There’s a different Season 4 out there where Jon, desperate to find proof that being a Fully Fledged Avatar that Eats People Trauma can still, somehow, be good in some fashion, doesn’t find Fanshawe’s letter first and therefore immediately concludes, with no shred of doubt (and with endless self-loathing because he’s mirroring, his boyfriend is ghosting him, nobody is happy he’s back, and he’s like few episodes away from jumping in a coffin being like ‘eh, it ever works or i die’) that Jonah Magnus was an evil man all along and there was never anything good to the Institute.
Maybe instead of he finds a letter from Jonah to Smirke that tells the fall of yet another of their friends, maybe a letter that, on paper, is perfectly polite, but that Jon reads with the undertone of anger and fear (you said balance is the key but prevention is doing nothing we need more knowledge, we need to understand more, Robert-). Maybe, if we want to keep it at “we never hear from Jonah directly” (which does also have sexy implications, find) he finds a letter from yet another friend who actually recalls WHAT happened the day Smirke told his buddies about all this, that shows that Jonah immediately was with Smirke on the whole “balance thing”, at least on paper.
In any case, what he finds is not a downright “oh, Jonah bad” and Jon wants to believe SO badly that he can still do some good; also he’s obsessive and doesn’t know when to quit, as we know <3 so he just keeps. finding new letters to read, which, of course, parallels his own journey, and so, of course, when we reach the final, actual reveal of Elias being Jonah, it’s just. oh. Oh.
(Side note: got distracted by the end of this post because I was reminded again that, genuinely, when this podcast is good it’s brillant, and Elias going “Exactly where they’ve always been, Martin. Watching over my institute.” is just. so. fucking good. what a delicious, perfect, satisfying reveal. I adore him so much. It’s just so perfectly dramatic. that whole scene!! THat whole episode. god. anyway. what was i saying? i don’t remember)
another thing is that jon is basically in captivity for the first four seasons. he can’t quit the head archivist position so that makes him. a captive. and the archivist job is intended to make him a victim of prolonged and repeated trauma. it’s not immediately apparent because he isn’t being kept in a literal attic but figuratively he was in the attic. the attic just happens to cover his whole life. and elias is responsible for every assault (by proxy), but since his alignment with the eye, i.e. role as the watcher naturally precludes him from getting personally involved in any of it (“My inclinations, predictably, were more toward watching than doing the deed myself.” - mary keay in MAG 62), their relationship is operating on this weird and ambiguous note where jon is aware that elias is responsible for his captivity but he’s never been subjected to the experience of elias personally hurting him. he’s very condescending and paternalistic with jon (father moment) but he just won’t. do that. in s3 jon knows there are monsters out there who want to hurt and kill him, but not elias! elias is the only one he can look to for any semblance of protection, elias is the only one he can ask, “am i still human?” because you see. he has absolutely nowhere else to go.
And I think that’s partially why Jon has never truly blamed Jonah. Like rationally he obviously knows Jonah is to blame, but emotionally he never seems to acknowledge the extent of Jonah’s abuse on him.
Isn’t it interesting that when Jon confronts him at the end he’s not taking revenge for himself, but only for other people? Especially considering that in the same season he repeatedly takes revenge on other people who hurt him?
And Jonah’s lack of direct action against him plays so well into Jon’s guilt complex! It makes it so much easier for him to believe that he’s responsible for everything, which obviously makes him miserable but also ‘helps’ him to deny the fact that Jonah has literally made an object out of him (an archive, not an archivist) in order to use it for his purpose. Until he has guilt he has agency.
So he never confronts Jonah, not really, even when he’s more powerful than him! And I’ll never get over it.
