(I'll start this off by posting their matching color shifts because it made me scream when I first saw it LMAO.) Some mutuals and I were talking awhile back about Sports Maxx and Rikiel's supposed linked story, so I wanted to drabble about it here since I've done so on Twitter several times over already and I think I could make it a little neater here heheh.

So, to me, Hermes' story suspiciously fell-off halfway through Stone Ocean, or rather, as soon as she got her revenge, she didn't seem to play into much of the story anymore, and was just an ally to follow Jolyne around. And that's fine, she wouldn't be the first JoBro/Ally character to be that way, but moots and I were brainrotting and thinking that maybe she was supposed to have more story but Araki had cut it either due to changing the ending of Stone Ocean or just time restraints to the story in general.

Hermes' story is really big on revenge, and getting justice for a misdeed. And she gets her justice, for sure! But what if Hermes wasn't the only one looking for revenge?

Rikiel suspiciously tortures Hermes throughout their entire fight, something that was cut from the original anime showing, while he aims to just kill Jolyne outright. He also points out that she "doesn't want to die alone, do you, Hermes?", possibly referencing how she'd made Maxx suffer and die alone when he originally perished. How did he come across this information? If I read the timeline correctly, before his fight with Jolyne and Hermes, he had time to spend with Pucci in the hospital, who might've filled him in on Maxx's fate and fueled his anger towards the group, specifically Hermes, through the info.

The matching rings only show up briefly but one mutual of mine, who studies in media analysis, did point out to me that it was curious how in both the manga and anime, the rings are given a forefront view before the characters are shown, as if they hold a big importance! Both characters are also explicitly stated to be from a "gang", with Rikiel being just a "punk" while Maxx is referenced to being it's "leader"; I think that at some point, Maxx and Rikiel were supposed to be a part of a resurgence to Hermes' arc, but the story might've been scrapped in favor of getting to Pucci's awakening and finally to Weather's story, and the overall ending in general.

There's also the question of how did Donatello know to pull a memory of Sports Maxx out of the ground to specifically stun Hermes enough and make her trip up? I tie that back also to the time that Pucci might've relayed Maxx's fate to Rikiel: in the same sense, Donatello might've been given a recap on Maxx and Rikiel's history by Rikiel himself, since Underworld's Maxx is wearing the ring, and the Maxx from his own episodes with Hermes has none on: he must be from someone's memory, and it wouldn't have been Hermes' own, since she'd never seen a ring on his finger.

The sons of Dio arc, while being one of my most favorites of all the Jojo arcs in all of the series, is rushed, and does feel incomplete in many ways. There's a lot that's left unsaid about them, where they came from (at least for Rikiel and Ungalo), and what goals they had outside of just 'happiness'/'satisfaction'. With all this considered, I also like to read the title of "Kiss of Love and Revenge" as a double meaning. The "love" is not only between Gloria and Hermes, and the "revenge" is not only between Hermes and Maxx. I would like to think that in some way, Araki may have planned for these two characters to show up again in either a backstory or in some sort of connected way, but I've heard he changed the ending of Stone Ocean pretty abruptly, so we'll never know!

🌹🕯且且🕯🌹