(March 25th 2021)

God, the more deeply you try to analyze the torte the richer it gets; the ultimate question of the finale, in my eyes, is if you have the right to choose you and your loved one's survival over that of unseen thousands. It relates to themes from the whole series about working for evil because you have to survive (someone made a beautiful post about that which I'll link here once I find it again) and also how much it's reasonable to ask of one person.

During the debate, while the group wanted to unleash the fears and save their own home planet, Jon was willing to give up the Earth to save the other worlds; and he was perfectly willing to sacrifice himself for everyone else until Martin stopped him.

Jon was going to spend the rest of remaining time holding the fears inside, become the God-Voyeur of an apocalypse until all of Creation burned out.

Martin would have had to spend an eternity sitting in that room, listening, or somewhere else, tortured or torturing, watching over his own domain... alone. Martin would have been without Jon, for the rest of time. Martin may have gone back to the Lonely, which he spent the whole series trying to overcome.

Jon would have been the embodiment of what he was when he read the Incantation in 160, overseeing the suffering of billions; a monster. At least he would be able to tell himself that he was working towards a greater good, but guilt was ingrained too deeply into him to ever escape it. Each moment, he would be attempting to pay off a debt to these people be could never annul. With every statement, every drop, he would remember what he was in Season 4, and hate that he enjoyed it.

The morality of the four outcomes is really complicated but it's the moment when they realize they will have to watch each other die that does it. They can give themselves up, sure, but not the other.

Can it really make such a difference if the path they choose is love?

..

Martin has the right to feel betrayed, doesn't he? Jon martyring himself is exactly what they agreed against, even if it saves other worlds, because it's their promise to each other. It's not just himself he's giving up.

Is that the heartless way? Jonah did say it was; "Empathy only holds you back in the end." He knew what this choice would mean for Martin.

But isn't it selfish to spread the fear to innocent worlds for the love of two humans, for the single world they know and love?

..

Then when Jon is Atlas, trying to keep reality together and send Martin away before he is hurt and sees "what's going to be left of him," he refuses to leave him: he would rather die with the two of them together than let Jon go it alone. Isn't that love?

It's that moment, when Martin reminds Jon "where you go, I go" and Jon says "that's the deal;" that's when he decides. They choose to be together. Despite the everything that keeps being demanded of them, they will tilt the decision to the one where they don't have to be apart.

And though Martin has to kill Jon to do it, they're both okay with this, because if there's anything they've learned in the apocalypse it's that sometimes death is a mercy.

Martin stops Jon from spending an eternity trapped by his guilt and Jon stops Martin from being returned to a lone existence and they choose to be together, to save their home planet in return for a smaller price that thousands of others will pay. They choose home. Strangers will have to bear the Fears instead.