A Rant About Jaha & Murphy In The Desert

a rant about Jaha & Murphy in the Desert

so a while ago @doortotomorrow​ asked my opinion on the Jaha and Murphy desert storyline when I was sleep-deprived and I went on this really emotional rant about it and probably cried because I love this storyline to pieces. it’s been sitting in my drafts for a while, but here it is

it’s about hope. it’s about finding a new home. it’s about pushing through all the shittiness towards something greater. and it’s also about the fact that maybe it’s just more shittiness at the end, but good stuff happened along the way and you grew through it despite that

it’s about a man who lost his son and hurt his people but wants to find something to make it all worth it, wants to find the light at the end of the tunnel of so much tragedy, the thing that will save his people and make his son’s death worth it - all the people he and the Ark authority killed worth it, the Culling worth it, his own survival worth it because he tried to be the martyr and it didn’t take

but also about that man becoming obsessive about reaching that light. so enamored with the end goal of heaven/paradise that he will help create hell to get there. so focused on saving his people as a whole and as an abstract concept - of redeeming himself through that - that he’s willing to sacrifice innocent people along the way to do it. a man corrupted striving towards the good and the perfect

and it’s about a boy doing the opposite. a boy who has been through hell several times over and knows it well, who brought hell down on other people because if he shared and spread the pain maybe it would hurt him less, who has done horrible things and maybe regretted some, but mostly doesn’t regret it, who knows he will do whatever he must to survive and has accepted it and YET who finds a better version of himself in the desert because the journey towards the light and towards hope and towards redemption crafts him into something better. he shares his water - a precious thing - with a stranger. he treats her with the kindness she has never received. he is against Jaha sacrificing an innocent life so he can live. 

he learns the value of life in the desert - a desert! a place that kills so easily and takes so much, where it is a constant struggle to survive - and not just his own, but of others.

a martyr becomes corrupted and a villain starts being redeemed in the desert on the road to find paradise in a hellish world

I would never have predicted pairing those characters together and yet it was SO SATISFYING - and they get put together at such an interesting time in their journeys. (I’ll never get over the fact that Jaha sort of takes Murphy on to mentor after his son dies, like he was sort of filling the hole even if Murphy and Wells are nothing alike)

you have this boy who has done so much wrong and is hated by everyone, who was one of the s1 villains but who has just showed to have so much more in him and then you have this man who had done so much wrong and was hated but redeemed himself at the end of s1. they’re sort of at the same place in their journeys at that moment, but the desert storyline makes them very different people

Jaha will kill a man if it will get him to the city of light so he can save his people, but John is unwilling to kill a man just for that. he’s only ever killed in revenge because it fits his sense of justice. throwing Craig overboard - who had done nothing, who had followed Jaha wherever he led - is not justice and Murphy can not agree with it. John’s value for life increases during that storyline - I think because he’s witnessing Jaha completely disregard it. 

Jaha values life in the abstract. “I must save all my people.” “Our people must go on.” - it’s very Arkadian, because it goes with this idea that I might not live, and specific people might not live, but we as a whole and as a group must live to see the end - to see earth. and it’s clashing with John who sees people as individuals. 

to John, human life is valuable not as the human race, but as individual humans - because human beings deserve to live. that doesn’t mean he won’t kill of course, but he killed in revenge based on the actions of an individual. or because he had to to live. John does not agree with the idea that people should be sacrificed for the sake of the whole - for the sake of the human race to survive.

so basically you see two characters who APPEAR to be at the same point in their journeys - people who have done wrong and are searching for something better and some way to make up for it, AND OF COURSE their journey to reach a city of LIGHT is absolutely symbolic of that - two men well-hated by most of the other Arkadians going off to find the light together 

and yet even though they appear to be at the same place, even though they appear to both be striving towards something greater, you get this clash of ideas of what life is worth, WHY life is valuable, and what is acceptable to do in the sake of survival and - which is the THESIS of the show. and it all takes place in a setting symbolic of death and suffering

and you also get this clash between the old way of thinking, the Arkadian way of thinking, and the new way of the delinquents/the ground, which is that “every life here matters.” and we may kill to save our lives, we might do terrible things, but we can not sacrifice people just for the sake of the human race.

and in the end it is John - the ultimate delinquent, the ultimate rebellion against the Arkadian authority - and Jaha - the ultimate Arkadian. the ultimate authority - that are the last two left, who finally split because of a moral question about life and what it’s worth.