I rather think the narrative has to, although that doesn't necessarily mean John will accept it.

When we see the very beginning of his story, John is afraid. He's afraid that if he admits to any kind of failure, he will become unlovable - that love is something that can be earned and lost, that forgiveness doesn't truly exist. The path to becoming a world-annihilating horror is paved with the belief that to be fallible is to be unlovable.

John first meets the nun worrying that she will accuse him of being the antichrist, and watches her die after she has told him that "fear doesn't help us achieve a state of grace; it deafens the heart". Which is all rather 1 John 4:18: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear." 1 John is one of the New Testament letters, maybe by the same John as the gospel and the apocalypse, depending on who you ask. And it's about how you can defeat the antichrist with the power of friendship recognise truth because it is characterised by love.

One of Paul's first actions is to offer the real possibility of forgiveness to Ianthe: a forgiveness that undoes the metaphysical violence of her actions and could restore both her and Babs. Paul calls themself "the love perfected by death", which is an Oscar Wilde reference, but also rather loops back to 1 John, and "perfect love casts out fear."

And this idea that metaphysical violence can be undone, that it is love, not fear, that gives power, fits with what we know about Alecto the Ninth, in which it would seem there will be some kind of Harrowing of Hell. One of the fundamental aspects of the Harrowing of Hell in Catholic thought is that Jesus liberates Adam and Eve from the underworld, restores them to wholeness with God, and defeats death. John and Alecto are Adam and Eve figures in a number of ways, and it's interesting to wonder what that might mean for them in the end game of the series.

It feels like all of these thematic threads come together to suggest that John might still have the possibility of redemption - whatever that might mean in this series. But it might be just that: a possibility.

An end that might satisfy on both options for the poll could be one where John is genuinely offered some possibility of redemption or forgiveness, and cannot or will not accept it, either because he is so blinded by his desire for vengeance, or by the strength of his belief that he is unforgivable.

I think this is a great summary of what might happen but I wanted to offer another thought about John's character.

The more I've learned about the story, the more I equate John's character to that of an inversion of the prophet Jonah. In the book of Jonah, God tasks him with going to the people of Nineveh and telling them that God is going to destroy the city for being so vile and wicked. Jonah refuses running away from God, going on a ship, getting eaten by a whale before eventually relenting and going to Nineveh and telling them that if they don't repent that God will strike them down. But, wildly, the people of Nineveh change their ways and God spares them. This pisses off Jonah who skulks about it and the book kinda abruptly ends. The story is interpreted as showing that God's mercy and grace extends to everyone, even people who Jonah does not want to forgive.

I think that's what the narrative is banking towards: forgiveness for the seemingly unworthy. But I think that whether or not he is capable of accepting such a forgiveness is the question. Nigh every character in this series has done some genuinely fucked up shit: Ianthe killing Babs, Harrow tormenting Gideon through their childhood, Gideon killing Crux, they have all sinned but the simple truth is that they are all capable of earning grace from the reader.

Love and it's horrors can absolve a myriad of sins...

At least they're in Italy though

(tags by @unashamedly-enthusiastic)

Is this from Muppet's Goncharov?

It is! Only the directors cut though.

thank you for that