#vanderco

I mean, obviously it's not ideal to let some criminal chem baron forcibly remove you from your own home and force you to live somewhere else, but, compared to what happened with Mylo, Claggor, and apparently Vander dying, Vi in Stillwater, and Jinx as Silco's traumatized adoptive daughter/weapon, the scenario really would have avoided so many of the horrors and misery that came later, compared to what happened with Vi's rescue attempt and Jinx's monkey bomb.

For real, picture this: You're Silco. You've had it up to here with Vander's pacifism towards topside. You need him out of the picture because you plan to supplant him as de facto leader of Zaun, but you don't actually want him dead. You definitely don't want your friend Felicia's kids dead too.

However, there's no way you can let Vander stay, he'll mount a resistance against your takeover attempts if he's left in place, you can't just kill him because everyone will know you did it, and you can't just say he abandoned everyone to save himself, because there's no way anyone would believe he'd leave his kids behind.

So, you stage a classic kitten trap, ie, you trap the mother, and use it to lure the kittens to one spot. The kids are given an easy rescue mission and Vander is used as bait to round them up. Everyone will easily believe that Vander abandoned the undercity to skip town with his kids, especially since it's pretty clear it's his kids who pissed off topside, and Vander will know he's screwed if he ever comes back to the undercity again because everyone will be pissed at him for leaving them and Silco will have tightened his grip on power. Perfect. Everyone (sort of) wins and gets to live.

There's just one problem with this plan: you're Silco. One of the most malicious looking motherfuckers to ever live. You could ask someone for directions to the library and it would sound sinister. Seriously, he looks like the dictionary definition of a cartoon villain.

So, you're Silco and you're telling Vander and the kids the 100% absolute truth: I'm going to relocate you, it's going to look like you skipped town, you and your kids will be fine, just don't ever come back.

But, since you're the most evil looking motherfucker in the land, no one believes you. Everyone freaks out. The kids mount a violent rescue effort, everything goes to hell, Shimmer starts exploding, now half the kids are dead, Vander is "dead", half your goons are dead, one lost an arm, and the whole undercity is going to know you off'ed the previous leader and resistance movements like the Firelights are going to spring up as a result. You have to rule with an iron fist because there's no other way to seize the power vacuum now and look like a good guy.

Now, do I really think Silco was going to peacefully let Vander and the kids go live somewhere else, in exchange for a promise to never return to the undercity on pain of death? Maybe! It seems a little naive but then, after what we learn in S2, it's not entirely impossible that Silco was reluctant to kill Vander or Felicia's kids and tried to find a peaceful work-around that would lure them to a secondary location for easy capture.