What is Jack's Fate?

There was a thread on this topic way back in the day, this has been on my mind so I figure I would try to start a new discussion.

Jack's fate is made ambiguous by the game. I think he's the only named character whose fate is left ambiguous. I'm pretty sure every other character is confirmed to be alive or dead.

Let's start with what we know: the last time we see Jack is in the Plantation when you visit the Jail as you first arrive. By the time you are throw in Jail, Sue and Jack are "taken away" by the Doctor. Sue is summoned by Misery at the Black Space and escapes with Kazuma, but Jack is nowhere to be seen.

Theory 1: Is Jack an enraged Mimiga?
This is a theory that some in the old thread brought up, that Jack is one of the enraged Mimiga you see on the balcony. This seems unlikely to me. Jack wears the most clothes out of any Mimiga, with a shirt, hat, and glasses, so surely an enraged version of Jack would be recognizable. However, he does wear a green shirt that does look similar to the ones the Ravils wear. However, this might not actually be the worst fate for Jack. As Kazuma says in the Egg Corridor, destroying the core caused enraged Mimiga to turn back to normal (I believe we see a version of this happening as Sue transforms back to normal after the Undead Core is defeated) Because of this, if Jack became an enraged Mimiga, he could have been turned back after the Core was defeated and escaped with Itoh and Momorin. Side Note: I do believe that the Enraged Mimiga we see on the Balcony and up escaping. We see Santa and Chako escape, so surely all of the generic Mimiga at the King's Table also escape with them. Because of this, it is not a big stretch to believe that the Enraged Mimiga escape with them, which is why we don't see them at all after the Undead Core is defeated.)

The evidence against the theory that Jack turned into an enraged Mimiga and then escaped is that he does not appear in any of the credits. They show Santa and Chako in the scene where Sue and Itoh get transformed back to humans, and if Jack survived, why wouldn't he show up there?

Theory 2: Jack is alive.
This theory basically is just that Jack is alive and stayed on the island. The Doctor was surely busy with other stuff, like creating the Red Crystal, and wouldn't have any reason to just kill a random Mimiga. The best evidence I have for this is the fact that Cave Story doesn't seem like it would kill a character off screen, and there's some precedent for this. When Booster falls in the labyrinth and you talk to him, he dies. If you don't talk to him, he survives. Why? Because you don't actually see Booster die when you ignore him, you can just assume he survives. Because of this we can follow the logic that if you don't literally see a character die, he/she is not dead. I have one other piece of insane evidence for this theory. We know that at least SOME Mimiga return to Mimiga village, because we see the Mimiga graveyard in the credits with no mushrooms and flowers blooming. That wouldn't just happen on its own, so we know that Mimiga return to the village. And who's the only Mimiga who does anything with the graveyard? Jack, who protects it at the beginning of the game. So if you want, you can think that Jack is the one who fixed up the Mimiga graveyard. However, this is a pretty big stretch, and it is not hard evidence.

Theory 3: Jack is dead.
This theory is that Jack was killed by the Doctor and is now dead. compared to the others, the only real evidence for this if that Jack does not appear in the credits. However, Mahin and Kanpachi don't appear in the credits, and no reasonable person would assume they are dead. Another version of this theory is that Jack got turned into an enraged Mimiga and WE killed him, as many players will defeat the enraged Mimiga on the balcony. However, they respawn, and you could always just do a play though where you don't kill any of them.

So yeah, I do personally think that Jack is alive, as even if he was turned into an enraged Mimiga, he would have turned back after the core was destroyed. What do you think?

 

Cave Story 2 : Jack is running Mimiga village now (Would honestly feel satisfying for him as a character, to take King's place and try filling the shoes that Arthur and King previously filled)
...Isn't Jack in secret santa? wasn't that game canon or something?

I think there's a possibility that Jack may have been another character at some point in development, like one of the Grasstown or plantation mimiga, but then he was made to have a more distinct purpose. Or he was meant to have something to do with the scrapped Wind Fortress (which probably would've had more to do with the actual plot of the game in an actual CS-integrated version rather than as a challenge)
So either another character got the end that was supposed to go to Jack, or Jack was meant to get a proper ending but it was scrapped alongside other content and Pixel decided it wasn't important enough to try fitting it in with other stuff.

There's also the possibility that Jack did have a proper ending as a character but it might've made the story too cramped. Because the story gets VERY busy after the waterway, it might've just been too much to write about. So it might've just been better to leave it up in the air.

 

People are always "where's Jack" but never "how's Jack".

Honestly, I wonder what happened to Mahin and Sandaime, since they're just about as relevant as Jack was throughout the whole game.

 

Honestly, I wonder what happened to Mahin and Sandaime, since they're just about as relevant as Jack was throughout the whole game.

Since we see a cleaned up Mimiga Village graveyard in the credits, I think it's safe to assume a number of Mimiga return to Mimiga Village. It's safe to assume Kanpachi, Mahin, and Sandaime do return to the village. I like to assume that a number of the generic Mimiga in the plantation return with them in to increase the Village's population.

...Isn't Jack in secret santa? wasn't that game canon or something?

I'll have to replay Secret Santa to check that out. If he is in the game, I think that can be used a pretty solid evidence that Jack is alive and in Mimiga Village.

 

secret santa also contains king alive and well, so idk, it's either a prequel or just not canon

as for jack's fate... given pixel went to the trouble of showing him in the jail, i wonder if there was something planned and he just forgot to add it in - could be he was meant to show up in the balcony cages or something, along with chie/chacko/santa? it's sorta in the same category as the colons for me*, just more baffling as there was evidentially some attempt to show where he wound up post-labyrinth...

(*which is probably one of my biggest genuine issues with the game's plot - as much as i respect that pixel's writing style is vague and he doesn't care to fill in the details, the colons were important to curly, and to have them vanish with no hints as to their fate - outside of the disproven balcony mimiga theory - feels kinda unsatisfying, like... would it have been that hard to just put them in one of the plantation jails???)

Cave Story 2 : Jack is running Mimiga village now (Would honestly feel satisfying for him as a character, to take King's place and try filling the shoes that Arthur and King previously filled)

this is basically my headcanon, though - that he survived and took over leadership duties animal crossing-style spinoff starring jack when

 

You did a good job of summarizing the main known and previously discussed details surrounding this topic in the opening post, so there's not much to add. I've always assumed that Jack survived. Obviously, we don't see him alive in the credits, but you make a really good point about Pixel's style in Cave Story, which is that for the identified characters, it's not like Pixel to have them die off-screen. That's a very interesting theory you have about Jack being the one who planted all those flowers in the Mimiga Graveyard. That actually makes a lot of sense, and I like that theory a lot, even though we can't prove it.

I am a little bit more warm toward the theory about Jack possibly being one of the enraged Mimigas on the Balcony. I don't find your points about dissimilar clothing to carry much weight, given that the ravils are all the same sprite set, and the big rabid Mimiga is just re-using enraged Igor's sprite set. There was a theory that was popular for some years that Igor either didn't actually die in the Egg Corridor or was somehow resurrected into enraged form on the Balcony. But the far more likely explanation is that that's some Mimiga other than Igor, and Pixel was just re-using that sprite. If Jack was a more central character, I'd be a bit more confident in saying that the generic sprite instead of a unique and clearly identifiable sprite is evidence that it's not Jack, but given that he's not as crucial as, say, Sue, King, and several others, I think it could go either way. If we were to go with that theory about him being an enraged Mimiga on the Balcony, then I guess the player could theoretically create a bunch of different branch endings that aren't distinctly recognized by the actual game itself, but nonetheless reflect a different outcome for Jack.

More than anything, I always assumed Jack survived because having him take over as the new number one in the village seemed thematically appropriate in the wake of King's dramatic death, as YoshiPilot also alluded to in the OP. Given the lack of an on-screen death, this seemed like the natural logical conclusion.

 

I've always assumed that Jack survived.

Yeah, TBH I never really thought that Jack dying was a reasonable interpretation, until I saw this (Otherwise good) video

that randomly claims Jack to be dead like it is an undisputed fact at around the 8:00 mark. This got me thinking about whether we actually know if he's alive or not. I mean, he is the only character we see in the plantation that just disappears and never comes back.