Season 5 is a constant fight for Jon’s humanity. it’s a back and fourth between Jon being The Archivist who ended up the world, and Jon being Jon Sims who cares about people and wants to make things right. In this moment, Jon is The Archivist.
Jon says that he’s reduced Trever to even lower than prey by making him bait…while simultaneously using Martin for bait to lurer in Trever.
He put him in a dangerous situation to let Basira catch up to them, which really wasn’t necessary considering he could see Basira the whole time and knew her about location. He knew she was close so he could have just…waited for her enter a slightly less dangerous area before catching up. Or he could have told Martin to wait somewhere (and there was probably a “somewhere” considering the various places away from everyone Jon finds to give statements) while he confronted Trever and got Basira on board.
But instead Jon plays along with the concept of The Hunt. He uses a bait (Martin) to lure in prey (Trevor) to get taken down by a predator (Basira.) He’s playing by The Fears rules even though he doesn’t have too, and for me this is a moment that really shows Jon’s struggle with keeping his humanity.
He’s inclined to go along the fears and play games that he can’t actually win. It’s like he’s trying to play connect four with only three pieces. And that’s the both the fatal flaw and the tragedy of Jon’s character. He can’t give up the game, but the only way to win was to not play at all, and he lost before the series even began.
