jey uso becomes much more tragic as a character once you remember he was never like this before roman initiated him into the bloodline. There was no “crashing out”, no breaking down in the middle of the ring while being abused, no yeeting—he was just a normal person tag teaming with his brother.
Sure, Jey Uso isn’t just a twin anymore. He’s his own person, he’s beloved by the audience with his own catchphrase & song & dance, with his own individual appearance; but the torture (both physically and mentally) he had to get there will always haunt him. Roman essentially molded Jey into a monster by ruining his life in various ways (isolation, physical & verbal abuse, pitting him against his own brother) , threatening him if he ever left & FOR leaving, and now he’s on raw and this version of himself was supposed to have died a long time ago.
For war games, the original bloodline reunited. Jey, Jimmy and Sami helped get Roman back into power. Roman never apologized for his actions at all—nor did he even show an ounce of remorse. Even worse, he mocked Jey for being close to Sami & breaking the single boundary Jey placed. The apology from Roman was supposed to be a huge plot point before….it was skipped over bc the reunion was rushed lol. Despite that, Jey is legit just expected to go past everything that’s happened & finally accept his life and the fact that his family will never beg for his forgiveness while he is expected to ride and die for a man who would never do the same for him.
Cut to ‘mania season, Jimmy is literally fucking dead. Sami, the only other person who might understand him, is gone. Nobody is around to help Jey anymore. He’s getting terrorized by a man whose tactics are eerily similar to Roman during the thunderdome era. However, this time there’s no familial connection. No Jimmy, Sami, Seth, or Cody to talk him out of hurting people. The only things that remain the same are Jey’s feelings of guilt, shame, and utter lack of confidence in himself. The thing is, he will probably never get revenge against his abuser, so Gunther is the next best (worst?) thing he’ll get. So while Jey feels like shit because he’s treated like it by Gunther, he won’t ever be pressured to forgive him like he was by Jimmy with Roman. The moment he was zip tied to the ring, Jey finally had an excuse to release all the hatred he’s been holding back for almost two years. He’s finally allowed to be a terrible person again & he won’t be told he’s in the wrong anymore. He won’t have to stop.
The emotionally conflicted & violent part of Jey that was so successful as Roman’s right hand man never really died—it’s just constantly covered by the yeet shades he wears.
summarizing my bible-rolleigns posting as "everyone wants to be jesus" is both comedic but also Very Serious. seth and roman are both kind of obsessed with absolution. seth has obviously never been Allowed to move on from the chairshot. roman went from the person unconditionally giving forgiveness to the person needing to be forgiven. the fact that neither of them fit the... moral purity of jesus is pretty centrally important. neither of them can wipe away the actions that led to them needing forgiveness in the first place.
so! in the context of wrestlemania 40. let's broaden our (their) search for christ the uh, redeemer to include the other obvious choice. hey cody rhodes.
cody certainly represents absolution to seth: he's the method by which seth can finally redeem himself in his own eyes. he's the shining threat to roman's empire, the champion of the meek roman has cast aside (do we think roman could fit through the eye of a needle? discuss). the codyvengers have chosen to support him, not because of cult abuse or familial abuse, but because he's just kind of a nice guy. in more serious terms, he's loving. he's kind. he forgives jey and sami and welcomes them back with open arms. he gives Seth that chance to prove himself, even if it's given a little warily.
fascinatingly, cody isn't a sinless person, but in the present context, he might as well be. his motivations are not unselfish- he wants the title because he needs to complete his story. seth has the (seemingly) unselfish motivations of dethroning roman to make wwe the healthier meritocracy he once aspired for (oh, authority seth and your intricate ironies). he does suffer during the wrestlemania build, but he doesn't give the total sacrifice that seth does. he's not nearly as consumed by the need for people to Think he's a good person as roman and seth are/were.
he doesn't have the culty, everyone-must-be-devoted-to-me aspirations of messiah seth or tribal chief roman. it's a wonderful irony that he seems to have the love/devotion despite not being as consumed/destroyed by it as roman and seth. he doesn't even really conceptualize this like a jesus story (again! no sacrifice). he's just better at the innate goodness the jesus story necessitates. or at faking it. and he's not even really going at it while intending to fake it. maybe he really is just nice.
the fact that cody doesn't really care about the jesus narrative also makes him, you know, not jesus. that's a roman/seth landmine field. he ruptures roman and seth's narratives about themselves and forgiveness and what it even means to be a good person by how naturally he seems to get it, and by how little that seems to consume him.
Commentary said “he’s a changed man”
I don’t think that’s right. I think Gunther dug in so deep that he found the version of Jey Uso that he tried so hard to bury. Jey has not changed. He is going back to the part of him borne of Romans abuse and his helpless anger. The same rage created when Roman himself hurt Jimmy to get to Jey.
He’s the same man he’s always been, he’s just falling back into the worst part of himself, triggered by the exact same thing as before.
one of the best decisions yellowjackets has ever made is reverting the women back into girls at their most vulnerable moments. shauna when she kills adam, nat laying her head in lottie's lap, misty seeing young natalie in the mirror, misty in the morgue seeing lottie because this truly hammers home that their lives stopped the moment that plane went down and that no matter how much time has passed by, they're still those teenage girls who were on their way to their football game and lost 19 months of their lives trying to survive.
YELLOWJACKETS 3.08 "A Normal, Boring Life"
I feel like this could be taken as two things.
Obviously, their argument and Jackie ending up dead in the show.
But I also like the idea that she is talking about Shauna killing the real her. Distorting who Jackie truly was and replacing it with this version. The one that only exists in her mind. The one that is all Shauna can see now. At least, it feels that way. She didn't literally kill Jackie true, but she did kill the real Jackie, the one that loved Shauna (in any way you could love someone) and now all that remains is this. A hollow bitchy shell.
Seth's betrayal and years of hatred from the fans made Roman into someone who callously pressures his closest allies into proving their love for him at the expense of others they also care deeply about... and even when they openly break down in tears in front of him, Roman cannot take a step back and realize his obsession with unconditional, blind loyalty - stemming from over a decade of trauma - will continue to cost him everything over and over again.
