#from pfl articles and chorus ones

[grif-hawaiian-rolls]

sometimes u just get so filled w thoughts about a pair of characters u gotta just go bonkers ya know

[jomeimei421]

the problem with wash

It’s really no secret that I absolutely love Wash. He’s a great character and that whole “fiercely loyal, paranoid stiffness that melts into affection” is right up my alley 👀👀👀 and he’s always been an excellent support for the rest of the main cast.

But therein lies the problem: he’s always just a support character.

It certainly feels like he’s been a prominent presence in the series, but the truth is Wash hasn’t been in the focus of a season since his introduction in season 6.

During seasons 7 and 8, his main purpose was to be an antagonist hunting down Epsilon, supporting the Meta as the main villain.

During the freelancer saga, Wash takes the back burner in favor of letting Carolina take center stage. Carolina’s problems with Tex are the focus of the flashback scenes and Carolina vs the Sim Troopers becomes the main conflict of present day.

In season 11, he briefly comes back as a focus character, but at the end of the day, he serves as a support character for Tucker and Locus’s character arcs during the Chorus Trilogy.

The only notable thing Wash does in seasons 15 and 16 is get shot, which admittedly did put some emphasis on him, but only in relation to Carolina.

Even in season 17, he becomes an emotional pillar for Donut, but the narrative doesn’t really focus on his state of being outside of his relationships with other characters (Carolina)

I understand that Wash is a character that holds his friends very near and dear to his heart and that there can be no discussion of Wash without at least mentioning them. I also understand that there are other characters who haven’t gotten nearly as much screentime as Wash.

But none of that excuses the omission of INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT events that were crucial to Wash’s character arc being simply brushed aside in favor of other characters.

To name a few:

We don’t know what happened in the gap between the crashing of the MoI and Recovery One besides the vague description of something called Article 12: unfit for duty. What does that mean?? Is it a place? Is it just a designation? If it is, where did he even go?

Wash goes directly from the end of season 8 to the beginning of season 10 without any scenes of the red and blues getting used to him. He was ready to literally kill them all but by season 10 he has gained a fierce enough loyalty to the sim troopers to raise a gun to Carolina. It feels like a cop out to just say “hey uh yeah wash kinda killed Donut and Lopez and he held Simmons at gunpoint and is basically the reason Church is gone twice and tried to murder us for a year but he’s cool now we love him” (guys...the sim troopers have canonically sang happy birthday to wash. Come on. I feel robbed.)

And most infuriatingly:

The Epsilon Incident is introduced as the reason Wash has become so jaded since his days in PFL. He’s spacey and unfocused when he recalls the incident, and makes resentful comments about not knowing which memories are his own and which are Epsilon’s disintegrating thoughts. The Epsilon incident fucked him up so bad they designated him ‘unfit for duty.’ Epsilon dies in season 13 without a SINGLE mention of Wash and Epsilon’s very intimate and complicated history. This event is crucial to Wash’s character arc and it was never even mentioned beyond season 10.

So Wash has had a ton of screentime, but for some reason, most of the essential points of his character arc are never touched on.

Then where did all that screen time go? That’s right, to supporting other characters’ arcs.

I’m not saying that Wash needs to be the focus of a season, I’m saying that the RvB storyline needs to stop using him as the emotional go-to for character development (since he’s the only character who tries to talk openly about serious emotional dilemmas) and then reduce his own character arc to relationships with other characters.

The closest we got to real introspection on Wash’s own mindset beyond season 6 was a sideplot in season 10 where Wash has to choose between Carolina and the Sim Troopers— and even then it only focuses on his relationships rather than his own (rather turbulent) state of mind.

TL; DR Even if he’s just a side character, Wash is still part of the main cast. His dark storyline and troubled past was pivotal to RvB, and is responsible for the tone shift of the entire series. Doesn’t he deserve some real closure on all that?