This is something I have always thought: Carolina would have been a much, much better foil for Locus when he was having his midlife crisis than Wash was. Do you have any thoughts about that?
I think in some ways, yeah, thatās definitely true. I also think it couldāve been done better with Wash with some changes to the writing.
If you really want to emphasize theĀ āperfect soldierā angle, Carolina is the staggeringly obvious choice; of our two surviving Freelancers, only one of them is a brutal perfectionist and it isnāt Wash. The regrets aboutĀ āfollowing ordersā works for Carolina too, for the faith she placed in the program and in her own father.
Similarly, with Wash, I think theĀ ājust following ordersā bit works much better if you put the emphasis on what Wash saw and ignored during Project Freelancer (because we actually have a lot more onscreen evidence of WashĀ seeing things that were off about the Project and ignoring those things than Carolina). The parallel to Wash shooting Donut and Lopez doesnāt work at all, because that wasnāt an order, and that wouldnāt be such a problem if the framing allowed us to see that as Locus projecting onto Wash rather than setting up the parallel in Washās own fever dream.
Really, that applies in both casesāthe parallel works better if itās framed from Locusā POV rather than the Freelancers. It couldĀ work better for Wash than it did, but I think overall Carolina was the better choice.
It also worked a lot better as a personality foil between hero and obvious villain, before we had Locus onscreen comparing himself to the Freelancers to justify why he deserves a second chance, because regardless of where they may be similar in personality, nothing the Freelancers have done, knowingly or unknowingly, is even remotely comparable to what Locus did knowingly and willingly.
