John Walker thoughts because my flashlight ran out and also so did my chill
Okay so first: I doĀ notĀ agree with John Walker. He makes terrible choices. He murders people. He loses it. I am not saying heās a good guy. But if you actually look at theĀ context? The emotional, mental, human context? He makesā¦ sense. Not excusable sense, but understandable sense.
He wasnāt thinking clearly. He was grieving Lemar. He was carrying the serum, which literally warps your brain and amplifies everything you feel. And what if it was Bucky and Steve instead of Lemar? Or Sam and Bucky? Or even just someone he loved and lost while trying to be a symbol of something bigger than himself? He was trapped between grief, guilt, power, and expectation, and the world demanded he be perfect anyway. He had no space to justĀ be a human beingin a situation that was impossible to survive emotionally.
And alsoā¦ Midwest emo. Like. Very clearly Midwest emo. I donāt normally post music stuff but hear me out:Ā Be Nice To MeĀ by The Front Bottoms justā¦ screams John Walker. The metaphors hit too hard:
āYouāre a flashlight in a dark roomā¦ but the batteries ran out.ā Lemar is the flashlight. The thing that kept John grounded, kept him human, kept him anchored when everything else is chaos. When Lemar dies? The batteries are gone. John is stumbling blind, still trying to do right, still trying to hold it together, and failing because he literally has no guide.
āYouāre a werewolf and Iām a full moon.ā John believes he causes everything bad. The serum, his anger, his impulsiveness ā heās the storm. Lemar is caught in it, hurt because of him, and John carries the guilt like a boulder that wonāt budge.
All the lines about breaking, failing, lying, and screaming into the void? Thatās John screaming into the world after Lemar dies. Thatās him trying to make sense of a world that wonāt make sense, trying to be the symbol heās supposed to be, while the person who kept him human is gone.
Some comic context for the record: John is literally canonically a US Agent in the comics, trained to be the governmentās āperfectā patriotic soldier. HeĀ kills villainsĀ under orders, struggles with authority and morality, and has a really messy emotional life in canon too. MCU justā¦ condensed all the trauma into one intense arc with Lemar and the serum.
The song isnāt justification. Itās devastation. Itās guilt. Itās grief and rage and self-loathing all tangled together. John is violent and wrong and dangerous and alsoā¦ heartbreakingly human. Heās angry, heās scared, heās desperate, heās trying to do the right thing in a world that wonāt let him. And he will never be allowed to be a human who fails, because the serum and the government and the symbol he carries wonāt let him exist quietly.
So yeah. I donāt condone him. I think heās terrifying. I think heās tragic. I think he makes the worst possible mistakes over and over. But IĀ getĀ him. I get the grief. I get the guilt. I get the way the world can take one small mistake and spiral you into hell. And the Midwest emo in him is real and delicious and sad and I am fully here for it.
