Qs regarding 'Escape from Pain' ending
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Trigun
phaedrus000 — 12 years ago(March 15, 2014 12:33 AM)
I'm currently re-watching Trigun and just finished episode 11, "Escape from Pain". Now, I remember being bugged by the plot of this episode the first time I saw it. Seeing it again, however, didn't help me to understand it any better.
Julius is the son of the caravan owner. He is also the caravan's "pass" into the city of Fondrique. Julius wants to run away, but that would spell doom for the caravan. This moral conundrum is the center of the episode. In the end, Julius escapes anyway with the help of Vash, who shoots him with rubber bullets to make the men from the caravan think he is dead. At the close of the episode we get a little internal monologue from Wolfwood: "All along I thought there had to be a sacrifice. But there was another answer after all: Vash the Stampede."
How is this any different than if Julius had run away? How are the people in the caravan any less screwed? What difference does it make whether they think he's dead or alive but on the run? They need him to get into Fondrique and will perish without him. How has a sacrifice been avoided? What is it about this faked death that has saved the people of the caravan?
Can someone shed some light on this for me? It doesn't make sense to me.