Duo Maxwell (Gundam Wing)
Author: Saro
Spoilers: Vague and explicit spoilers for the entire anime, and Episode Zero manga.
Thinking about this project, I couldn’t help but wonder what I could say about Duo Maxwell that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. This is entirely my personal take on his character, and not entirely the standard interpretation, but still, this is a character that’s been examined and reexamined any number of times by any number of people. What did I have to add to that?
Unlike many a Duo fan, I didn’t like him the first time I watched Gundam Wing. I didn’t dislike him, per se, but he didn’t grab me. He was very loud, and too bold. Actually, I took him for an American stereotype; the cowboy, larger and louder than life, and excessively heroic. That first time I was more interested in Heero, and especially in Trowa, and in what was going on behind their more stoic masks.
When I watched Gundam Wing again years later, I wondered what the hell I’d been on the first time. Duo was not what I remembered.
I had been fooled. And I think that’s not an inappropriate introduction to the boy.
Like Heero and Trowa, Duo hides himself behind a mask. However in his case, it’s not one of stoicism, but amiability. By seeming friendly and casual, Duo avoids deeper speculation about his character and intentions. He smiles, but his actions repeatedly contradict the face he presents.
I have seen people write about Duo’s social nature time and again, both in fanfiction and in essay studies of his character, and there are certainly points in the canon that support this. His attitude is, in general, a superficially friendly one. He saves Heero, and follows him to school. After Heero steals parts from Duo’s Gundam, Duo wonders about him aloud.
However, in reality, Duo makes very little effort to maintain his social ties, or to ally himself with other forces. When resistances groups invite him to join, he either walks away, or (in the case Whitefang) kicks them out. One of the most memorable scenes from my second viewing was Duo walking away, waving over his shoulder as he does. We see this happen more than once in the course of the series. In terms of art direction, especially in animation, no detail is coincidental. It’s important to see Duo leaving people behind; it characterizes him the same as Heero self-destructing, or Quatre asking people to surrender.
The only people he seems interested in working with are the other pilots, and he even maintains a distance with them. The first thing he does when Sally and Noin find him is tell them that he’s not particularly committed to their cause. Directly before that, he sat aside in cloak while Trowa fought, only joining when he was discovered. To me this didn’t seem like the action of someone who was too terribly concerned about protecting his “gang.”
It’s established more than once that the pilots do not function as a team, Duo included. When they fight, they do not fight as individuals. Duo’s only concession toward working as a unit seems to be eventually defering to Quatre as a leader, which I wouldn’t say he does any more readily than Heero or Trowa. Indeed, he does less to encourage it. It’s Heero who openly sets Quatre as their leader, and who installs the Zero system in Sandrock.
Duo’s relationship with Quatre is in and of itself an example of his duality. When he first meets Quatre, Duo seems willing to reach out and connect with the other boy, but upon learning Quatre’s true identity, he backs off. Later, he is willing to take his cues from Quatre, but the overtures toward friendship vanish.
This in particular seems to stem from his background. Duo grew up as an orphan on the streets of L2, the poorest of the colony clusters. Quatre is the heir to a fortune, which he turns his back on for a cause he believes in. While I don’t think that Duo necessarily has a problem with Quatre, it’s reasonable to conclude that because of this contrast, Duo would feel uncomfortable around Quatre. Evidence of this can be seen when he breaks into Quatre’s office: he presents more confidence in that scene than any other I can think off, and mixes it with sarcastic comments about being uncomfortable in such rich surroundings.
He is quick to leave that meeting.
So why is Duo hiding? Why does he seem so friendly, and yet act so evasive?
While canon never addresses why specifically, we are shown in the Episode Zero manga that Duo grew up with loss, violence, and presumably, largely on his own. The images we are given of Duo’s childhood imply a strong military presence on the colony, as well as friction between the civilians and the army. This friction erupts at least once, leading to the death of Duo’s guardians, Father Maxwell and Sister Helen.
After that, it seems that Duo fended for himself on the streets. He was in and out of correctional facilities before he met G and joins Operation Meteor. In fact, for all we know, he was mostly fending for himself before being taken in by Maxwell’s church--living in a gang of street children hardly qualifies as having supervision.
One theory is that Duo avoids relationships because his childhood was so unstable. Because he lost friends and guardians, he’s afraid to risk that sort of pain again. It’s a reasonable premise from a psychological stand point, and many stories have been written exploring it. It’s satisfying, in that it makes a nice kind of internal logic, and gives many opportunities to experiment with what happens when a character is caught between conflicting impulses--in this case, between the desire to bond with people, and the fear that doing so will lead to pain in the future. This is pretty sound from a basic psychological stand point.
Another is that having had only a few short lived successful relationships with others, he doesn’t actually know how to interact with people on a deeper level. I admit that this is my favorite theory as to why Duo acts as he does. It rings true to me more than the others, because he didn’t come from a normal background, with the normal exposure to different kinds of healthy interpersonal activity, it wouldn’t be surprising for him to be guarded in dealing with people. What he would have had the most experience with is the superficial image or relationship, and he projects that well, but the under lying motivations and connections would be more foreign to him.
Yet a third is that he avoids connecting with people to avoid hurting them rather than to avoid being hurt. Duo is not an entirely thoughtless person, and while he doesn’t seem to know how to handle other people well all the time, he does avoid hurting them. A scene which stands out in my mind when I say this is after Hilde blows his cover and he’s captured. Talking to her, he tries to convert her, or just get her out of the war. Perhaps he was just distracting her while he worked the cuffs restraining him, but perhaps he was also really trying to keep her from getting hurt. If you see this caring in Duo’s character, it’s not hard to extrapolate that perhaps he keeps people at arms length to avoid hurting them either through his own death, or through association with him.
Unfortunately, canon information doesn’t give us much insight into the truth. Gundam Wing is a shounen anime after all, and those tend to be light of character exploration. There is more than enough room for varied interpretation, which is part of what I enjoy about the show.
One thing, however, is certain. Duo’s character is darker than the other pilots’, and more morbid. He refers to himself as Shinigami, literally a “god of death.” When he takes up the mantle of a killer, he doesn’t do so with Quatre’s mercy, Heero’s professionalism, Trowa’s indifference, nor Wufei’s passion. Instead, Duo seems to have a sort of fatalism about the whole thing. It’s not precisely zeal. To me, it almost seems to be irreverence, especially near the beginning of the anime. Their fate was decided when they became his enemy. Period. At the same time, he still wishes to protect and foreward the rights of the people (at first, only the colonies, later on the entire Earth Sphere).
It’s almost as though he sees himself as a necessary evil: a devil to fight so that the innocent don’t have to. I saw this in his relationship with Hilde, and more so when the colonies denounced the Gundam pilots. When the people he fought for took away their support, it was a low moment for Duo, and shook the conviction I saw in Duo at the beginning of the story.
Part of his growth as a character lies in recovering his commitment to the cause, and also, I think, in becoming less cynical. Unlike some of the other characters who make clear, visible progressions from blind idealism to more pragmatic philosophy, or who develop their own initiative, Duo’s changes very little in the course of the anime. He starts out somewhat jaded and political, a terrorist among revolutionaries, has what faith he has left shaken, then recovers it again, stronger.
That growth is probably what fascinates me most about him, because it’s subtle, and because it’s overshadowed by other character’s grander epiphanies.
I wonder what I’ll see in Gundam Wing the next time I watch it.
Spoilers: Vague and explicit spoilers for the entire anime, and Episode Zero manga.
Thinking about this project, I couldn’t help but wonder what I could say about Duo Maxwell that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. This is entirely my personal take on his character, and not entirely the standard interpretation, but still, this is a character that’s been examined and reexamined any number of times by any number of people. What did I have to add to that?
Unlike many a Duo fan, I didn’t like him the first time I watched Gundam Wing. I didn’t dislike him, per se, but he didn’t grab me. He was very loud, and too bold. Actually, I took him for an American stereotype; the cowboy, larger and louder than life, and excessively heroic. That first time I was more interested in Heero, and especially in Trowa, and in what was going on behind their more stoic masks.
When I watched Gundam Wing again years later, I wondered what the hell I’d been on the first time. Duo was not what I remembered.
I had been fooled. And I think that’s not an inappropriate introduction to the boy.
Like Heero and Trowa, Duo hides himself behind a mask. However in his case, it’s not one of stoicism, but amiability. By seeming friendly and casual, Duo avoids deeper speculation about his character and intentions. He smiles, but his actions repeatedly contradict the face he presents.
I have seen people write about Duo’s social nature time and again, both in fanfiction and in essay studies of his character, and there are certainly points in the canon that support this. His attitude is, in general, a superficially friendly one. He saves Heero, and follows him to school. After Heero steals parts from Duo’s Gundam, Duo wonders about him aloud.
However, in reality, Duo makes very little effort to maintain his social ties, or to ally himself with other forces. When resistances groups invite him to join, he either walks away, or (in the case Whitefang) kicks them out. One of the most memorable scenes from my second viewing was Duo walking away, waving over his shoulder as he does. We see this happen more than once in the course of the series. In terms of art direction, especially in animation, no detail is coincidental. It’s important to see Duo leaving people behind; it characterizes him the same as Heero self-destructing, or Quatre asking people to surrender.
The only people he seems interested in working with are the other pilots, and he even maintains a distance with them. The first thing he does when Sally and Noin find him is tell them that he’s not particularly committed to their cause. Directly before that, he sat aside in cloak while Trowa fought, only joining when he was discovered. To me this didn’t seem like the action of someone who was too terribly concerned about protecting his “gang.”
It’s established more than once that the pilots do not function as a team, Duo included. When they fight, they do not fight as individuals. Duo’s only concession toward working as a unit seems to be eventually defering to Quatre as a leader, which I wouldn’t say he does any more readily than Heero or Trowa. Indeed, he does less to encourage it. It’s Heero who openly sets Quatre as their leader, and who installs the Zero system in Sandrock.
Duo’s relationship with Quatre is in and of itself an example of his duality. When he first meets Quatre, Duo seems willing to reach out and connect with the other boy, but upon learning Quatre’s true identity, he backs off. Later, he is willing to take his cues from Quatre, but the overtures toward friendship vanish.
This in particular seems to stem from his background. Duo grew up as an orphan on the streets of L2, the poorest of the colony clusters. Quatre is the heir to a fortune, which he turns his back on for a cause he believes in. While I don’t think that Duo necessarily has a problem with Quatre, it’s reasonable to conclude that because of this contrast, Duo would feel uncomfortable around Quatre. Evidence of this can be seen when he breaks into Quatre’s office: he presents more confidence in that scene than any other I can think off, and mixes it with sarcastic comments about being uncomfortable in such rich surroundings.
He is quick to leave that meeting.
So why is Duo hiding? Why does he seem so friendly, and yet act so evasive?
While canon never addresses why specifically, we are shown in the Episode Zero manga that Duo grew up with loss, violence, and presumably, largely on his own. The images we are given of Duo’s childhood imply a strong military presence on the colony, as well as friction between the civilians and the army. This friction erupts at least once, leading to the death of Duo’s guardians, Father Maxwell and Sister Helen.
After that, it seems that Duo fended for himself on the streets. He was in and out of correctional facilities before he met G and joins Operation Meteor. In fact, for all we know, he was mostly fending for himself before being taken in by Maxwell’s church--living in a gang of street children hardly qualifies as having supervision.
One theory is that Duo avoids relationships because his childhood was so unstable. Because he lost friends and guardians, he’s afraid to risk that sort of pain again. It’s a reasonable premise from a psychological stand point, and many stories have been written exploring it. It’s satisfying, in that it makes a nice kind of internal logic, and gives many opportunities to experiment with what happens when a character is caught between conflicting impulses--in this case, between the desire to bond with people, and the fear that doing so will lead to pain in the future. This is pretty sound from a basic psychological stand point.
Another is that having had only a few short lived successful relationships with others, he doesn’t actually know how to interact with people on a deeper level. I admit that this is my favorite theory as to why Duo acts as he does. It rings true to me more than the others, because he didn’t come from a normal background, with the normal exposure to different kinds of healthy interpersonal activity, it wouldn’t be surprising for him to be guarded in dealing with people. What he would have had the most experience with is the superficial image or relationship, and he projects that well, but the under lying motivations and connections would be more foreign to him.
Yet a third is that he avoids connecting with people to avoid hurting them rather than to avoid being hurt. Duo is not an entirely thoughtless person, and while he doesn’t seem to know how to handle other people well all the time, he does avoid hurting them. A scene which stands out in my mind when I say this is after Hilde blows his cover and he’s captured. Talking to her, he tries to convert her, or just get her out of the war. Perhaps he was just distracting her while he worked the cuffs restraining him, but perhaps he was also really trying to keep her from getting hurt. If you see this caring in Duo’s character, it’s not hard to extrapolate that perhaps he keeps people at arms length to avoid hurting them either through his own death, or through association with him.
Unfortunately, canon information doesn’t give us much insight into the truth. Gundam Wing is a shounen anime after all, and those tend to be light of character exploration. There is more than enough room for varied interpretation, which is part of what I enjoy about the show.
One thing, however, is certain. Duo’s character is darker than the other pilots’, and more morbid. He refers to himself as Shinigami, literally a “god of death.” When he takes up the mantle of a killer, he doesn’t do so with Quatre’s mercy, Heero’s professionalism, Trowa’s indifference, nor Wufei’s passion. Instead, Duo seems to have a sort of fatalism about the whole thing. It’s not precisely zeal. To me, it almost seems to be irreverence, especially near the beginning of the anime. Their fate was decided when they became his enemy. Period. At the same time, he still wishes to protect and foreward the rights of the people (at first, only the colonies, later on the entire Earth Sphere).
It’s almost as though he sees himself as a necessary evil: a devil to fight so that the innocent don’t have to. I saw this in his relationship with Hilde, and more so when the colonies denounced the Gundam pilots. When the people he fought for took away their support, it was a low moment for Duo, and shook the conviction I saw in Duo at the beginning of the story.
Part of his growth as a character lies in recovering his commitment to the cause, and also, I think, in becoming less cynical. Unlike some of the other characters who make clear, visible progressions from blind idealism to more pragmatic philosophy, or who develop their own initiative, Duo’s changes very little in the course of the anime. He starts out somewhat jaded and political, a terrorist among revolutionaries, has what faith he has left shaken, then recovers it again, stronger.
That growth is probably what fascinates me most about him, because it’s subtle, and because it’s overshadowed by other character’s grander epiphanies.
I wonder what I’ll see in Gundam Wing the next time I watch it.