Oh.

Oh.

Underrated JayVik moments/lines (16/∞)

"I suppose your legacy has been well-secured."

How is this a JayVik line? At first and even second glance it isn't, but bear with me for a moment.

What this line does do initially - seeing as it's said in response to Heimerdinger stating he never contemplates his own death - is tell us how important the idea of "legacy", of leaving something good behind to be remembered by, is to Viktor.

This is not a novel idea; I've seen multiple posts talking about the tragedy that is Viktor, in the end, leaving no legacy at all (if he's lucky, that is - otherwise there would only be the tale of that one time a metal maniac threatened to end all of humanity) because all of his accomplishments and good intentions vanish with him and Jayce.

And yes, that sure is one - very bleak - way to look at it.

However, fortunately that's not all there is to his story.

Because if you think about it for a moment - think about Viktor's motivations throughout the show -, there are two additional driving forces that contribute to this desire to leave a legacy, apart from his desire to help and his strong moral compass:

Loneliness and a damaged self-image.

People suffering from both often end up believing they will only ever be as good, as desirable, as lovable as the good they do for others. They wish to be remembered in death because they can't imagine feeling treasured in life.

I think for someone like Viktor - having placed all of his capacity to make a difference in the world on his "gifted mind" rather than his value as a person -, to be loved unconditionally for who he is may have been so grand an idea that changing the world honestly seemed more attainable to him.

Yet as I pointed out in part 4, even after ostensibly achieving what he thought he wanted in the commune ("an immaculate physique, community, the ability to help people and 'make the world a better place' - a perfect legacy"), from the way he speaks to Jayce and goes on to think and act after facing rejection by him, you absolutely get the sense that there is something vital missing from the picture here.

And it's scarcely even new information at that point, really, as we already learned this a lot earlier by how - when faced with the loss of both love and legacy - it wasn't the threat of losing legacy which Viktor's mind got stuck on:

"Jayce will understand."

It's almost as if... oh I don't know, as if Viktor had thought what he wanted was to bring magic to the world, but ultimately...

Oh.

"I thought I wanted us to give magic to the world... Now, all I want is my partner back."

Jayce, same as Viktor, had big dreams of making a difference in the world since childhood, which - while definitely also driven by a strong desire to help people - is proven here to be equally rooted in the very elementary human desire to connect with someone. For someone to understand him and share his dreams ("our HexTech dream").

He found, and was found by, that someone in Viktor. The fact that the very catalyst of Jayce's dreams - the mage - turns out to also literally have been Viktor all along only serves to emphasise this point.

And here, at the end of everything they've endured, Jayce concludes that maybe, to love and to be loved in kind can be enough. Can be everything. Can be all he wants.

I like to believe that Viktor came to that same realisation about himself in those final moments of perfect connection they shared.

Part 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/7½/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17/18/19/20

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