From the very beginning, the story of Furiosa is one filled with grief, pain, and loss. As we find the jaded road warrior getting constantly tested by the brutal wasteland in the worst ways possible from a young age, moments of respite seem increasingly sparse and limited. Getting entangled in the cycle of violence and longing for her homeland ever since her mother’s death, there has been really only one phase in Furiosa’s life when she could have dared to hope for a better future for herself, and that was when Praetorian Jack came into her life.
A standout character in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Praetorian Jack shares certain similarities with Max Rockatansky as an everyman protagonist while being distinctive enough to form a separate identity of his own. Jack’s relationship to Furiosa contributes to certain growth in her character by providing her with some closure, which we would like to discuss briefly in this write-up.
Spoilers Ahead
Jack as a Mentor to Furiosa
Narrative progression wise, viewers initially don’t get to know much about Praetorian Jack, aside from the fact that he is a revered war commander of Immortan Joe and has survived a number of road wars using his wit, guile, and expertise in combat. Which is why he gets the responsibility of driving the War Rig, the hulking war machine of Immortan Joe, and gets assigned to do supply runs to Gastown and Bullet Farm. Actor Tom Burke had opined that a part of the reason Jack took on the dangerous role was because he missed his past life as an adventurer, hinting at an intriguing background for the character.
Furiosa gets acquainted with Jack while serving the role of one of the mechanics of the War Rig, and Jack quickly assesses that the taciturn, talented operative of Joe’s crew who is hiding her identity is indeed someone exceptional. The audience gets a real insight into Jack’s character when, despite easily thwarting Furiosa’s attempt to hijack and escape with the War Rig, he offers to teach her essential survival skills, solely driven by his altruistic motive to help her. For Furiosa, who has to mold herself anew just to survive the hellhole of the wasteland, the prospect of someone showing her kindness was unthinkable. For someone who had held back all the pent-up frustration and feelings in her silence, Furiosa opens up to Jack as she puts her trust in him. She lets Jack know about her past, her home, the Green Place, and her people, the Many Mothers, and Jack shares his wish to reunite her with her birthplace.
In a lot of ways, Jack is the archetypal upstanding, chivalrous samaritan—someone who possesses a strong moral character and doesn’t let the depravity of the world get to them at any cost. As Jack reveals more about his past and from the backstory formed up by actor Tom Burke, we get to know that Jack’s parents, who had served in the military before the world went to dystopian hell, were acquainted with Immortan Joe (back when he was still a sane person, Colonel Joseph Moore). Jack’s parents, whose simplicity and goodness of character were later inculcated in Jack, presumably lost their lives in their efforts to uphold their noble values, and for Jack, it became a lifelong mission to honor their memories. After meeting Furiosa, Jack surmises that he can respect the legacy of his parents by helping a displaced, tortured soul like her, which is more than what he can ask from the life of drudgery he has been through.
Jack’s influence and unwavering support help Furiosa get in touch with her humanity—something that was lost as her days in the Citadel were spent in silence. The more Furiosa shares her mind with Jack, the more she re-discovers her true self, which she left behind at Green Place years ago.
Is Jack Dead?
However, being exceptional in a world ruled by madness and chaos has its own morbid reward, which Jack realizes too late as, while helping Furiosa escape to the Green Place, he gets captured alongside her at the hands of Dementus and gets brutally tortured to death. For Furiosa, this incident acts as a stern reminder of the fact that in the struggle for survival, morality and humanity are fool’s errands, which only serve to shackle one with emotional baggage. She becomes the Imperator, the vicious, fierce angel of vengeance, and avenges the deaths of her loved ones by taking down Dementus once and for all. Despite all that, a glimmer of hope and humanity lives inside her, which honors the deaths of Mary and Jack, as symbolized by the tree she plants in Citadel, using Demantus’ body as its foundation.
Praetorian Jack’s journey came to an end with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he is completely out of the picture after all. In a similar vein to the Furiosa solo movie, the makers can opt for a venture showcasing the trials and tribulations faced by Jack in his past life, which eventually made him the military commander of Immortan Joe.
