He probably sees Jack–along with most of Overwatch–as shining examples of his own philosophy who’ve drawn horribly, frustratingly misguided conclusions from it.
Jack and the rest of the original team fought through the Omnic Crisis. They WON the Omnic Crisis. They are the very embodiment of ‘conflict breeds strength.’ They faced the worst the world could throw at them and came out heroes capable of transcending human limits.
I submit to you, in fact, a young Akande who might even have dreamed of having a place on that team. Of being one of the great modern heroes of the world, of going into the very heart of the monster with them and slaying it and coming out victorious.
But then? Then they set about rebuilding the world so nobody else would have to fight like they did. And so did the Overwatch recruits that came after them, both the first round who’d probably fought in the war themselves, and the next generation who’d been kids when it happened, forged in the fires of terror and sacrifice. He watched these people, the best, brightest and bravest the world had to offer, systematically eradicating the challenges he personally needed in order to thrive.
In this way, I see him as a dark mirror reflection of Pharah. She’s lived many of the same dreams he has. She’s been given some of the same opportunities–she’s from a prestigious family, given the opportunity to associate with the world’s best and greatest and be mentored by them–and she drew many of the same conclusions about what she personally needed: to fight, to test herself constantly, to be the absolute best she could be and stand with the world’s greatest warriors and heroes as their equal.
But
her mom took the time to show her the value of peace and the sanctity of life, and how every person should have the right to decide how they live. Instead of believing her dream should be the way of the world at large, she envisioned herself as the bulwark between the world and threats to it.
Akande hung out with people who fed his thirst for conflict and his self-righteousness. They encouraged him to take that need for conflict in his own heart and believe in it as the right way for everybody. And that by extension, Overwatch was trying to make the world and the people lived in it into something smaller. Something that never had to fight for its life. Something that would never know its own limits because nothing would ever test them.
Akande reminds me of a thing from Tolkien, actually. That when a great evil falls, the world is diminished. When Sauron falls, he takes the power of the rings with him, and that includes the power that sustains marvels like Lothlorien and Rivendell. There’s a lot to be said for a smaller, more peaceful world and the beauties and opportunities that come with it. But for some people, it doesn’t make up for the losses: the lack of heroes or the chance to become one, because none are needed. The loss of the transcendent challenges presented by an overriding menace, and the perilous, knife-edged beauties that can exist only in a place of extremes.
I think this is absolutely how Akande sees the world. For him, a man with the talents and drive to rise to every occasion, the need to be challenged and pushed to his limits, all he can see is the deprivation and diminishing. And, to be charitable toward him, maybe he was marked from a young age by something incredible. I think the world’s people did achieve something great during the Omnic Crisis and after. I think collectively they came together in one of those great and noble pushes we see from time to time in history, those moments when it seems like it must be inevitable that humanity will fall into darkness but then instead they rise in a shining hour that leaves us, on the far side of history, awestruck and wondering what it would have been like to be there and see it for ourselves…
And he was 14, 16, 18, brilliant and fierce and full of potential. And since then, he has spent the rest of his life watching humanity slump back into ordinary days and seeing only their failure to live up. He knows that greatness is in there, and it frustrates him to watch people fritter it away.
Akande is an extremely smart man. I don’t think he’s dumb enough to believe he’s something as simple as a hero for wanting to bring war back to the world. But I think maybe he sees himself as the villain the world needs in order to become something better. Maybe he even thinks of it as a sacrifice he’s willing to make for the ‘good’ of humanity.
But he’s also arrogant, and clearly obsessively competitive, and has possibly made the mistake of confusing ‘heroism’ with ‘glory.’ At the end of the day, this is all driven by what he wants. What feels right to him. We know he hates losing and I have a strong suspicion he absolutely can’t stand the idea of being wrong.
So yeah, I think he probably detests Overwatch and everybody in it for being so much like him and yet coming to an utterly different conclusion about how the world should be. I think he hates Jack Morrison and the other founding members more than almost anybody (except maybe Winston, who is in his way also a brilliant, overachieving reflection of Akande), because they created it. And I also think he is still utterly furious at having been defeated and sent to prison.
I think if he ever knowingly gets the chance to kick Jack Morrison’s ass, he’ll go after him with a screaming yet well-calculated fury. But I think he might feel very smug about the state Jack is in now. He fell. His image was broken. His organization came crashing down around him and he lost everything. He would probably consider Jack Morrison to be demonstrably on the wrong side of history.
He would be thoroughly unwilling to listen to any warning Jack might give him that they might be more alike than Akande wants to admit, or about what happens when you try to reach too high.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2sUfa1h