I know you wrote a whole long thing about Isabel and how she has a personality, but the one thing I took away from that is that you think Jason is in love with her? Is that something you really believe (has been shown)? For all we know they've been dating again for about a month and she's said something like "I don't love you for your money" and called him love. I think he deeply cares about her, but don't personally see it as love or even close to it yet. I do think she'll stay for a while tho
Not to get too philosophical, but some people are willing to call it love when the feelings are still light, like infatuation, other people won’t call it love even when it’s at the I-would-die-if-I-didn’t-have-you stage. I mean, I think love is a spectrum, it’s not a yes or no, either or question. If you care about someone, that’s love, isn’t it? At what point are we allowed to call it ‘love’? I don’t really know, but I would be willing to say Jason is on that road even if he isn’t fully ‘there‘ yet.
So...okay, Jason and Isabel have gone on like four dates, maybe a few more off camera. It doesn’t seem like much, but I think Isabel has proven herself to Jason in a lot of ways. I think you could say Essence’s relationship might have appeared at least to Jason like a manipulation, that she just got with Jason because he was the ‘chosen one’ or so she could manipulate him later on. I’m not sure if Talia is even canon anymore but if it is then that was also manipulative. It’s hard to say what was up with Rose but she might have been a shallow relationship too. Barbara quite clearly was just interested in Jason as a replacement for Dick. Artemis and him never quite got off the ground and she rejected him a few times first.
Isabel is the only person who has ever shown attraction to Jason who hasn’t seemed to be trying to use him. That means a lot to him. And even when she broke up with Jason, she told him why--she couldn't deal with life threatening situations all the time. It was reasonable, it wasn’t a judgement on him. She didn’t try to change him, I don’t think she even suggested he should ever stop being Red Hood for her, didn’t say anything about him killing. Even when they ran into each other again, she stood her ground. As soon as the danger didn’t appear to be an issue anymore, she came back. She never tried to take anything away from him, suggest he be something else for her and she was honest about what she wanted and spoke the truth. She’s made herself someone safe for Jason and that is so rare for him.
This might be surprising to some people, but it’s clear to me that Jason is someone who ‘loves’ very quickly, very easily. He tries not to because he’s easily hurt, he’s been betrayed so often, but even when he avoids caring about people he fails over and over and ends up caring anyway. I don’t think that would be any different for him in a romantic relationship as opposed to a platonic one. So Jason loving Isabel even this soon, especially after she’s demonstrated that she’s a safe harbor for him, wouldn’t be that unlikely to me.
Also, I think what really drives home for me that he he loves her is the first few pages of Issue #35. Jason just...tells Isabel so much about what he’s thinking, about his worries and his past. He talks to her a lot about some really personal stuff. It kind of blows my mind. He trusts her a lot. It’s the kind of stuff he only ever talked about with Roy and Kori--not even Artemis and Bizarro know so much, he kept pretty much the whole issue with his father’s letters to himself and here he is mentioning his father to Isabel. Maybe Jason doesn’t engage in a lot of the behavior we tend to see in characters when they are ‘in love’, but his trust in telling Isabel so much, in letting her see his pain, just says it all to me. Jason loves Isabel. But is he in love with her? Jason might not admit it but I think he probably is starting to be.
But truthfully I think he’s probably trying not to fall in love with Isabel, because he knows it’s doomed. Red Hood was her line in the sand and he’s still vigilante-ing despite what he let her believe. She’s been honest with him but he hasn’t with her. And unless she gets killed off, which I think is possible, or she has a change of heart, unlikely but maybe possible, she’s most likely going to leave him again as soon as she finds out he lied to her. And when that happens, I think we will really see the depth of his love for her. I think it’s going to surprise even Jason, how much he really did love her.
