Mayu

While talking to Jill in Death Island, Chris mentions that dying in the line of duty is something they need to be prepared for, but rushing in is dangerous and doesn't just risk their own lives. He admits that he would have probably done the same as Jill, but that's exactly why their job is hard - because they can't. He goes on to say that they've been in this fight for so long that they've grown numb to it, which is why they need to be even more careful now. And, well, you can probably see why I clocked that.

I don't envy Chris, tho! Telling Jill to not rush in feels a lot like trying to tell Leon not to rush in and, well.

I feel like Jill and Leon would either be the best or the worst team - mostly I think they'd split up pretty early on and just do their own thing till they meet up again. They're too similar in a way that doesn't make them meet in the middle, if that makes sense?

But I gotta respect Chris for holding onto that principle. He's both the guy who drops in solo if needed but also sticks to his squad and it's the perfect blend of, well, game protagonist who kicks ass in a way ordinary soldiers can't and won't, and a guy who's deeply aware of his role in the world - and what he isn't, in turn. Experience doesn't make him invincible, and relaxing into familiarity will get his teammates killed.

I know nobody cares about this guy, but I actually think he's one of the most fascinating antagonists of the franchise, and, well, I love ID and clearly I have too much space in my brain! Strap in.

There are three questions I had about Jason whenever I watched ID: Why is he different, why is he so fixated on fear and terror, and why does he think showing himself will help?

First, there's the similarities. He was just a guy before the incident. He tried to do good and do his job, and he very quickly realized he was in way over his head - but also, holy shit, those are zombies. So he went through his outbreak, he got his men out of there, he had his damsel as saved as he'd ever be, and he got some help from a third party. Sounds familiar, what's different?

Well, first of all, the aftermath. Nothing went well here. In the end, they died half a death, nobody got really saved, and to make matters worse, they may as well have put the collars on themselves. Had they not involved themselves, nothing would have changed; except, of course, their own fates. Mr. Politician lost a squad during that outbreak and lo and behold, a new one walked right into the palm of his hand. Infected. Dependent. The heroes didn't win this fight.

If he were more cultist and less louder-than-smarter politician out for money, you may as well imagine that him gaining the position he inhabits now would be roughly as disastrous as Los Illuminados succeeding in turning Ashley and having her infect him - minus the fact she would have tried to also turn everyone else, but bear with me. He wanted to get high up, he used bio weapons to reach for it, and the heroes of that conflict were turned into what would help him achieve it in the end. That's a pretty horrible outcome for a RE outbreak.

So we got ourselves a fallen hero - why fear?

The reason he thinks showing himself to the people will change anything is because everything changed for him when he saw this. Terror to him may as well be a virus that you catch when you experience hell. When you think about it for longer than a moment, you know that showing himself like this will just as easily be swept under the rug and played off as an act of terrorism to undermine the American government, probably. People will rage and be pacified and move on; it doesn't just stick to people - like a disease. But he's long past the point of logic. His sanity lies at his feet in shattered pieces.

He's trying to re-enact his own outbreak, but on a global scale. He's delusional, but that's the point. He's like... a negative of Arias. He's not trying to make something right for himself by re-enacting it, he's trying to break everyone else the way he was broken. All the people deliberately looking away, the ones actively hurting him, the civilians who have no idea and vote for these guys anyway.

He's probably arrived at the conclusion that the reason for everyone's inaction is that they don't get it. He saw hell but no one else did, they covered it up, of course no one's doing anything. So he'll have to show them. Because the terror of that experience and everything it brought with it changed his life, literally changed who he was. Again, it seems like he sees fear as an infection itself. It's a little twisted that he's just like all the other antagonists trying to infect people, after all.

A chip with information wouldn't have terrorized him that much. No, he had to live it. And, looking at it like that, Leon was probably part of the reason why Jason completely abandoned the plan to release the information on the chip. 'Cause it wasn't enough to convince Leon, was it? They told him all about what happened that day, and he believed them, but he didn't do what Jason wanted him to either. And if a guy like Leon isn't moved to action by truth alone, well, what is the world gonna do with it? Cover it up again and keep abusing people like Jason, the real victims, in covert missions and underground facilities? Never again, heroes promise. Never again, madmen claim.

It's reasonable to assume Jason has given up on humanity, but I honestly don't think he has. He's just given up on his people and their future; for good reason. After all, they're all dead. Jason truly lost when his last remaining teammate gave up. The policemen with Claire mention the man with the shotgun must have been dead a few days, so probably somewhere around the beginning of ID. That's the trigger.

But is anyone else as curious about why he killed Jun Shī and Shen Mei as me? Tied up some loose ends nobody wants to deal with, to break the 4th wall, but I also don't think it's out of character.

Jun Shī was him giving up his last, desperate hope. There's no one to save, and maybe there never was. There's no salvation, and he was foolish to assume there'd be an end to it. Fittingly, this is him tying up loose ends, putting an end to the man he's kept alive all these years. Because they dragged him out Penamstan, yeah? They made that decision, to save him. And now it's only Jason and Jun Shī left, and in Jason's eyes, they're finally, already dead. There's nothing to save, nothing alive. Putting an end to what happened back in Penamstan, the last two infected.

And Shen Mei? I honestly think it might have been a mercy kill in his eyes. In his mind, he's about to unleash terror upon humanity; something that will change them, like it changed him. I don't think he wanted that for her. I don't think he sees her as someone who experienced hell with him, knows that terror, and he loves her. He doesn't want her to be terrified, as twisted as it all is. If he wasn't so convinced his way would work, would do that to everyone, I don't think he would have killed her.

The true irony is that Jason thinks fear will stop his tragedy from repeating, when fear is what forced him to become a monster himself.

So what does all of this have to do with Leon and Claire and his refusal to give her the chip?

Jason, like Claire, like Shen Mei, wants the world to see, to understand what is happening, to be so horrified and terrified as to be moved to action. Leon though? He wants to stop it. This may not sound contradictory, but it leads to two entirely different goals. There'll be a different outcome, depending on whether you force the world to acknowledge its horrors and change for the better or eradicate the horrors yourself, unknown, unseen. I'm not gonna weigh in whether one or the other is the better approach. All I'm here to say is that I can see where both Leon and Claire are coming from.

To quote a guy quoting a guy, that is Leon's answer and Claire's answer.

Leon has sworn to himself that Raccoon City will never happen again, and, in a way, be it right or wrong, he's not letting that terror spread among civilians again. He keeps his fear locked tight and he fights alone. But, at the same time, he's not alone. There's always someone with him, and a big aspect of his character is that "we're together in this." He says sth along those lines in almost every installment I've seen him in.

And maybe that's the difference between him and Jason, after all.