Thinking, as always, about Joel and his relationships and the Lone Player role.

Scar and Pearl play the loner so well because they hate it. Every second, every opportunity they get they’re begging for companionship. They’re trying to strike deals or make threats in exchange for friendship, for allies, and it just never works. It is always falling apart at the last moment and is what makes the Lone Player so tragic. But Joel is different as the Lone Player, he seems like he was made to do it.

It doesn’t feel like he’s abysmally lonely, at the end of 3rd Life his biggest tragedy is that he didn’t manage to kill more. The whole time just feels like an outsider, like he has a job to do, he sticks to himself and he has his dogs but it doesn’t feel like he’s desperate for connections. Instead, everyone wants his fealty. He’s actively rejecting alliances by the middle of the game, he’s not desperate. He doesn’t care to have every ally. He’s making his own decisions to cut off alliances, even when they seem illogical, even when it costs him, and in the end he’s still all alone. He can work alongside allies and armies, but he never has anyone really close to him, he never has someone he lives alongside, who accompanies him always, it’s just him and his dogs.

And Scar.

It’s played as a silly joke, sure, but Scar being Joel’s “best friend” in 3rd Life gets in my head and lives there. Its just Scar’s tactic for getting loyalty but it works. Joel believing in it and reinforcing it and trusting Scar even when he knows he shouldn’t. Joining Scar’s army and dying for it in the end. He betrays the Red Army to side with Scar and his final death is fighting Ren and Martyn all alone. Allies only moving in too late, like with his roof, like always; that’s the fate of the Lone Player, it will always be too late for someone to save you. He dies for Scar’s cause and he dies alone. All that’s left behind of him is his dogs scattered across the desert, useless and passive without him, they can’t possibly avenge him.

But they try again in Last Life. That trust returns, it has to. Even when Scar tries to kill him as soon as he becomes a Boogey. Even when Scar breaks the bridge before them cause he can’t trust Joel on Red. Even when they can never ally, they’re always missing eachother, always whizzing right by, never Green or Red together. There’s still that try for friendship once again. They’re both wizards, they’re trying to run a business together, Scar lets him stay on the cliffs of Magical Mountain despite the danger he imposes. Scar’s trying to win back Joel’s friendship through another contract, another piece of paper that proposes allyship. Just like 3rd Life. And it can never work and it always ends up such a hollow bond but they’re trying again. There’s this fundamental incompatibility the universe and the game sets between them; it doesn’t want them to be together in Last Life, it doesn’t allow them to be. Their friendship can never not be this fucked up and empty thing, but they’re trying again.

He's truly alone in these traffic games, until he manages to kill Grian. Only then do you realize the extent of his loneliness. Because then the games force him to have a friend, and you see the sheer glee he has for it. He holds onto Grian for the rest of the season. It’s just the two of them. Even when there are other Reds it still just feels like it always falls to them. They start their last episode scheming together, and they reject Scott and Ren when they fall to Red— sure, the two of them betray Joel and Grian in the first place, but Joel says himself it’s a rocky alliance anyway, they aren’t really welcome here.

What Joel needs is someone to join him in bloodlust. He only really makes connections to Reds or when he’s Red. In 3rd Life his and Scar’s “best friendship” starts after Scar goes Red, but he couldn’t ever ally with Scar in Last Life because they were never Red together. He only gained his first real ally when he killed Grian and brought him down to Red in Last Life. And now in Double Life he has someone tethered to him who is itching for blood. Etho and him establish in the first (if I recall correctly) session that they know they’re going to have a lot of fun on Red, and now we see that’s true— and they’re effective. They’ve already killed twice, one pair taken down by each of them.

Joel can only have real allies when the universe forces it. When he and Grian are the only Reds. When he has his soul and life literally bound to Etho’s. He’s a fucked up little man who can’t make connections right who only realizes he’s lonely when he’s fucking knee deep in it.