<mark>Please note that this thread contains lots and lots of spoilers for the Escalations comics. Please don’t read if you want to read them yourself.</mark>
Okay, now, this is a few things I thought I might share with you lot after mulling over the latest comic for a little bit.
Firstly, just to get it out of the way, it’s left ambiguous again as to whether or not the Didact died… again. There’s a whole other thread for discussing this, so I’m not going to talk about it here. I just think that it’s likely he survived in some form. The snippet of dialogue after: (“contained”) and the whispers in your head during Shutdown… Even if it’s just as a Geas in MC’s head, I think we haven’t seen the last of ol’ Shadow-of-Sundered-Star.
Secondly, there’s the whole “What John’s doing” thing. Strangely, in what seems to be a direct U-turn of what has been hinted at and theorised over for ages, MC does not seem to be embracing his humanity. Quite the opposite. After Hood told him effectively to take a break, he decided to just up and leave, taking Blue Team with him, doing “Missions” seemingly of his own accord. Instead of being Human, he’s decided to be more of a machine than he ever was before. In a neat bit of symbolism, the comic kind of shows us this as well. John’s helmet is fused on after the Didact grabbed it, showing now that he cannot take the armour off, and with no memories of his past before his life as a soldier, he has regressed into doing what he knows how to do best: killing.
Anyway, this means MC is confirmed rogue. Dun dun dun! And then, the obvious thing is whether Locke is hunting him to kill him or bring him back. Honestly, I’m leaning towards killing right now. If MC has upped and left, taking a few guns and a few super-soldiers with him, and has started randomly (or not so randomly) killing things that he believes may be a threat to the UNSC/galaxy, then he might end up giving the UNSC a bit of bad press, perhaps so much so that they decide to remove him, as he now presents a significant threat to human-alien relations, or even certain members of the UNSC itself. Even if the Flood does show up again, I think that MC is expendable enough now, given there are hundreds, if not thousands of almost-as-good S-IVs ready and waiting. So there isn’t really that much of a reason to find him just so he can be one more gun in a line. Even the Arbiter’s line doesn’t hold up.
“…because all our lives are at stake.”
Again, A few of the better S-IVs could probably deal with anything MC would have done before, so it only remains that MC is doing something misguided/insane/influenced by a Geas/something else that may threaten the galaxy itself. Making MC an antagonist would definitely make H5 more interesting.
Anyway, just a few things to think about. Discuss!