Everybody’s suddenly a criminology expert this week. Every corner of the internet has an opinion on Lucia and Jason, what makes them “different,” why this duo supposedly “means something” for crime stories going forward. Cool. Let’s actually talk about it instead of just vibing off trailer music for the fortieth time.
Here’s what’s actually interesting to me: most crime-duo stories treat the girl as the accessory. The getaway driver. The one standing slightly behind. Lucia isn’t standing behind anybody. From everything we’ve seen, she’s not tagging along on Jason’s story — she’s got her own reasons, her own damage, her own trajectory that just happens to intersect with his. That’s not a small shift. That’s the whole framing changing.
And I already know the reflex take some people are gonna reach for — “well ACTUALLY, Leonida’s had women in crime stories before, back in [game from a decade nobody under thirty was alive for].” Cool history lesson. Nobody asked. The difference isn’t “has this ever technically happened,” it’s how it’s centered. There’s a difference between a character existing and a character being the actual engine of the story. Lucia reads like the engine.
What I actually want to see — and what I’ll be side-eyeing hard if it doesn’t deliver — is whether Leonida lets this relationship be messy instead of romantic-tragic-poster-on-a-dorm-wall.
Real modern couples running from real modern consequences aren’t sexy outlaw poetry. They’re two people making increasingly bad decisions together and occasionally resenting each other for it. If Leonida has the guts to let Lucia and Jason be petty, wrong, and human instead of just Bonnie-and-Clyde cosplay with a Vice Beach filter, that’s the story worth telling.
Anyway, I’m sure by next week some columnist twice my age will have already compared this to a duo from a PS2-era game nobody talks about anymore and called it “the same energy, honestly.” Sure it is, Dale. Sure it is.
— Vee Corcoran