Okay, so JAX kinda just did the same thing Caine did by the end of his story. Caused problems, felt guilt, died, admitted faults, and wanted to come back. On top of that, Jax was vulnerable with Pomni and hugged her back which also shows growth. Caine did not take accountability before he was lucky enough to be revived, so what did he do more than Jax to be worthy of coming back again?
I actually wrote about this in this post!
Jax's interaction with Pomni was the ultimate display that he was ready to change. Jax acknowledged that she was a bad person, that she hurt people and isolated the people who only chose to love her, and most importantly, she was denying her own identity as a trans person.
On top of everything you said here, Jax hugged Pomni! IMO Goose was trying to set up a contrast between episode 6 and episode 9, as well as Jax's backstory.
Jax came out to his mom, she verbally abused him, hugged him, and then he pushed her and ran away.
In episode 6, Pomni hugged Jax and Jax pushed her away. Something that hinted that Jax WAS going to do better this time is the fact that Jax didn't run away this time. I like to interpret that as his mind betraying himself. He desperately wanted to be close to Pomni while pushing her away.
We see everything come full circle when Jax chose to hug Pomni back after he came out to her about EVERYTHING. When he came out to his mom, he ended up physically pushing her away. When he came out to Ribbit, he emotionally pushed her away. He finally stopped pushing...and then he died?
I understand that the "Isn't she lovely" sequence is trying to tell us that Jax finally accepted that she was trans and that she was being reborn as a girl, but how can you be reborn if you're...uh...dead?
I have a lot of issues on how suicide is handled in the show but that's another conversation.
I know that abstraction not being healed is supposed to be more impactful but I think that's undermined by the fact that Caine came back.
So much of this episode tries to tell us that humans and NPCs are the same in the circus, but I think the choice to bring back Caine really messes with that narrative.
I also want to remind everyone that NPCs have "died" and come back before. Yes, there's obviously Gumigoo, but there's also the Gloink Queen, Orbsman, Ming, Disappearing Guy, etc.
If anything, I think they should have shown that the cure for abstraction is to reset the mind files from the day they entered the circus. That would show that the humans ARE the same as the NPCs, since they can respawn without memories, just like the NPCs.
prguitarman
discoholicmusic
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
andulkaphoto
izzy806
