Hurleyjack is canon bc he needs something to fix like his wife said and Hurley feels he needs fixing brooo genius ship
That's literally the core of it.
A major part of the ship is that Jack is a doctor and Hurley is a severely mentally ill former psych patient and how those inherently counteract: Jack clearly adores Hurley but because of his career as a doctor he can't truly separate him from his diagnosis, Jack's position here leads him to a dynamic that reads less like friendship and more paternal, with Jack consistently infantilising Hurley because of the ableism that has been hammered in him from both his father and the medical institution.
Hurley on the other hand is a victim of paternal Abandonment, he desperately craves a man to replace his dad which leads to him clinging vrry hard to Jack (and later Locke) as the ideal masculine figure. though i don't wanna take all the blame from his father i feel his mother's role in his complex is not talked about enough, i believe his mom, after years of coddling him, forcibly institutionalizing him played a major role in his Abandonment issues, now i do not wanna sound like I fully blame her, it was an extremely difficult situation and she did what she had to do, but i feel it's important to mention when talking about his relationship with Jack. Hurley's extensive history of mental institutions is major, i believe the trauma around it and the years of dealing with doctors who, just by the role of their jobs, treated him like a second class citizen contributed to Hurley's having an inherent need to obey doctor's, he's been bashed in the skull that he's lower than then for so long that at this point it's instict, and in comes Jack Shephard.
I would argue that Jack and Hurley are two sides of emotional incest: Jack's relationship with his father, a dynamic where he was always made to be his successor, never truly allowed to be his own person; and Hurley, spoiled and coddled most of his life by a woman grieving, and then institutionalized when she no longer could do it alone. Jack coming out of it with a need to fix and Hurley coming out of it with a need to be fixed, it's a whirlpool and neither are coming out alive.
