One of my favorite things about Elias is how comfortable he is being underestimated. I think a lot of people tend to write him as prideful and intolerant of disrespect, but he's really not?
His employees call him by his first name. The very first time we hear his voice it's Jon talking back and being snippy with him, and Elias barely admonishes him for his mistake in the first place. It was under Elias's supervision that Gertrude "let" the Archives fall apart, and Jon + his assistants are obviously aware of that.
He stole the body and identity of a weed-smoking failson that was too young for the position he was in and only joined the Institute a few years prior. The Institute itself is kind of a laughingstock, openly mocked by academics and dismissed as "crackpots" that will accept literally anything.
Elias comes off as borderline incompetent until episode 80. He dismisses Jon's concerns about Prentiss, "admits" that he ran away like a coward and abandoned Sasha during the attack, and then apologizes because he couldn't figure out how to work the fire suppression system fast enough.
Even in Season 3 he still comes off like a dolt sometimes. He conveniently can't find Jon after he's been kidnapped, and then this whole conversation happens:
And in season four, with Basira!! He apologizes to her after she physically assaults him, and then stutters about a "miscalculation" when Basira demands to know why he sent them to the North Pole.
And then Peter sums it up nicely in 159, after revealing that Elias has "lost" most of his wagers against him:
All of this!! Probably for 200+ years! He's most comfortable being overlooked and underestimated, he doesn't care about being disrespected or looked down on so long as he wins in the end. And he did.
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
