Is Jason an undercover cop who betrays Lucia? We tested the evidence
The theory rests on a handful of trailer moments and one screenshot. Read at full resolution, that screenshot says close to the opposite of what it's quoted for.
By Wes Calloway
Method: the screenshot the theory is built on, read at native resolution rather than at thumbnail size.
Nothing in this article is confirmed. Rockstar hasn't published a plot summary, character arcs or an ending, and it won't before 19 November. This is the most popular fan theory about the game, and we've tried to test it instead of just repeating it.
Here's how it goes. Jason isn't a criminal. He's an undercover police officer or federal agent, planted inside Leonida's drug economy, and at some point he turns on Lucia and puts her back in prison.
The six claims holding it up
| Claim | Where it comes from | Holds up? |
|---|---|---|
| Jason is ex-military | Rockstar's own character description | Yes, this is official |
| A prison officer seems to recognise him | Trailer 2 prison sequence | Partly, see below |
| Somebody asks whether he's a fed | Reported dialogue from the trailers | Can't verify, reported only |
| His trousers match Miami-Dade SWAT | Fan comparison to published uniform guidelines | Weak |
| A masked officer in a raid resembles him | Trailer 1 | Weak |
| Lucia holds a gun on him in a screenshot | Official screenshot | No, and this is the interesting one |
The screenshot everybody cites is being described wrongly
The betrayal half of the theory leans almost entirely on one official image, usually summed up as *Lucia holding a gun behind Jason's back while they hug*.
We looked at it at native resolution, and that description gets three separate things wrong.
The gun isn't behind his back. The pistol's in front of him, flat against his chest, held muzzle up. They're both facing the camera and neither one's behind the other.
They aren't hugging. They're standing close and looking in different directions. Behind them, out of focus, there's a police helicopter in the air and a police boat on the water. It's staged like two people who've just been found, and there's nothing tender about it.
And her finger's off the trigger. It's laid straight along the frame of the pistol, which is how you deliberately hold a gun you aren't about to fire. Somebody chose that in a modelling package. A character about to shoot the man next to her would have the muzzle pressed into him and a finger on the trigger, and this image has neither.
Take the shot for what's actually in it and it says she's armed and ready, and he isn't the target.
The prison scenes show a release
Trailer 2 has a run of shots at a prison: a watchtower behind razor wire, an office with a guard behind the desk, somebody walking out through the gate in a shirt reading Let Freedom Reign, and Lucia at the fence, released.
Every one of those frames is in our frame browser, and what they show is somebody getting out. The theory needs the guard's recognition of Jason to be sinister. The frames show a prison doing what prisons do at the end of a sentence, on the same day the trailer shows Lucia leaving one.
The dialogue claims are a different matter. We can read images at native resolution, but we can't verify a line of speech from a still. So the claim that somebody asks Jason whether he's a fed goes in here as reported, sourced to the outlets that transcribed it, and nothing more.
The case against is stronger
He meets her at the gate. Trailer 2 shows the two of them back together when Lucia's released. An officer running her as an informant wouldn't turn up to collect her personally in front of a prison camera.
You can kill civilians as Jason. He's a playable character in a Grand Theft Auto game with a wanted system built on evidence. If the protagonist's secretly police, either he's exempt from that system, which would be strange, or he's committing crimes on camera that would end the operation.
Ex-military isn't ex-police. Rockstar says Jason served in the Army and came back into the orbit he'd left. That's the series explaining why he can shoot, which it's done before, and it's a long way from a badge.
The trousers are trousers. The uniform comparison relies on a colour of workwear you can buy in every surplus shop in Florida.
What we'd actually bet on
Not the undercover theory. The bits of it that survive a look at the footage are the two weakest ones, and the strongest piece of evidence, the screenshot, points the other way once you look at it properly.
What the material does back up is that this ends badly. The first trailer opens with Lucia in a correctional facility answering a question about why she's there. The second shows her leaving one. The official art has her armed and alert with police closing in behind. Rockstar's built a story about two people whose relationship is a tracked system and more than a cutscene, in a series that's never once let a partnership end well.
Jason doesn't need to be a cop for that to hurt.
One line of dialogue would settle it
That, or the game itself. Rockstar has never confirmed a plot point in response to a fan theory, and there's no reason to think it'll start now.
Until then it stays filed as a rumour on this site, because that's what it is. If it turns out to be right, this page will say so.
Who are you more looking forward to playing?
Rockstar has not said how switching between them works.
Sources
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