#Janja's relationships to everyone else around him are all so incredibly fascinating to me

[dawn-sunlight]

I want to talk about these two for a second, specifically my thoughts about how they were after Scar's backstabbing of the hyenas

On the one hand, there's Janja. He knows Scar tried to burn him and his hyena clan, not even for actual betrayal, just for Janja THINKING about whether to join Jasiri. Something he'd actively tried to keep from his clan. And they're the ones that got caught in the trap while he escaped. If the Guard hadn't figured out a way to escape the lair, Scar would have failed to kill the one actually having traitorous thoughts but succeeded in killing his clan who had no idea of any of this. His clan would have paid for his "mistake". And this probably haunts Janja. And I see Janja as someone who takes loyalty very seriously(I disregard Janja's New Crew entirely because pretty much nothing in that episode makes any sense with what we've seen in pretty much every other episode), which was one of the reasons he was having such a hard time choosing a side. He couldn't just backstab Scar like that. After all, Scar actually cared about them, he was actually trying to help them which was more than anyone else had tried to do for them. So when Scar told Janja that Kion was powerful enough to destroy him, Janja felt incredibly bad for seriously considering switching sides just that morning. Scar could be destroyed and he was over here thinking of backstabbing him. So he decided not to do it. And then Scar double crossed him. In addition, if Janja defected to Jasiri's side, it would screw over the rest of Scar's army, and he might bicker and fight with them and partake in power squabbles among them but he was still loyal and couldn't bring himself to do that to the army. And after Scar tries to burn him and his clan, he no longer can say whether the rest of the army would give him that courtesy. He doesn't know whether Scar consulted the rest of them, or how much they know about what happened. He's sure the skinks and Ushari knew. Scar always told them everything. And at the end of the day he wasn't too surprised even if the betrayal still stung(because they had still been teammates at the end of the day); they had never had a good relationship. But the other three leaders? Sure, Kiburi and him had a strained relationship, but they had fought together in the army since pretty much the beginning. Reirei and him always fought in petty squabbles, but they'd also had each other's backs when it counted. And Mzingo? The thought that he had been in on it was what really hurt, because Janja could at least understand it if the other two had known. He couldn't do that with Mzingo. So he needed to know.

On the other hand, there's Mzingo. Scar had only told him that they would burn the royal family and the Guard, and that Janja and his clan would make sure the Guard was in the right place for the plan to work. And after Janja defected, Scar told the army that Janja had betrayed them by allying with Jasiri and, by association, the Pridelanders. When Janja asked him if he had known about the murder attempt, if Mzingo had been in on the plan, Mzingo was horrified. He hadn't known Janja had been backstabbed like that. That the fire he'd been told to drop on Pride Rock, that he'd been told was for the royal family and the Lion Guard, was also for the hyena he saw as his son. He hadn't known, and to make matters worse, he had believed Scar when Scar painted Janja as the one who was the backstabber. And Mzingo feels so incredibly guilty because he should have realized something was up, that Janja must have had a reason for joining up with the Pridelanders, but he believed Scar instead, who almost succeeded in having Janja killed.