It’s shown again again over the eps out so far that Jax does not want to confront reality or anything that’s ‘real’, including feelings and relationships etc but also just the idea of consequences and stakes.

He doesn’t go to Kaufmo’s funeral because he doesn’t want to confront the reality that his friend is dead and he feels sad about it so it’s easier to just walk away and pretend he doesn’t care.

Ep 4 he tries to fuck around and not engage with the fast food work which is very rooted in reality (eg he throws Ragatha in the deep fryer - he is rejecting any sense of reality or responsibility, nothing matters he can do what he wants). But as soon as Gangle phones Caine and the concept of a punishment is introduced Jax gets uncomfortable because suddenly he HAS to engage because there are consequences and he can’t just fuck around, he tries to push this again and just not do the work but is forced into it and remains drained and uncomfortable for the rest of the adventure.

Ep 5 in the bar scene when everyone is taking about their pasts he just straight up refuses to engage in that and uses a joke to cover his discomfort. He also has a moment of looking uncomfortable after Ragatha shares maybe showing that talking about reality and the difficulties of reality is not something he wants to think about - also the idea that these other people he does not want to see as people have issues too that humanises them and he does not want to think about that, he wants to hide behind the comfort that they are not human.

Ep 6 Jax literally tells Pomni that he prefers to see everything as not real, as not mattering. This is literally his coping mechanism. At the end of the ep his interaction with Pomni threatens this coping mechanism - their friendship is becoming too real for him and he immediately rejects her in an effort to feel comfortable and in control - he doesn’t want to allow himself to feel that their friendship is real because when he allowed himself to have real friendships it just caused him pain so he’d rather hide behind the idea that nothing is real or matters.

So it’s no surprise that in ep 7 the idea of returning to the real world is fucking terrifying to Jax to the point that he would trap everyone else inside the circus with him just to avoid confronting reality.

His conversation with Zooble about having someone waiting on the outside suggests that he either does not have anyone or at least nobody he wants to see (probably he doesn’t actually have anyone important). He looks extremely uncomfortable when Gangle and Zooble are talking in the holding hands walking to the console scene- they have a real relationship and are talking about the real world - Jax likely feels he has nothing to go back to and the idea of confronting that while the other people around him do is sending him over the edge. The whole time he’s super reluctant to believe anything about escaping could be true. I think when he sees the doors to Caine’s office it hits that it could be true and he just does not know how to deal with that because he is not ready to return to a world where things matter, where there are consequences and stakes and he can’t hide behind a mask of being the ‘funny one’ and he can’t pretend nothing is real. There’s also the flashes to the real world and I’ve seen some crazy theories over that but I don’t really think there’s enough to go off from to form a solid theory except that the real world is scary and something probably happened - or it’s from the night he entered the circus. Not sure and I don’t know if we’ll ever know so it’s not really worth fixating on imo for now

Crocheted myself some Magnus gloves! These were very fun to make even tho sewing the eyes on was a pain

Patterns I used and adapted below: