u/YoureWelcomeM8

A lot of the characters meet pretty bitter ends, and a lot of how their stories end is built off their characterization and their placement in the world, their faults and mistakes mixing with who and what's around them both contributing to where they end up.

Juan Bolsa feels like he's 100% the latter and little of the former. He meets his end because he's an essential part of Eladio's cartel, but his moments don't extend beyond him playing the role of a pragmatic, professional, and logical arm of the cartel.

His relationship to Gus is purely business, but quietly adversarial due to Gus's actions behind the scenes, which Bolsa seems to subtly recognize. Bolsa never overtly acknowledges that though, nor reflects on the position Gus puts him in from his perspective. We don't really get to see him speak on what he thinks of Gus, engage with other characters on personal terms, reflect on his place in the cartel, or understand his motivations or personality beyond him being a levelheaded businessman allied to the cartel. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just that he moreso served a plot function than acted as a true character in the world of the show, but I feel like he's somewhat of a missed opportunity for something more.

I feel like his character and death had a lot of opportunity to speak on Gus's faults and who Gus is. Bolsa genuinely wants stability and profit. Gus claims he wants stability and profit. But really, Gus is willing to burn everything down to settle a personal score. Bolsa slowly realizing that and speaking on it as a foil who never truly hated or hurt Gus personally would've made him a great foil for exposing that nature to Gus.

His death already speaks somewhat to Gus's ultimate mission being revenge against Eladio and Hector with any means to that end when you read into it, so having that subtext brought forward would've been a great callout on Gus's nature. Maybe its the case that Bolsa never truly understood the ramification of Max's death, and only understood Gus and his actions in business terms, but even if you preserve that I think it opens a similar opportunity. If Bolsa never never really understood Gus at all, I think his death still has an opportunity to say a lot about who Gus kills and why.

TLDR: Gus's actions were never purely business, and I think Juan Bolsa acknowledging that or being a stronger personal character in the plot would have elevated the moral grayness of that beat.

Masculinity focuses on providing these things, but discourages wanting them. Many men feel it's at odds with being desirable, valued, or "masculine".

“If 50% of all humans worship Cthulhu, the ritual will summon Cthulhu and he’ll kill all nonbelievers. Do you choose to worship Cthulhu?”

You’re not saving yourself by not pressing blue, you’re actively creating the problem for no real reason beyond believing more than half of people will also try to create the problem. It’s effectively mass panic disguised as logic, when in reality the only thing causing people to die is people pressing red out of fear.

Here’s the thing though: We live in a society. Unironically, and our laws exist to punish flagrant willingness to cause death in service of a personal need. Society is more in danger from the button presser than the other way around. You can only contribute to society being in danger by pressing the red button. And the red button is the only choice that’s capable of causing suffering. Not only would the hypothetical button be made illegal to press in most places around the world, in most places, including the US, pressing the button IS illegal.

1. Reckless endangerment: You’re consciously disregarding a substantial risk to human life. You know choosing blue may cause people to die if enough press it, and you chose it anyway.
2. Criminal negligence: You’re participating in a deadly mechanism despite foreseeable danger. This is true regardless of assumption about the outcome.
3. Manslaughter / Attempted Homicide: Knowingly contributing to a collective lethal act. Attempting to further one’s survival is not justification when an alternate course of action is available and no clear and present danger is directly established.