#and Winning a Battle means just killing people. it doesn't Stop The Problem (nor really end a war)

[regina-del-cielo]

Maybe it's a 'study finds water is wet' type of thought, but

considering it's an action movie whose overall plot is "immortal warriors Fuck Shit Up™️", I think it's significant that in The Old Guard the thing that makes Copley pull red strings through his Murder Conspiracy Board and say "[Merrick] doesn't care what [Andy]'s done with [her immortality]" is the people they save, not the ones they kill

Most of the Conspiracy Board is him circling random newspaper headlines and faces on old photographs to (more or less realistically) follow the immortals' treck through the world and big historical events. Which is, in-canon, not much different than putting portraits from different centuries next to a picture of Keanu Reeves and saying "they look the same, clearly Reeves is an immortal!"

But then there are the connections. A little girl holding Joe's hand in WW1 becoming the youngest (and first) woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize for Medicine (suck it, Kozak). Or the grandchild of a family that Andy saved from [something] helping people escape from the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia.

They are warriors. They have fought and been in the midst of countless wars, major or minor, throughout history. They must have killed as many people as they saved... and yet.

It's not them taking out a random warlord or dictator or rabidly hateful politician that has tangible repercussions in history. It's the children and families they get out of war zones, save from accidents, protect from natural disasters. People to whom they give a second chance at life, and grow to change the world (or even just their own world), like a mysterious stranger once changed theirs just by holding out a hand or patching a wound.

I don't know I just think it's particularly neat

[princeescaluswords]

It can be argued that it had it's problems, but I loved season 3a. Jennifer is one of my favorite villains and overall characters. Her backstory, her motivations, her choices and actions. One thing I've kinda returned to is her interesting choice in words regarding her sacrificial murders. She says the victims "lended" their power, which we know isn't true. Is it her trying to intentionally make her cruel actions more palpable or does she truly believe these people offered themselves up in a way. And what her thoughts must've been when she reached the Nemeton and sensed a spark of power inside it. She must have known like Deaton that it was a place that hadn't had power in a long time.

Scott: You see this symbol? It's a symbol of revenge. You talk about balance, about saving people. We know what you really want. And now you know where to find us.

I would argue that there's no such thing as perfect media, and while we should never shy away from confronting the flaws in the media we consume, it's missing the point to dwell exclusively on them. We wouldn't love the show so much if it was all bad. So, while there are many things to scorn in Season 3A -- the endless pity party for Killer Derek because he was a sad white man; the way Peter got to swan about as if his serial murders were old news; Cora's egregious misuse; Boyd being murdered in order to pave the way for Derek's redemption when no one was holding him responsible in the first place; the fact that Melissa McCall wasn't given a speech in the root cellar nor a reunion scene with her own son -- there is a lot to praise, and one of the biggest is the way the story of Julia Baccari/Jennifer Blake totally demolishes counter-arguments to Teen Wolf's themes that "revenge is not the same as accountability" and "pain caused by others doesn't give a person the right to inflict pain on other people."

One of the major criticisms of Scott McCall and his role as heroic protagonist is that "he won't get his hands dirty" or "he won't do what's necessary." I would argue, and I have elsewhere, that Scott absolutely did get his hands dirty, he just never crossed the line into deliberately hurting innocent people in order to accomplish his goals. While Peter nattered on about "only responsible ones" and Derek shouted "I can't let her live!" and Deucalion threatened to kill any living thing that got in his way, Jennifer argued that the only way to stop the Alpha Pack and its "piles of bodies" is to kill even more innocent people.

Isn't that what "doing what's necessary" means? It wasn't Derek who stopped the Alpha Pack by his pointless willingness to fight battles he couldn't win. It wasn't Peter's ruthless scheming which mainly consisted on skipping out on battles and scavenging power when he could. Scott didn't stop them either, no matter what Garrett said. It was Jennifer and the power she harvested by murdering innocents. She's the one who killed Kali. She's the one who broke the twins. She would have beat Deucalion's head to a bloody pulp if Derek hadn't interfered.

Isn't this what they say they want? Isn't this Left Hand Bullshit? Doing the unthinkable to protect what's important?

But for all of her protestations that she was doing it for "everyone they'll ever hurt again," she never managed to trust people enough to even consider alternatives. She had an emotional connection to Derek through his sacrifice of Paige. She was in synch with the Nemeton. She obviously had inner knowledge of the workings of the Alpha Pack. If she was solely interested in stopping them, wouldn't it have made more sense to work with Derek?

A possible counter is that to get the power she needed, she had to kill people! And? That didn't seem to be a deal breaker for Derek or Peter, considering their behavior during that season, i.e. "Maybe it would be best to just kill them" or "You can always make more werewolves." And if she could mesmerize Derek as people like to claim, couldn't she use that ability to get him to accept her "necessary evil?"

In other words, while Jennifer had told her self she was doing it for the greater good, as Scott divined, it was ultimately about revenge. She justified -- even to herself -- the murder of innocent people as an act only she had the courage to do, ignoring that this means she had the courage to try another way. In the end, her actions weren't about the stopping the Alpha Pack or even punishing them, it was about her punishing them. "That's right, Kali, look at my face." That's what Derek figured out and how he was able to trick her. If all she did was for the purpose of stopping Deucalion, she wouldn't care about him seeing what his actions had done to her.

And that's the point. Jennifer wasn't a monster. She was extraordinarily sympathetic and I feel she had real feelings for Derek. No one can deny that Jennifer was cruelly used and savagely injured, but in the end, no one can also deny that her pain didn't justify her hurting others, since there was another way. And that's where Scott's optimism makes him the True Alpha, because he doesn't allow the pain of what was done to him confuse issues of right and wrong. It's why he didn't simply switch out Gerard's medication for cyanide or some other lethal poison, because the mountain ash would never have come into play if he could have figured out another way to stop Gerard from making Derek bite hm.

That's how a villain helps develop the heroic protagonist's journey.