Originally this was replying to something else but I'd misread and ended up getting into something different but. This is a huge Janalysis and I'm not scrapping it lol
J is fucked up in the sense it's she pretty much did do everything to stay together she just won't say it. On the surface it seems like keeping them together is part of the Cyn appeasement. J lied to V and promised whatever mislead her to think they could "get away", which is like, of course, because V wouldn't have been on board with the mission otherwise (and by extension N), and Cyn's pressure was on J to be the boss and carry things out and not fuck up Cyn's toys. But if J protecting herself for Cyn's wrath was the ONLY reason, there wouldn't have been any reason for J to stop mid fight with V to ask her to come back "as a team". Like it's just not J's problem at that point if V wants to go rouge. Before going to the lab, Cyn told J to wait in the car, everything that happened with N and V in the lab was under Cyn's watch. Cyn left V behind with the dinos. Literally none of that was J's responsibility at that point, and Cyn was already in the planet eating stage so I doubt she cared about J to wrangle her team in. Honestly since V and N were out of line Cyn was probably just planning on killing them and booting up backups as usual.
J stopping to appeal to V was nothing but her own prerogative. She wanted V to stay with her. She might've been scared of what Cyn would do to her, if her memory would be wiped or worse, idk, but J genuinely didn't think there was an escape for any of them, and felt like being together was something they had.
And I do think hell would freeze over before admitting she even slightly wants N there, but she does in some way. (and I'm sure she just knows that as long as she keeps V, N's a package deal. Or simply the fact that he's Cyn's favorite and will always come back but V is on thin ice). Cause here's the thing with both N and V.. to perhaps differing degrees (but who knows really) J might not actually love them, she might not actually care about them as people, and I do say might because it's really not clear, but none of that is necessary to /want them/. They are constants, they are company, they have been there her entire life and they like being with her (even if she acts so very ungrateful). If she does hate him, she can simultaneously hate N with all her being and not want him to go anywhere. Trauma does this shit to people.
I have a thing in my drafts where I do an analysis on the staging and symbolism going on in the beginning of ep 6, but a highlight (and I'm not the first to point this bit out, there's just more leading up to it!) is when Tessa throws J the key and dismisses her, J very candidly hesitates and gives a split second glance towards V then N before she leaves.
But also, every moment of the episode up UNTIL a certain point, the staging NEVER visually shows J in between N and V UNTIL Tessa crosses over to the other side here (cutting through the trio) and throws J the key. It is only then she appears in the middle, leading to where she hesitates and, also note this ALL J. we can't even see N and V's expressions.
She wanted to go with them. She was gone for a few months wasn't she? She thought she was getting reunited and she was disappointed she wasn't. And again.. Cyn was going with them (and hamming it up playing the part of the leader), so it wasn't anything about being eager to boss them around again. She straight up just wanted to be there and was NOT enthused about getting another break from them.
And jumping back to the finale, y'know I think J's "I never needed either of you" line is interesting too. It kind of comes out of nowhere. She's smugly taunting V one second, kicks her pretty far away, and says it in a volume just short of being a whisper. And "either of you" when N hadn't been mentioned by V and J whatsoever, and the lines prior were completely directed at V. Like obviously J is lashing out and coping with the fact she's still alone on the Cyn side, but I just think there's a little more coping going on there too that's being said primarily to herself.
She'd be a wreck with them both gone. Even if she was on the side fighting against them, there's a lot mentally going on with her that was messed up but one thing is that she probably figured it was the only route left that had a chance of getting the status quo back to normal, which is also the best case scenario for all of them in her mind (because she did not think defeating Cyn was possible)
I have so many Janalyses to look back on and see how close I got and I really like this one because I think the only thing I may have been off the mark about is the fact I might have been underestimating how much she actually cares about?/loves?/likes? N and V .. still sorta hard to say for sure though because even if J was further away from rock bottom in the video, she was still acting traumatized and maladaptive coping and all that.. we've never ever seen her at her best.
You know what heavily stands out to me (especially because it's how I usually talk about the group) is that when J narrates her video, she never singles out V or N talk about them specifically.. other than mentioning how V gets weirdly happy playing with severed heads dnjdefje, but she doesn't mention favoring V or N sucks or anything.. she's always referring to them as a set, "them" "they", and alluding to them as "family" the way y'know corporate would call someone family but clearly they're more to than corporate family.
Oh there's another thing I underestimated. I've said J and N have a lot in common, not that she'd admit it, they're both praise seeking, passionate about their "work" (even if work is murder), I hit some topical ones that it seemed like (as seen in Home) J is good at drawing, so perhaps she likes art, and J also has a sense of humor and shes not nearly as stuck up as people tend to read her as. Well. Underestimated big time. Her office is filled with drawings and she's SO silly and hyper when she can be herself (also more than I thought!! I knew she was fun loving but not partying and zoomies loudly singing karaoke)
Like. We all knew she was probably jealous of N for being the Favorite (multiple times), his memory wipes relieve him of the burden of knowledge, all that. But oh. God. She's also probably jealous that he can be the kind of person she really is all the time, he can be silly and carefree and childish and playful and J can only act like that when she's 100% alone and seems like it probably comes with alcohol abuse pretty often.
Which honestly...that only reinforces my viewpoint she doesn't actually hate him, she's just lashing out hardcore and dragging him down to some level of misery with her because why should he be the only one who isn't suffering? Maybe even on some level she's even projecting that part of herself on him and punishing it. Like it's more self hatred than not, y'know? I don't doubt that N can genuinely get on her nerves or anything but in a better situation I don't think she'd have behaved so resentfully towards him.
