But that is neither here nor there. By the time Old Joe is ready to pull the trigger, we beg him not to for the myriad of reasons Johnson has provided. Our understanding of identity forces us to view Cid as innocent, our affection for the boy as he exists makes us protective, and our love and sympathy for Sara tells us she can save this world far more effectively than any firearm.
But it is, in fact, a firearm that saves the day. Young Joe’s blunderbuss, discharged at his own heart in a split-second decision, erases Old Joe from existence and saves Sara, thus preventing Cid from ever growing into the Rainmaker.
It is the trickiest moment in the film from a moral standpoint. Joe’s actions do great amounts of good – not just for Cid and Sara, but for the future population that will be spared the Rainmaker’s terror – but to achieve that good, he engages in the same morally reputable act of violence that Old Joe tried to accomplish. He kills the source to remove the very possibility of the eventuality. It may be suicide, but he is still taking the life of an innocent – himself – to stop the actions of the guilty.
‘Innocent’ is obviously not the easiest term to apply to Young Joe, as he is a paid assassin and junkie. But he is, by the film’s own argumentation, innocent of the crime at hand. His conscious is not Old Joe’s conscious, and just as Cid cannot be held accountable for the actions of the Rainmaker, Young Joe should not be blamed for the actions of his older self.
There are complications, of course. Unlike Cid, Young Joe is many, many years past Tabula Rasa. The choices he has made, on his own, directly forge the path that ends in Old Joe’s killing spree. Becoming a looper in the first place makes the connection between Young and Old Joe much closer than the one between Cid and the Rainmaker, and one suspects that Young Joe is at least partially aware of this when he pulls the trigger. He had his shot at life. Cid has not. Simple pragmatism makes the choice clear.
Pragmatism is, after all, the pervading factor in the finale, as the only possible way for Young Joe to save Sara is to commit suicide. It has already been established what a pathetically short range the blunderbuss has; Old Joe is using a precision weapon at point blank range; Sara has no way to defend herself; and Cid has passed out from his gunshot wound. Taking logical stock of the situation, turning the blunderbuss on himself is the only way Young Joe can stop the Rainmaker’s creation.
This should not, however, stop us from analyzing the complex morality of the scenario. It is, I believe, Johnson’s intention for us to leave the theatre feeling extremely uneasy about Joe’s final decision. The day has been saved by the very same action we came, over the course of the film, to view as evil. It is an inherently messy – brilliantly messy, one might say – conclusion.
One can speculate for days about all the emotions that compel Joe to pull the trigger – self-loathing, nobility, love, fear, etc. – but one thing is for sure: By doing something so relatively selfless, Joe is not nearly as hopeless as he may believe himself to be. He has given his life to shield others, and achieved redemption in the process. Were he to continue living, this action proves he could be a good man. The capacity exists within him. He could be a good lover to Sara, and a good father figure to Cid. Pulling the trigger erases Old Joe in more ways than one. Not only will that violent, bitter man cease to exist in a literal sense, but he shall also disappear philosophically. The conscious mind that could act with such purity of heart could never develop into a raging killing machine.
By committing suicide, Joe has resolved his disparate identities into one strong conscious, formed from the best of Young and Old Joe; the young man’s compassion and the old man’s strength, together, for those final moments, as one.
Follow author Jonathan Lack on Twitter @JonathanLack.