Handsome Jack was the Hero

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 SPOILERS
#1

Spoilers for all them games… probably

So this is some head cannon that I have developed and would like to share. Depending on how I am feeling I may elaborate on it a bit more and expand it into ideas for BL4. Of course this is an opinion piece and as far as I am aware none of it is actual cannon. Now onto it.

The theme of BL2 is there are no heros on Pandora. This theme is frequently reinforced thoughout the game, from the initial opening scenes exquisit soundtrack, to you the vault hunter killing someone’s child, your selfish motives for nearly everything, Salvadors… hobbies, and Jack refering to himself as the hero. Now when I say Jack was the hero, it’s hyperbole, but only just. Yes, Jack was trying to genocide Pandora, but the why is almost intentionally vague.

The pre-sequal would have you believe it was possibly for revenge on Lilith, possibly just because he went crazy, but I think it is a red herring. Jack had always displayed an intense ambition, he went from a low level nobody to the CEO of Hyperion within an extremely short timeframe. Infact he had control of Hyperion before the beginning of BL2. So he had control over one of the major corporations. He revolutionized the military and transportation of that military with the moonshot and the loader bots. Between Helios and the Handsome Jackpot, Jack had the means to invade and conqure the galaxy at this fingertips. So why Pandora?

Why waste time on this backwater garbage planet? He didn’t need the Warrior. He could have dropped astroids onto Sanctuary and obliterated them shields or no. He had the means, he had the resources, and he had the brains to wipe it off the map without the Warrior so why didn’t he? Well because there is no fun in that. Jack is bored. You hear it frequently in Jack’s communications with you. You are just something happening while Jack is stripping tonnes of Eridium out of Pandora. He didn’t believe that you were ever a real threat, he was just playing cat and mouse with you. That is why there is such an intense tone shift after Angels death. The game was suddenly over, and you were being taken seriously.

Now as I have proposed, Jack didn’t need the Warior for Sanctuary. So why wake the Warior? For what it was always for, to fight the Destroyer. At the end of the Presequal Jack is exposed to eridian tech and says “I get it, I understand, I understand everything.” This is when Jack learns the nature of the destroyer, and he understands the gravity of the first vault having been opened. The chains on the Destroyer had been loosened, and if he didn’t keep the destroyer in check, then the chains would be broken. Who loosened the chains? The vault hunters. The vault hunters are toying with God’s for their own benifits. Throughout all of the Borderlands games, the vault hunters have no idea what the consequences of their actions are. They are just doing it for self profit. They do not understand that they are hastening the end of the galaxy. So Jack does what every hero does, he starts to kill the bad guys. He lures vault hunters to Pandora, killing them by the thousands. Taking these idiots cracking the seals, and killing them, one train at a time.

Meanwhile he works to wake the Warrior. Scrubbing the fodder off of Pandora and taking ultimate control so no self delighting idiots can crack open Pandora. So, the vault map. The vault key was the same one from BL1 (If I am not mistaken), it builds up energy every 200 years so it can open a vault (I am still not sure which specifically because it opens many of the vaults on Pandora). When it is used in BL1, nothing no map, so why do we see it in BL2? Because it was activating the vault of the Warrior.

(Entering a lot of head cannon)
The eridians created many many things to try and fight the destroyer, but sealing it away was ultimately the route to success. The warrior was one of these weapons to fight the destroyer, the main weapon. What better to fight a god, than another god? The activation of this Vault was the trigger to unvieling all of the tools the eridians had built in order to fight and supress the destroyer. Jack was well aware of what he was doing and why. He was preparing for war against a being he couldn’t possibly defeat with loaders. He needed a super weapons and every other tool he could get a hold of in order to save the entire universe. He was the hero the universe needed. He had the power, the knowledge, the brains, and the resources to do it, but once again, ignorant vault hunters push the universe to its damnation. Had it not been for Jacks arrogance and Angles betrayel, he would have won. And you, you the vault hunter are the destroyers greatest asset, and the universes worst enemy.

To be continued…
Well maybe, if people want me to I will.

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#2

Two things you kind of whiffed on, or at least, the games undermine based on what they put out there:

The Eridian Writings explain the purpose of the Warrior, and it’s not to combat the Destroyer.

In BL2’s “Getting to Know Jack” they basically make it known that Jack was the one who set up the Vault Hunters to open the Vault, which was a retcon for sure, but that’s the canon, so if you can tweak your idea to make sense of that you’ll be solid. Or you can just say, “Hey, I’m retconning that and sticking with the lore of BL1 for that.”

In a way, the Vaults are traps. The canon at this point is that the Eridians made the Guardians and the Warrior, but every other Vault Monster is unexplained, but also the power source for the Vaults. The Vaults are basically Pokeballs.

What’s odd for me, is how they have a Full Metal Alchemist inspired weapon, and based on BL3 they have a Full Metal Alchemist-type explanation for Pandora’s creation.

I ended up opining about that, so I just made a new topic for it over here

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#3

I think the retcon is only needed if Jack new precisely what he was doing. The fact that Angle is so confident in your ability to kill the destroyer makes me think they didn’t fully understand the consequences for your actions.

I do not believe the vaults are traps. I think the vault monsters are probably there for the exact same reason the guardians are, as a deterrent from opening ■■■■ you aren’t able to handle.

The eridian making the warrior to control those who want to appease it… That I would retcon the ■■■■ out of. If the leech could suck that thing instead of even 10 eridians they would have. My understanding is even those who would seek to appease were leached, why keep the warrior rather than the eridians?

#4

Have you listened to all the Eridian Writings, and in order?

Of course those are major spoilers, but it explains the sequence in which things happen and why things were set up with the Warrior in its role. And yeah, the Warrior actually probably isn’t as powerful* as Billions of people with the power to create it.

*like literal energy, think The Matrix and the idea of biochemical and biokinetic energy.

#5

It has to be some kind of aetherial ■■■■■■■■ energy like in FMA because the amount of energy output by a super giant star is nuts.

#6

Well, if you consider all you need is to split one atom of Hydrogen. So now that we have Sirens moving beyond Telekinesis and Telepathy and fully embracing energy manipulation, which honestly Lilith has been doing from day one, slipping between dimensions as all Creating Fusion and Fission reactions isn’t out of the realm of possibilities. The Warrior is just a Dragon Golem when you get down to it, probably great raw material, but not a whole lot of it compared to the atomic mass of billions of Eridians, who’s biochemical composition is a mystery to us.

#7

If you compare the mass off all of humanity to even out planet it is nothing, compared to a star it would be even less. Something about the value of the soul would have to be at play and the sirens would probably not be able to use non-eridium energy. Even then I’m not saying the warrior would be equivalent to all of the eridians but a couple hundred, maybe even a couple thousand, it could be enough.

#8

Thing is we’re not talking mass, we’re talking energy. The mass factors in when we’re comparing a

billion Eridians to one 20 story Dragon made of Volcanic Rock and infused with Eridian power.

And here’s the thing. It’s said they made the Warrior. Have you considered that the Warrior was infused with some of their power, and that’s what makes it as powerful as it is? It’s purple death ray from its tail is the one power it has that doesn’t fit with the rest. That’s very much a dead ringer for other purple eridium based powers we’ve seen.

That said, we know that the Eridians made Pandora out of Eridium over a multitude of years, and that it took a Siren sacrificing Billions of them to lure the Destroyer into the trap. Since Sirens can absorb Eridium for Power, Anoint Others with their power, which then turns those people into Eridium, those Eridians had access to some arcane knowledge to be able to do what only sirens could do. That or there was something about them that was very powerful. On the Food Chain only the Destroyer and Nyriad the leeching siren surpassed them.

#9

I’m not comparing the warrior with billions I’m comparing it to a handful of eridians, maybe just enough so the species can reproduce and not go extinct.

Also mass and energy are two sides of the same coin.

#10

The Warrior was meant to, and only capable of stopping people from reaching the Vault of the Destroyer (the true vault) as it says in Nyriad’s story in the Eridian Writings. And based on TPS, he was not meant to be controlled by a regular human who knew nothing of its purpose. The relic in Elpis’s vault was giving knowledge to Jack before Lilith stopped it.

It’s entirely possible that the Sentinel was meant to control the Warrior, and if defeated, whoever touched that relic would be given the knowledge held by the Sentinel so that they would take on the duty? Kind of like the curse of the Mummy basically?

Physics connects everything, but to quote a professor of mine back in college, “Where does a flame go when it’s snuffed out?”

The connection between matter and energy is obvious, and at the same time nebulous.

Additional Thought

Imagine if Jack had gone crazy about killing Bandits on Pandora and he hadn’t tried to compare them to Bandits. Instead he just hated them for betraying him, and wanted to get rid of the Bandits because of what he saw from the Vault Relic before he was stopped by Lilith? That would make it a lot easier to connect his motivation with BL3’s plot. What Zarpedon saw made her decide to take out Elpis, and what Jack saw made me want to take out Bandits, two sides of the same problem in the end.