Trigun Episode 23 Discussion

The number of people in this thread hating Vash for "corrupting" Wolfwood and leading him to his death is honestly shocking to me.

I think it's fairly clear from following Wolfwood's character that he has a good soul. He's the kind of person that would have loved to be like Vash or Rem. It's the world around him that has corrupted him. He says himself how much he hates this planet. He's never enjoyed killing, but the world has always forced him to.

The big culmination of this is when Wolfwood shoots and kills a child. How can any of you have missed this? The utter remorse and sorrow he feels for shooting a young, impressionable child, compounded by the regret when he learned that it might not have even been necessary, was the straw that broke him. He hates to kill. It's against his nature, but the world has made him refuse his nature and kill anyways.

When he's then asked to kill the only person who has ever exemplified his good nature in the flesh, he comes to a final conflict of self. He can choose to succumb to the world, kill the man who defines his own nature, and kill those who come for him. Instead, however, he chooses the opposite. Even after killing for all his life, even after killing a child, he finally embraces his own nature and genuinely puts his trust into Vash.

When he refuses to kill his teacher, that's not him succumbing to fate like a weakling. That's him finally embracing who he has always wanted to be. He won.

His final confession, to me, reads like this: His only regrets were not living his own way sooner, so that the world could be closer to his peaceful ideal, and that he has to die so soon after finally realizing what it is he wants to be. He's happy to have finally had this victory, but he's sad that he won't go on to see the aftermath. He acknowledges that he has perhaps been doomed from the start. It's a tragedy, but it's bittersweet. His good soul finally shined through, even if only for a moment, even if only at the very end. Wolfwood won.