#nostalgia max

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You know, it’s pretty fascinating that Inside Job is literally a story told from the perspective of the evil minions. The fact that everyone talks about murder, genocide, and controlling the government so casually and calmly, treating horrifically world altering events as office banter, abusing their power every now and then for entirely petty and self-serving reasons, and working for a corrupt evil organization that controls most of the world. Inside Job is set in a dystopia and we see the show through the everyday lives of the villains.
Like, the Gang are all quirky and funny, but, they’re also all kind of evil? Even Brett, who we usually think of as a harmless himbo, and he’s arguably the LEAST destructive out of everyone and tends to question his morality a lot (“I can never remember how evil we are”) is still perfectly willing to get his hands dirty and kill someone, given the moon episode where he stabs a man in the NUTS WITH A FLAG POLE and tosses a bunch of other guys into the vacuum of space. Brett has a body count yall
Reagan is obvious, she’s legit a supervillain, Glenn is perfectly willing to burn a town to the ground just because he feels like it (in The Brettfast Club, he kept a flamethrower in case their cover was blown), Gigi constantly refers to having legit killed people (she mentions using acid to get rid of a body) in the past and covering for corrupt celebrities and politicians. Andre seems harmless on the surface, but he mentions having created “as many cures as diseases” which means his body count could legit be in the THOUSANDS, if not MILLIONS. No wonder he uses drugs.
Funnily enough, despite how much of an asshole he is, this makes Myc the least terrible person by default, since he hasn’t actually killed anybody as far as we know. He’s mostly just along for the ride and uses his position to engage in self-serving stuff lol.

Adding onto this, I also realized that Reagan and Brett (the main characters) both have moments where they act even more villainous than usual, which may or may not act as foreshadowing for how both could become even WORSE somehow, or act as a way for both to have some self reflection in season 2.

Reagan becoming more of a villain when Rafe Masters was stalking her is a bit more of a debatable example. Rafe was incessantly stalking her and being sexist, and was generally pretty nuts, but Reagan’s idea of faking her death and accidentally leading him into a wild goose chase and eventually chaining him to a table in a freaking volcano to kill him with a laser is perhaps the most stereotypical “villain” thing she could ever do. There are a lot more references to Reagan being an eventual villain; other characters describe her as being a future supervillain, she offhandedly mentions wanting to rule the world, and Robo-Reagan is directly a version of Reagan without any self-doubt who becomes controlling and murderous.

Perhaps this means that Reagan has the potential to become a “true” villain not just by being morally bankrupt and petty like she usually is, but if she were to be more like her DAD; entirely self-serving without even the excuse of good intentions to defend herself. At least current Reagan has the excuse of being SOMEWHAT well intentioned (at least compared to the rest of Cognito Inc) and not being a total monster. Her villainy is understandable and (as many viewers can say) kind of relatable. What’d make her go from villain to supervillain is losing the last shreds of a conscience that she still has and letting her ego and pride get the better of her.

Reagan being a potential super villain has been discussed by fans a lot, but I personally think Brett is just as capable of the same thing. After all, both of them serve as each other’s foils.

Brett is unique in the cast that he doesn’t FEEL like a villain (and sometimes fans of the show tend to baby him a little and forget he’s part of the shadow government) and he’s the most friendly out of everyone and questioning of his morality, but the one time where he becomes a true antagonist is during the Brettfast Club, where he gets transformed into Nostalgia Max. Unlike Reagan, who becomes a worse person when she loses touch with her empathy and becomes prideful, Brett becomes more villainous as he loses touch with reality and becomes more desperate to be loved (or the illusion of it); Nostalgia Max tries to cultivate a family that flat out doesn’t exist, all in the name of recovering from decades-old trauma that he never fully healed from and, in many ways, refuses to acknowledge the depths of.

While this version of Brett was under the influence of the Nostalgia substance and probably wasn’t in full control of his actions, the episode highlighted how far Brett is willing to go to stay in a fantasy; right before he was transformed, he was trying to use the substance to brainwash his friends into staying with him in Still Valley. That sounds cute and harmless, but if he had gone through with it, than it could have left them all brain damaged and potentially blow everyone’s cover, or create a bunch of nostalgia-empowered lunatics and inadvertently cause more trouble.

Brett becomes an ACTUAL villain when he’s unable to resolve his trauma and, in his efforts to preserve what he thinks is healthy, ends up being toxically positive and putting others in danger inadvertently. Basically, a truly villainous Brett would be someone who, after years of not receiving validation for his people-pleasing, might decide that the only way to receive the affection he craves would be to TAKE it for himself, consequences be damned.

Basically, the difference between a truly “supervillain” Brett and Reagan is that “supervillain” Brett hurts people as a side-effect of his goal to shut out any pain he suffers, while “supervillain” Reagan is aware of others being harmed but doesn’t give a shit because the end goal is her own pride being maintained.