Speaking of Samur, let’s actually talk about Hayden and my personal thoughts about him as a character, and what he represents.
Hayden’s a very difficult character to talk about mainly because of how different he is in practically every aspect in Eternal compared to his rendition in 2016. In 2016, we have this walking tech-bro parody who is completely disconnected from practically every consequence to his actions despite them literally being smeared in his face — and despite that, feeling himself to be the smartest person in the room. DOOM has always been a series whose political storytelling is very directly anti-capitalist in its nature. This isn’t surprising, considering how many of the action media of its time that it was inspired by followed the same philosophy. Terminator, Alien, etc.
Hayden, much like the people his character parodies, makes decisions and rationalizes said decisions through his own personal fears and paranoias, rather than any real reason. It’s hard for me to believe that the only solution an advanced angelic being could scrounge up for an energy crisis was opening a fucking portal to hell to harvest literal fucking soul energy. Which, of course, the UAC supplying people argent energy, an energy literally made of the souls of the dead, HUMAN souls, is a very blunt and hilarious metaphor for how many of our systems fuel themselves in many capitalist and post-industrial societies.
Bringing this back to Hayden, his motivations are variable and very hard to pin down, but there’s one thing we know for sure he absolutely wants that’s been confirmed from the mouth of Hugo Martin himself; Hayden doesn’t want power, he just wants to be in control. He’s not as ontologically evil as he is kind of just a crybaby who thinks he knows best, and if he can’t do it then nobody else can, just cause.
Some people have compared Hayden to people like Elon Musk and while that’s not the only person i’d compare him to, I do actually agree, for a bit of a different reason though. Similar to Hayden, I don’t think Musk is as evil as people give him credit for. Is he evil? Yeah, obviously, but he is more objectively incompetent and an idiot. He’s a wannabe facist who didn’t get any pussy in Highschool and now has to make it everybody’s problem. This to me is also how I feel about Hayden.
He constantly whines to DoomGuy about how he was the one who gave him his powers, and how HE should’ve been in charge of Urdak and Argent D’nur. He’s constantly pouting about not being in control and always takes credit for other people’s achievements. If there is a hero of 2016 other than DoomGuy, it wouldn’t be Hayden, it would be VEGA. Someone who, after hiding himself as The Father, was immediately taken advantage of by Hayden, like a “son taking advantage of an amnesic parent,” as Hugo stated. Now VEGA, he’s just become another working guy like DoomGuy whose works and efforts become stolen valor for some corporate baby.
To me, if Hayden can be watered down to one archetypal character trait, it would be that he’s a massive fucking LOSER. He’s a loser like the UAC, he’s a loser like the Kahn Maykr, he’s a loser like Bishop creed, and he’s a loser like anyone else who thinks they are superior and have control over other people. This is the root of DOOM’s political messaging; all the powerful figures and tech bros and tyrants, whatever you wanna call them, are at their core, losers. And most importantly, they are losers that bleed like us.
