“All of this leads me to something I would normally consider impossible: Rocky made an engineering mistake.”

Stratt specifically says Ryland doesn’t have any living family. Maybe she just didn’t look hard enough because they have different last names, but come on. It’s Eva Stratt, dictator of Earth; she would have found Colt.

So either:

-Ryland and Colt are so estranged that it doesn’t make a difference (horrible implications, great angst potential), or

-Colt died before the events of Project Hail Mary. Maybe it was the initial accident that starts The Fall Guy, maybe Tom actually managed to kill him, maybe Colt miscalculated the jump and it was ruled a suicide, maybe it was another accident post The Fall Guy.

Angel/Dove wings? Eden’s religious undertones (overtones, really) and the struggle with faith. Purity vs perceived crime. ‘An angle is a warrior of God.’

Bird of Prey wings? Preconceived notions and the assumptions made of prisoners. Butcher implications. Doing what nature requires of you to survive. Emphasis on “I just want to live.”

Owl/Corvid wings? A lack of information is a lack of safety. Simon’s intelligence. “Knowledge and skill fade every year, why wouldn’t they rescue you?”

Bug wings? Seeing certain people as beneath others. Another commentary on prisoner treatment. Ava and David basically see him as a bug anyways.

Wings from a Mythical/Mars related creature? Homesickness for a place to which you can never return. Being othered in your own community (if people on Eden don’t also have similar wing types) or being dragged out of the only community you ever knew. The betrayal hurts even more.

He loses them during Filament? His attachment to Eden. His brothers ‘betrayed him’ and the lack of weight where his wings should be will always be there to remind him of that.

He loses them to the COI’s prisons? The Consolidation’s cruelty. Yet again, commentary on the treatment of prisoners. It makes his desperation to live just that much more tragic; what is left for him? Being stuck on the ground, looking up at dead stars in a dying universe.

He manages to keep them long enough to get inside the Iron Lung, only for the blood to latch onto them? Sacrifices in the face of something bigger than him. Weighing the cost of his life, chunks of himself, full limbs and balance, against the rest of humanity. Losing an arm sucks, yeah, but it’s probably nothing compared to losing a wing or two. It doesn’t matter what type of wings he has for this option, the religious imagery triples when you crucify a man with wings. [The blood in his feathers from all those tumbles he took would also be fun to explore; how would wings break down in the blood ocean?]

He actually keeps them to the end? Blood soaked tenacity. The indomitable human spirit. It doesn’t matter if he lives or dies, he kept his identity intact the entire time despite the massive force outside trying desperately to subsume him. Again, it doesn’t matter what type of wings he has, he’s going to look like a bloody angel standing over salvation.

Right after we see him get tackled, we get this little scene. He’s sedated, in his gear, and being transported onto the Hail Mary. These are his very last moments on Earth, he has never been to space before and he’s not coming back.

And I love Colt, I really do! But have we considered Ryland Grace as Courtland’s (only) younger brother?

Think about it. Stratt specifically says that Ryland has no living family. And yeah, Colt could be dead, but The Fall Guy canon suggests that he lives pretty long. The name change would mean absolutely nothing to Earth’s Dictator Eva Stratt.

But Courtland? Courtland “I’m Sierra. There is no intel.” Gentry? He’d be impossible to find, or, at the very least, impossible to connect to Ryland.

So Courtland killed their father to save Ryland. Court went to jail, Ryland either went into the Florida Foster system or got shipped out to family in California. Court burns his identity at 23 and can’t risk keeping tabs on his little brother as effectively as he wants to but he knows Ryland is in academia.

Simple, easy estrangement.

Then the thing with Lloyd happens and Court has to take care of a kid. Six is out of the game for the foreseeable future, but there’s still no way to properly look for his little brother. He knows Ryland works at a middle school now, and, as tempting as it is to move to San Francisco, the risk of identification is still too high.

It’s fine. Claire grows ups, there aren’t many problems and they don’t have to move too often.

And then the sun starts to dim. It’s a whole thing. Claire changes her major. The name Ryland Grace is heard around the world with increasing frequency. Court can look into the man without scrutiny, but he can’t get to him, not on Stratt’s Vat.

Court’s fine, he’s content. When it’s over, maybe he’ll manufacture a meeting between Ryland and Claire and ease his way back into an identity.

The Hail Mary launches. Ryland’s on it.

And Court has to sit with the knowledge that the little boy he sacrificed his freedom to save has decided to take a one-way ticket through space to save the world.

He doesn’t know that Ryland didn’t decide that. He doesn’t know that Ryland lost his freedom months before the launch of the Hail Mary. All he knows is that his little brother is going to save the world and the niece unknown to him will grow into her adulthood with stories of Six’s brother.

Maybe she’ll become a scientist. Maybe she’ll find her way onto the Petrova Taskforce. Maybe, Claire Fitzroy will help send Taumoeba to Venus.

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