what exactly do you think JD was planning to do had he, like, actually succeeded in blowing up the school?
was he planning on (figuratively) going down with the ship, or was he just gonna do it over and over again?
thanks for the ask, anon! in my opinion, it is extremely obvious that jd was going to kill himself in the bombing, but i shall present all my evidence for your convenience.
JD immediately thinks of suicide as a solution when they kill Heather Chandler. After watching his mother commit suicide, he clearly thinks of it often as a concept. Not even necessarily for himself. But when he's under extreme stress, it's one of the things he's able to think of. It is a common solution in his mind.
When JD is dictating Heather Chandler's suicide note, Veronica asks, "Have you done this before?" Followed by a "queasy silence".
While I personally take it as nothing more than flirting with no deeper meaning, you could interpret this as meaning JD has written suicide notes before. And since we know from Dan Waters' statements that he has never killed before, they would be his own suicide notes.
As displayed above, in an earlier version of the script, right after Veronica breaks up with him, he contemplates suicide while putting a loaded gun in his mouth.
As shown above, JD assembles the bomb while wearing the same shirt as he's wearing the next day. Note, this is the first time we see JD wear a t-shirt in the whole movie. I have always interpreted this as it being his pajamas and that he basically rolled out of bed to go blow up the school. The sort of bare minimum, disorganized attitude someone would have if planning to kill themselves.
and of course, my biggest piece of evidence, even after his plan to blow up the school is interrupted, he finishes out his plan to commit suicide with the bomb. he had no intention to be alive at the end of the day, and he planned on killing himself with the bomb, so he did.
So conclusion! Yes, he was going to kill himself.
But if he wasn't, I also don't think he'd go and repeat it at another school. That makes absolutely no sense.
JD didn't just want to kill people, he wanted to kill people with Veronica. His only plan that didn't involve Veronica was a suicide bombing, even though it seems like he had plenty of time to commit other murders while they were broken up.
i'm going to be honest, the "jd is a high school serial killer" is probably a fun head-canon for some people, but doesn't really hold water as a way to interpret the text (according to dan waters himself)
