How the writing made Kenny look better than Jane

Disclaimers before I begin
1) I wrote this analysis post without bias, looking at how the writers wrote the scenes instead of how I personally feel.
2) You can feel free to disagree with me.

The point of this analysis post isn’t to argue that Kenny is only better than Jane because of the how the writers wanted people to feel (whether he’s a better person or not is subjective). The point is that every outcome involving Kenny is written to either 1) make him look better than Jane/seem like a generally good person, or 2) make you sympathize with him. Whereas, even if Jane does something that seems to be good, it ultimately makes her out to be the bad one. Again, this is from a writing standpoint. Regardless of whether or not you felt that way doesn’t change that it was written that way. I’ll prove this by making comparisons to each outcome in relation to these two. Hope you’re comfortable because this may take a while.

• Their deaths
  

Kenny’s death is given more screen time. When the knife gets stabbed through Jane’s chest, she screams, flails a bit, and dies (all of which happens in a few seconds). The first time you can shoot Kenny, it takes him roughly a minute and a half for him to die. And during that time, he talks about how sorry he is for making Clementine shoot him, how it was the right decision, how he wanted to die and he’s scared now that he’s going to. There’s even a possible parallel to Lee (though holding his hand) if Clem tells him that he’ll see Katjaa and Duck again.

Directly paralleling Lee is something the writers constantly do- and, to be honest, overdid- to touch the players emotions. So it’s clear they really wanted you to have that gut reaction with Kenny. Jane does get a similar Lee reference too, but I’ll get to that later. The point is, regardless of what you actually felt, the writers wanted you to feel like you’re losing another close friend/guardian.

Kenny’s second death, though shorter than the first one, was still longer than Jane’s and had more emotion put in just before you pull the trigger. Clementine looks distressed, Kenny is submissive to his fate and tells Clementine to do it, and there’s a short pause before she fires the gun. I think there should’ve been an option to shoot Jane after you find out what she did (just so you have a chance to kill both characters twice), but even if they did do that, knowing how they treated anything involving Jane during this section, it probably would’ve been shorter than Kenny’s second death and lack the same kind of emotions.

Kenny’s deaths are written to make you feel sorry for him, whereas Jane almost can’t get that reaction from the audience because her death happens so fast.

• Leaving them
  

The time that lapses between the moment Kenny finally dies after being shot to leaving Jane is roughly three minutes. During that time, you find out that she lied about the baby being dead, and tries to manipulate Clem into staying with her. (A short aside, but the reason why it’s clear she was being manipulative was because, if for no other reason, she lies about not knowing Kenny would freak out and try to kill her, even though you clearly hear her tell Kenny that she knew he would attempt to when he’s trying to drive the knife into her chest).

When Clementine tells her that she’s not going anywhere with her, she sounds furious with Jane and storms off with an angry expression on her face. Jane proceeds to try to get her to change her mind; she calls after her, tells her that she did what she did for Clem and that she can’t be on her own, and sounds pretty choked up while she does all of this. But despite sounded pitiable she’s still using manipulative language, and everything leading up to that point is supposed to, from a written standpoint, make it hard for players to feel sorry for her.

The time that lapses between Kenny killing Jane to leaving Kenny is roughly five minutes. Unlike with Jane, when you find AJ, Clem has no aggressive dialog options toward Kenny (though it could be argued that it makes up for the fact that, before you hear the baby cry, three of the four options you have are to be silent, shoot Kenny, and yell at him for killing Jane). If you tell Kenny that he’s dangerous, he doesn’t disagree with you and tells you that he’s trying to change.

When Clementine tells him that she’s going to leave him, she sounds regretful about having to, even saying that she doesn’t want to do it (which might conflict with the feelings of the actual player). Though Kenny does try to convince Clem not to go, unlike Jane he quickly changes his mind and not only tells her that she’s doing a good thing, gives her AJ so the baby stays safe, but also encourages her before she goes on her way. As she’s walking, AJ begins to cry, and Kenny tells him that he’ll be fine and once again encourages Clem through saying that his “big sister” would protect him. Clementine walks away with a sad expression on her face.

Again, Kenny is supposed to look like the better of the two. Dealing with him lasts longer than dealing with Jane, and he’s made to look like the injured party who ultimately wants what’s best for Clementine at the expense of being alone. Jane gets less time to try to make the players sympathize with her, and though it’s clear that she does care for Clementine, it doesn’t change that she tried to manipulate Clem and continues to do that even as Clem is walking away from her.

• The endings
  

In Kenny’s ending (which lasts roughly seven minutes), he gets Edith to let Clementine and AJ stay in Wellington even though he knows he won’t be able to stay with them. Despite that the player may actually want to stay in the settlement, Clementine refuses the idea at first (“no no no, why are you doing this”). The scene is made to be very emotionally charged, and is supposed to be bittersweet regardless of what you choose to do.

If Clementine stays, it ends on a sadder note, with Kenny giving her his hat to give to AJ when he grows up, telling her that he might not look back when he walks away, seeing him almost look back, and having the final shot being the doors closing on his figure slowly going off into the distance. If Clementine leaves with him, it’s ends on a happier note. Edith gets choked up, gives you an extra bag of supplies, and Kenny and Clem both smile at each other before walking away.

In Jane’s ending (which lasts roughly four minutes), you have the choice to either let the family in or send them away. Though it’s evident that they’ll most likely die if they aren’t let in, Jane keeps trying to turn Clem away from the idea of letting them in; she tells her to keep an eye out for the husband, she says there isn’t much food left, and asks Clem if they really want to go through dealing with more people again when it didn’t work out so well the last time. These concerns are not unjustifiable, but at the same time the family does have a child with them.

If you choose to turn the family away, Jane says “Thanks for doing that. After looking at that kid, I wasn’t sure if I could. But we had to”. But based on the decision of letting the family in, the two of them “having” to turn them away isn’t true. Speaking about that decision, Jane is apprehensive about Clem letting them stay, though she can be convinced otherwise. In you stay silent, Jane lets the family in which seems like a good action on her part until you realize it’s not (I go into more detail about it here, but basically she was willing to let an eleven year old have blood on her hands and only spoke up when she knew Clem wouldn’t make a decision one way or another).

In Kenny’s ending, it could be argued that his actions were the most selfless he’s ever been, and even if the player’s reaction to that is “okay whatever bye Kenny”, the game itself forces you to recognize that he’s being heroic and self-sacrificing through it’s highly emotional scene. In Jane’s ending, even if you agree with her suspiciousness towards the family, it’s still written in a way to put her in a negative light. Going back to the Lee reference I talked about earlier, Clem has the option of saying that “you have to protect the people you care about, even if it means hurting someone else”, which is something Lee said to her in a dream, as a justification of turning the family away. But when you send them away, the last shot is of the boy staring back at settlement, the screen fading to black as if to remind the audience that you might be sending him to his death, something that Jane was willing to do with but Lee most likely wouldn’t have been due to his feelings toward children.

• Final thoughts
  

Was it okay for the writers to do this, to effectively have Kenny/good Jane/bad at the end of the final episode of season 2? Personally (and regardless of whether or not you believe I used no bias in this analysis post, this is the first personal comment I’m making on the subject) I’m not so sure.

On the one hand, many games have good, bad, and neutral endings depending on your choices. In this case, based on what happens and how the writers wrote Kenny and Jane, Kenny’s ending would be the “good” one, Jane the “bad” one, and being alone would be “neutral”. This isn’t a bad thing, because unlike most games and the intentions the writers had, you can still like what happens even if you get the “bad” ending, and you can think that the “good” and/or “neutral” endings isn’t what’s best for Clementine.

But at the same time, this game is about morally grey areas. And though there have been times where good vs bad decisions are evident, I don’t feel like the final decision having that distinction makes sense in a game where most choices are grey ones. The writers could’ve made Jane more sympathetic, they could’ve given Kenny less chances to move the player by making his scenes shorter. They could’ve made things equal between them and really made the “right” decision as ambiguous as it seems at first glance.

But the writers didn’t do that. Instead, did everything they could to make Kenny out to be much better than Jane, and make the players very emotional towards him, by giving him more time to connect to the player at the end of episode 5 than Jane ever got.