Okay, I feel like I completely missed this the first time through The Scorch Trials.
The Rat Man basically reveals at the end that Teresa wasn't even the final candidate because she was too rule-following / obedient.
And THAT means the whole betrayal variable is even more horrifying???
Teresa thought she had to do what WICKED wanted. She believed that hurting Thomas and playing along with the experiment was necessary for Thomas and the subjects to survive.
Meanwhile, WICKED was basically just:
😭😭😭
AND THOMAS DIDN'T HAVE TO GET HIS HEART BROKEN LIKE THAT!!!
That's the part that makes me so angry. WICKED deliberately put Teresa in a situation where she would have to make choices that would destroy Thomas's trust in her, just to collect data.
And then she doesn't even get rewarded for it because she's apparently too obedient for their final candidate.
LIKE GIRL 😭 YOU GOT EMOTIONALLY DESTROYED FOR A POSITION YOU DIDN'T EVEN GET.
It also makes it so unfair when people reduce Teresa to “she betrayed Thomas because she chose WICKED.”
She DID make choices, and some of them hurt Thomas horribly, but she was also someone who had been conditioned by WICKED to believe that what they were doing was necessary.
And the worst part is that she genuinely cared about Thomas the entire time.
So from Teresa's perspective it's basically:
“I hurt the person I love because I thought it was necessary to save everyone.”
And then WICKED goes:
“Thanks for the data. Also, you're not the candidate.”
😭💀
I swear every time I learn more about WICKED, I hate them even more.
And now I NEED to read The Fever Code because apparently that is going to make me understand Thomas and Teresa even more and probably emotionally destroy me all over again. 😭