From my
view, if you’re going to talk about Into
the Badlands, you really have to get to the relationship between Sunny and
Quinn at some point, and I can’t help doing it sooner rather than later. So fascinating, so twisted, and infinitely
watchable (a few major season 1 spoilers.)
When you
first look at Sunny and Quinn’s relationship, it’s easy to think of Sunny as
Quinn’s number two, his regent and most trusted clipper. Quinn values Sunny’s input on matters of
strategy and frequently seeks out his opinion on next moves, and it’s obvious
that Ryder, Quinn’s own son, is jealous of Sunny’s favor/respect in Quinn’s
eyes. And in Quinn’s (very twisted) way,
he does kind of view Sunny as an heir of sorts, as his pride and joy, his
greatest success.
But
there’s one thing you can never forget:
a clipper may have more perks and a great illusion of autonomy than a
cog, but Quinn owns Sunny. Sunny is Quinn’s slave who’s been trained to
kill for him since he was a child, and it’s usually in the moments when you almost get lulled into thinking of them
from a father/son perspective that Quinn asserts his ownership and you remember
that Sunny is actually the property of a madman. When Sunny is doing as he’s told and proving
his value, Quinn is all smiles and conviviality, but the second Sunny tries to
argue, he’s put in his place in the most devastating ways. Quinn butchers
the parents of Sunny’s secret lover with
Sunny’s own sword when Sunny refuses to follow orders and do it himself,
and he then forces Sunny to torch their
house with the bodies inside. When
Sunny is out of Quinn’s favor, Quinn takes a malicious delight in breaking him
down to remind him just what the dynamic is between them.
As a
viewer, this can seem crazy. By this
point, we’ve seen what Sunny can do, and even though Quinn is a very talented
fighter as well, it seems like a foregone conclusion that Sunny could wipe the
floor with him (and even if things went the other way, it’s tempting to believe
that Sunny would rather die trying than serve that monster a minute
longer.) And to be sure, season 1 is in
large part about Sunny breaking from Quinn once and all, about the stakes
raising to the point where Sunny can
go against Quinn in a big way, but the stakes have to be insanely high before Sunny is prepared to make this move. And this is what gets me most about their
relationship: Sunny’s often subservient,
seemingly unshakable loyalty to Quinn despite how obviously terrible he
is.
It is
more than just fealty to a baron in exchange for the benefits/protections that
comes with. Again, Sunny’s abilities in
a fight are almost superhuman at this point, and he could easily protect
himself and Veil from whatever might come at him. I get that there are barriers to leaving the
Badlands, and Sunny’s ultimate goal for them would be freedom rather than
living in hiding, but that’s not really
why it takes so long for him to pull the trigger on trying to leave, even more
so on facing Quinn in a real fight.
Instead, it’s about Sunny’s genuine, self-destructive devotion to Quinn. After all, when Sunny refuses to kill Veil’s
parents for him, Quinn holds a blade to Sunny’s neck and Sunny doesn’t move a
muscle. At that point in the series,
Sunny won’t follow this order, but he also won’t raise a hand againt Quinn, in
defense of Veil’s parents or his own
life.
That’s
seriously messed-up, and it’s all rooted in Sunny’s many years under
Quinn. Like I said, he was “rescued” in
the wastelands and brought to Quinn as a child, where he was groomed to become one
of the greatest clippers the Badlands has ever seen. And along the way, all that time, there was
Quinn feeding him lies about how he saved Sunny, cared for Sunny, took Sunny
from an unwanted nobody and fashioned him into the formidable man he is
today. From the outside looking in, it’s
clear that these are all ludicrous lies, but Sunny has had a steady diet of
this BS ever since he was a kid, and that changes a person.
It helps
if you try to view it as similar to the dynamic between Agu and the Commandant
in Beast of No Nation. Even though the Commandant is a disgusting,
manipulative human being who conscripts children into his “army,” that’s not
how Agu sees it because the Commandant is a master at controlling the
narrative, and so is Quinn. You were lost and I found you. You were left to die and I saved you. You were powerless, defenseless, and I gave
you the tools you need to protect yourself from any foe. You’re like a son to me, more so than my own
son, and I’m the only one who cares about you.
In light of how much I love you, you’ll fight for me, won’t you? After all I’ve done for you, don’t you owe it
to me? That’s a powerful, heady
stream of lies to fill a vulnerable child’s head with, and in a way, it’s just
as disturbing to see to long-term effects of that manipulation when the child
has long since become a man who would be more than skilled enough to break free
but has been conditioned to the point that he can scarcely imagine such an
idea. That’s what I see when I look at Sunny and Quinn.
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