - without even knowing it. And Jonathan does - without even trying.
The waterside scene is like a whole goddamn painting of their vulnerability, an ART. Jonathan learns of Teddy's past, his greatest and deepest and most painful truth and one he has pushed aside - in Diego's words, 'felt in the back of his mind his whole life'. In this scene, Jonathan understands that vulnerability needs to go both ways, and he tells Teddy the key parts of himself, laying himself bare just to get Teddy to listen. And not just for the sake of the mission and taking down Roper - no, Jonathan cares at this point.
And there are so many more examples of vulnerability between them, basically in like every scene they have.
We also have Diego saying that Teddy's need for love is his biggest weakness, and I think it's pretty obvious that Jonathan's savior complex (esp for people dragged under Roper) is one of his. Then there's also Teddy drugging him to get information / make sure he can trust him.
Jonathan is stripped of all guards and ability to lie, to cover his tracks. It is literally a situation all about trust and betrayal and lies, and they still end up having a very emotionally intimate bond.
And then here they are in the shed at the end of all things. In Tom's own words, 'it's just him and Teddy'. I think for them to have this goodbye scene with SUCH tension and a beautiful undertone of care and love in such a high octane situation is Vulnerability at its best.
Teddy is supposed to be interrogating Jonathan and probably hurting him a lil bit more. But there's nothing but caring mutters and touches and the cradling of faces that say more than words ever could.
Teddy knows he is not going to be able to kill Roper, and he knows this is going to end badly for him. And so to me this is him saying goodbye to Jonathan with the only love language Teddy knows - acts of service. The first one was (according to Diego) putting him on that plane to Paris instead of killing him. And now, these are his final acts. Jonathan is a captive and a tortured man and a dead man in the eyes of Roper and the thugs in the jungle, but Jonathan is untied by Teddy simply for the mercy of being free for the few last moments they have together. Jonathan's wounds (that he obtained in the first place primarily to make his and Teddy's 'act' believeable) are tended to and cared for.
Jonathan HAS to be the one to get hurt. He was pulled into the world of Roper by Angela ten years ago and no way in hell can he get out until Roper has been slain. Yes he put himself forward for this Colombia mission but even so, he is traumatised and obsessed and has ptsd from both his army days and his first Roper mission. And I think Teddy despises seeing blood and bruises on Jonathan. For a man used to violence who is now learning what it is to be with someone in the sense of trust and genuine companionship, I think that it wrecks him with guilt that he has so far come out of it all physically unscathed. And so the only way Teddy can absolved of this guilt and worry and shame is to care for Jonathan like this.
And so this very last face cradle moment to me feels like Teddy being so grateful and thankful to have even met someone like Jonathan in the first place. To have gained his trust but most IMPORTANTLY his genuine affection and his love. I think, kneeling down in front of Jonathan, it is almost another attempt at religious imagery. The first was the pool scene, and this - I think Teddy has spent his entire life looking for forgiveness and strength to have faith and I think that right here, this is it. Jonathan is his faith. Of course he will always have his Catholicism, but I also think that mercy and forgiveness and goodness and moral hope and hope for a better world have become his faith in a different way. I think that through all this vulnerability, Jonathan helps him to learn more of humanity and genuine human love, something he's never had till now.
