#i don't assume this is a new song rec for anyone under the age of 16

[a9saga]

rae sremmurd - no flex zone // fuck it

[thefearisoneself]

Jax might be one of the creators?

I could be totally off base here but here's some thoughts I've been having

Our first introduction to Jax outside of his place in the intro is him asking Caine "Is this one of your NPCs, or is this a new sucker? Because if it's a new character, we're going to have to redo this whole theme song."

Now first off, since as far as we and assumably the characters know, Caine is an autonomous AI, the question of 'Is this one of your NPCs?' especially in the way it's said strikes me as if there's an oddly familiar relationship between the pair. If Jax did create Caine and this game his particular flavour of befuddlement at Caine's possible NPC generation would make more sense IMO.

Secondly, Jax seems weirdly invested in the theme song's completion? He doesn't seem annoyed they have to do it in general like Zooble, just that they have to do it AGAIN.

Moving away from this initial moment, he's also the one to suggest the adventure for Pomni. While he's annoyed with what the Gloinks end up being, he again isn't annoyed by the adventures themselves like Zooble, which you'd kind of assume a character like him might be, but if he was the one to set up the idea as the game's developer it makes some amount of sense he'd be amused by these antics because he made it like that to some extent, and he does seem to have fun on the adventures once they get into it as well.

Then there's of course him having keys to everywhere when Ragatha suggests he literally shouldn't be able to do that. Silly joke that the asshole character can do basically whatever he wants? Probably, but it could also be hold over from his abilities as the game's developer.

He's also easily the calmest and most put-together character of the cast, going with the flow of everything and having no real urgency to do anything but enjoy the ride and watch the other characters suffer at Caine's unintentional hands.

Somebody else also noted that Jax is weirdly upset about abstracted Kaufmo being put in the cellar. This could either imply they were friends, or that Jax has a personal grievance with what happens to abstracted people. If we assume it's the latter for the sake of this theory, I can imagine it would be pretty frustrating to have your playerbase go through this game-breaking bug and the only way to 'fix' it is just to sweep it under the rug.

Another thing that could easily be a throwaway but for the sake of this theory is Jax' last line in the pilot "Sheesh, lay off it, since when are you an expert on the digital world?" would also make sense if he's the actual creator of said digital world, it would be a personal offence to suggest Kinger knew more.

On top of everything, if we assume that Jax is telling the truth about having been there for years, that implies some interesting things. We know from Goose's Q&As/Tumblr/Twitter that Jax is the youngest member of the cast, being only 22, along with Zooble.

But Zooble is also the most recent character to join the circus before Pomni, while we don't know exactly how long before, it at least exempts them from the weirdness that this timeline creates in terms of Jax.

If Jax was stuck here for any more than 4 years, he wouldn't have even been an adult yet, which seems pretty suspicious given the ages of everyone else when they presumably would've gotten stuck in the program.

Of course headset aside we don't actually know the circumstances of how anyone else got stuck in the game or for how long, but it does give me pause to consider that detail about Jax.

So ultimately I could see it being revealed later down the line that Jax was some kind of tech revolution prodigy who created Caine and this world, but being young as he was had no real idea of the ramifications of what he created or ultimately how to manage it. I have no clue how he got trapped, or ultimately if he even is, but that's theorizing for when we hopefully have more to work with.

Regardless, take all this with a grain of salt, I fully recognize all of this could just be connections I'm making of nothing, but it's something that's been plaguing my mind and I'd be remissed if I just let it sit and never put it out there if it did end up being true in the end.

Hope you guys enjoy my massive overanalysis of Jax' actions in the pilot and hopefully we get to see more from this gang in like 3-6 months' time.