tw suicide
people point to Jon not blinding himself in Season 4 as the main example of his insatiable curiosity being his tragic flaw that leads to his downfall but honestly given the evidence available to us the audience I don't think it was ever an option for Jon. he DIED, he was DEAD, he was being kept alive by the Eye. we are never given any indication that it is possible for an Avatar to regain their humanity, and that actually being possible would be pretty lore- and tone-shattering for TMA. this tells me that either Jon would've been unable to symbolically reject the Eye by blinding himself, or that he could've done it but it would've killed him. heck in that very same season we are shown how Daisy being cut off from the Hunt makes her terminally(!!!) ill, the only thing that can keep her alive at that point is her connection with her Entity.
If the choice that Jon faced in S4 was "risk everyone's lives and keep his coworkers trapped at the Institute by continuing to indulge his insatiable curiosity vs. blinding himself to get his and his coworkers' freedom at the cost of his eyesight and the chance to Learn More" then yeah I'd say Jon made the wrong choice, but that wasn't the choice he was facing. The choice was "risk everyone's lives and keep his coworkers trapped at the Institute by continuing to indulge his insatiable curiosity vs. getting his coworkers' freedom by literally killing himself". And that is a VERY different situation! Maybe others might still argue that Jon was in the wrong but I can't for a moment agree with the idea that Jon was morally obligated to kill himself.
Honestly the fact that this is barely brought up in the story is kind of weird because Jon was looking for any excuse for his actions at that point so the fact that he DIDN'T latch on to the idea that no, he can't blind himself because he would *literally die*, feels like a missed opportunity, and also has resulted in people treating the situation like Jon had an actual choice between two options that both involved big personal sacrifice but both had merits, when all available evidence tells me that's not the truth of the situation at all.
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I feel like it should also be noted that Jon didn’t even know that him dying would free the others. (Not that had he known he should have died for them.)
So the choice is more “keep his powers, which at the moment is the only thing the archives have as an advantage against other avatars, at the cost of his victims having nightmares” vs. “blind himself, maybe die, for the possibility of derailing Elias’s plot, that he doesn’t know what is, and leave the others in the archives to fend for themselves.”
I also don’t think he would actually be able to do it himself, he had trouble even picking up the tape of Eric’s statement, I don’t think he’d be able to use anything to damage his eyes.
Even if he could do it without dying he would be blind with absolutely no support in place. Honestly, the only reason Melanie could make that decision was because she had a support system in place.
Meanwhile for Jon, Georgie has cut him off and Martin just explicitly told him no, the only other people he could even think to turn to are Daisy, Basira, and Melanie. So he wouldn’t even be able to leave the archives anyway (as far as he knows) unless they all blinded themselves together.
And with the exception of maybe Daisy, they 100% wouldn’t want to care for him while he’s recovering. Basira would consider him “dead weight” just like she does Daisy and Melanie, and at least they still have all 5 senses. Daisy would probably be Jon’s only support, but even then, she’s still dealing with the Hunt and all that, so she’s got her own stuff to deal with. I don’t even know what Melanie would have done.