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Who did Jon actually suspect in TMA season 2?

An age-old fandom joke is to make fun of season 2 Jon for “accusing Tim and Martin of murder” and “he suspected everyone but Not!Sasha.”  I’m on a roll from my “did season 1 Jon dismiss statements” series, so now I gotta tackle this one!

My main goal is to point out the times he DID suspect Not!Sasha--and was the only human on the team to do so--but for the hell of it I’m going to keep a tally of how many times he mentions investigating/suspecting each person.  I’m also going to note other out-of-place things Jon noticed, some of which were due to Leitner, but definitely played a role in confirming that someone within the archives was being deceptive.

TMA 41 Too Deep -  “Elias is a prime suspect, but it could have been any of them.”  

TMA 42 Grifter’s Bone - Jon is nervous about Martin’s sudden doting and attentive behavior.  He goes through Martin’s poetry and letters.  

TMA 44 Tightrope  - Jon discovers that someone had been rifling through his desk drawer with the secret tapes.  (possibly Leitner)

TMA 45 Blood Bag - Jon looks into Tim’s background and takes photos of his house.

TMA 46 Literary Heights - Jon discovers that someone with a key has been using the trapdoor into the tunnels.  Everyone denies it when he asks.

TMA 47 A New Door - Michael tells Jon “they’re lying to you, you know.”  

TMA 48 Lost in the Crowd - Jon reveals that he already looked into Sasha’s background and found nothing unusual, but is now conflicted about whether Michael’s warning was genuine or if he was just messing with his head.  After Elias confronts him for spying on the others and tells him to stop investigating, Jon doubles down on his suspicion of him.

TMA 49 Butcher’s Window - Jon looks into Elias’s background.  (Running tally: mentioned Elias 3 times vs. 1 for everyone else!)

TMA 51 High Pressure - Jon records a conversation with Sasha in Artefact Storage, then finds that she’s been visiting a wax museum every few days during her lunch breaks.

TMA 52 Exceptional Risk - Jon confronts Sasha about her long lunch breaks, learns about the “boyfriend.”  (Running tally:  3 for both Elias and Sasha, 1 for the other two!)

TMA 56 Children of the Night - Jon confronts Martin over ‘lying’ to him about Trevor’s death, brings up the letter he found.  After learning about his faked CV, this is the last time Jon expresses suspicion over Martin.  (I also can’t help but point out the previous few episodes show Jon softening towards Martin, with him inviting himself out to lunch with Martin in TMA 53 and learning the jar of ashes was real in TMA 55.  The severity of the confrontation no doubt is influenced by how much he let his guard down and it taking it especially hard since it’s MartinGrand total for Martin:  2

TMA 57 Personal Space - Jon searches Sasha’s desk.  Sasha is now in the lead with 4!!  “Suspected everyone but the Not!Them” my ass!!!

TMA 58 Trail Rations - Jon records a conversation between Martin and Tim.  He confirms he no longer suspects Martin, but doubles down on his worries about Tim.

TMA 59 Recluse - Jon notices the others avoiding and talking about him (planning the upcoming intervention).  

TMA 60 Observer Effect - Everyone confronts Jon over his behavior.  After reviewing the doctored CCTV footage (a monthlong process, according to Tim in TMA 65), Jon decides to stop investigating them. “I can’t quite figure out whether this exoneration of my colleagues is more of a relief or a frustration.  At the very least, it seems I have been...  I have been rather unfair to them.”

Running total so far:

  • Sasha:  4
  • Elias:  3
  • Martin:  2
  • Tim:  2

The investigations stop temporarily, before Jon’s suspicion of Sasha is renewed, but it’s fascinating that fandom collectively forgot that Jon looked into Sasha as much as Martin and Tim combined, and mentioned Elias as his primary suspect twice, but somehow concluded “Jon accused Tim and Martin of murder, while ignoring Elias and Sasha!”

TMA 68 Tale of a Field Hospital - Jon notices that Sasha “seemed far too tall” in the tunnels, and that he didn’t recognize her at first.

TMA 76 The Smell of Blood - After Melanie accuses Jon of toying with her about Sasha, Jon turns his full attention towards her.  “There’s more than one thing in the files that can trick you. I can’t just ignore it.”

TMA 77 The Kind Mother - Jon learns about the Not!Them, and realizes Sasha has been killed and replaced.  “If it’s here, if Sasha… I’m going to find out how to kill it.”

And here we have our final total!!

  • Sasha:  7
  • Elias:  3
  • Martin:  2
  • Tim:  2
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Anguish aside, there were moments in TMA 154 that made me SO happy and put to rest many of the more dismal predictions about the direction Jon is taking:

- Jon doesn’t want to go full monster--he’s glad the others are holding him back, even though he’s suffering

- Jon willing to admit his mistakes and thank people for correcting him

- Jon ACTIVELY CHOOSING TO FIGHT THE EYE and strategizing how to foil its plans rather than fall into them

- “Season 5 Jon is the Big Bad” is the most dreadful horrible prediction I saw but this was the sharpest turn away from that I could even come up with

- Jon putting a ton of thought into how he can even do the right thing in his situation and acting on it rather than just deciding that Guilt Is Useless Who Needs It

hey so jsyk i keep rereading your post about how jm aren't actually a gift of the magi situation and i love it so much, esp on not wanting their feelings/relationship to be written as facilitating something bad!! tma is full of bad things but it's been the theme so far that if anything can save us it's our connections

Aaaah I’m so glad! I picked over it for a long time because there’s a lot of nuance going on and I don’t want to be overly hopeful or too dismissive of others’ interpretations. Part of it is also that I’m aromantic and can only properly enjoy ships if they don’t become a “this is the only important person in my life” or a “only romantic love can save the day” thing, so I ZOOM in on every little detail that plays counter to those tropes. I’ve been so happy that TMA has been aggressively avoiding that so far (e.g. the examples in my post, or a character escaping the Lonely by thinking of her mother, etc)

Though to indulge in being overly hopeful for a second, some more food for thought: It’s pretty much certain that Martin’s love for Jon helped him escape the Buried, which he sacrificed himself to in order to save one of the team (not Martin!!)

Know what would be a great parallel to that? Jon’s love for Martin saving him from the Lonely, which Martin seems to be sacrificing himself to for the sake of the rest of the team (aka everyone but Jon who was dead at the time!!)

All of which sets up a contrast to Gertrude “the only way to save the world is sacrifice those who trust you” Robinson, which is the #1 thing I want from this show in the end

I CAN ONLY HOPE

I see a lot of meta about how Jon and Martin are becoming monsters by sacrificing for each other, and while a “gift of the magi with your humanity” is the sort of poetic tragedy we’re expecting from this show, I don’t think that fits the situation at all? I just finished binging all of the episodes but so far the progression has been:

- Jon: Began to change in season 3 because of his role as the Archivist and chasing “the incessant need to know.” Sealed when he chose to wake up in season 4 instead of allowing himself to die. Use of powers since then have been mainly for Basira out of a desperation to be useful.

- Martin: Struck a deal with Peter Lukas when Jon was dead and assumed to never wake up again. We know part of this deal was that Peter would protect the archives from other powers, with the dubious possibility of helping Peter prevent another apocalypse. The Lonely powers are a result of his self-isolation conditioning for the supposed anti-apocalypse plan. Jon being alive was a threat to his plans and a temptation to abandon them altogether.

The fact they’re constantly thinking about each other through season 4 makes it easy to focus on that as the only motivation, but there’s so much more going on there—and to be honest I hate the thought of their feelings for each other being written as a bad thing, even if the characters are emotionally dense and clumsy going about it. The themes building up to this season have played up our connections to each other as a lifeline rather than dead weight, so framing it as the cause of their drift from humanity doesn’t feel right at all.

Between the Sunlight and the Grave - Dathen - The Magnus Archives (Podcast) [Archive of Our Own]

archiveofourown.org

My favorite time travel fics all have s5 Jon understanding where s1 Jon’s fear and reclusive tendencies come from and showing him some compassion, but I suddenly have the urge to read one where Jon takes out his guilt for his past behavior and his self-loathing on him—and then Martin and all of the s1 crew stand up to him insisting that their Jon doesn’t deserve that. Even s1 Martin, reevaluating his dislike of Jon after being surprised by his stilted kindness after Prentiss’s attack, pitches in.

s5 Jon is baffled. He’s heard Tim and Sasha’s private resentment towards him, and is sure that their old overtures of friendship must have just been to mask it; why would they defend him? And of course his Martin is biased, but why would this Martin care after just being shown the bare minimum of human decency? He was unlikeable, a burden to everyone around him, and even when he tried so hard to change never really stopped being so—

(of course this ends with both Jons hearing the rebuttals, including the older Martin saying that Jon didn’t start being worth something to him just because of how much he tried to sacrifice for others)

Making myself sad again over how many times Jon has been uprooted from his home and whether he even HAS a concept of home

And making myself SADDER by realizing the first time he was uprooted was at four years old after both his parents died and he moved in with a grandmother who didn’t want him

The pattern begins and it never stopped, all the way to the end.

My heart decided it wanted to draw Jon TheArchivist Sims but my stickler-for-continuity brain is like “well you need a list of all the scars he probably has and when he got them so as not to mess up the continuity”,,

So here’s me floundering around the internet and failing bc I figured there’d be a list somewhere so I wouldn’t have to relisten to the whole fuckin podcast whilst taking notes,, so either this fandom has failed me or maybe I’m just not good at googling

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