What do you think eiffel was thinking about when he asked hera to destroy his and Pryce's memories during the finale? I was always so struck by his decision to self sacrifice but also (also!!) about the implications it has for either him intentionally inciting permanent harm on another person or that he doesnt consider permanent memory loss permanent harm?

i think what the show is trying to communicate about eiffel's decision is described best in hera's reasoning: "i don't need to beat you. no matter how much i want to, no matter how much you deserve it, it wouldn't change anything. what i need is to make sure that you're not going to hurt anyone else again. ever." it is enacting harm, but it's also preventative. how do you negotiate with people who have intentionally and systematically removed themselves from humanity, who don't even recognize your humanity? what's justified in preventing future harm? i think there is a meaningful difference in an action taken to protect others vs. one taken in retribution, even if retribution is justified.

i think there is also an angle from which you can consider his self-sacrifice another form of self-destruction. so much of eiffel's character arc comes back to the ways he tries to get away from himself, how much he doesn't want to be doug eiffel. all of the ways he fractures his identity, tells stories in the third person. how he distances himself, and how that's distanced him from the people he cares about, when all of the men in all of those stories are still doug eiffel. if you consider eiffel's memory loss a finality, then it reads as a fulfillment of that desire, and i just... don't think that's what the show is going for.

and then you have his survivor's guilt. "the driver's always fine." in boléro, he feels personally responsible for the people who died because of his unwillingness to harm anyone on purpose. i don't think that makes his choices wrong, and i think he's wrong to blame himself, but it's a factor worth considering. if on some level he might see harm as more justifiable if he is also the recipient of it.

i also think there's another perspective from which you could consider his decision a selfish one: he knows the implications this has for hera in particular, and the weight he's putting on her. she agrees to it, she understands, but even so. i think that is something they're going to have to work through at some point. eiffel may be making the call, but whatever harm is enacted, hera is the one pulling the trigger.

ultimately i think the approach that eiffel is still eiffel, or at least that he has the intent and capacity to be, makes the most sense thematically and tonally. i think seeing it that way serves as an continuation and final affirmation of what the show already says about identity, rather than introducing some new philosophical question. i think you can even make a case for restoring eiffel's memories post-canon as a natural extension of the show's exploration of self and his character arc in particular. i won't get too into that now because it's another discussion and i don't want to make this response unreadably long, but that is to say...

what was eiffel thinking? i don't feel like i can answer that conclusively. i'd be surprised if he could. it's brave, and self-sacrificing, it definitely saved them, and it was also selfish and self-destructive. i may not think eiffel's memory loss is necessarily final, but he did, in that moment, and that came with the full intent that the same would be true of pryce. it's complicated, and messy, and personally? i think pryce deserved worse. but it's not really about deserving either.