(until they did the haha he’s actually super space Hitler rug-pull)
My guy, they had him admit to blowing up his own vessel and killing everyone on board. He openly ignored Starfleets protocols surrounding new life and sentient life by sanctioning the effective torture of a creature to power the spore drive. He rejected admirals and went against their orders frequently. He slept with a gun under his pillow. He was shown to be collecting torture implements that are psychotically illegal from the entire galaxy and having a creepy room filled with those implements that also happened to have its own independent brig.
It isn’t much of a rug pull if you looked down at any point…
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He was also gathering navigational data the entire time and actively punched in extra coordinates into the Spore Drive from the Captains Chair. He then gave a long stare into the camera and said “Lets go home”.
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He was exceptionally pragmatic in military strategy which isn’t so common in Starfleet in general.
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The season is also littered with mirror imagery. First time Lorca is introduced is through a reflection in his window. Stamets has his mirror moment in episode 4.
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He’s also littered with scars, including ones that are consistent with the shape of an Agonizer. He showed extreme interest in someone willing to break one of the biggest rules in Starfleet and used his power to pull her into his reach through some wildly sketchy means.
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The light sensitivity wasn’t an obvious one as it was a new thing, it was used to canonize why all the Mirror Universe episodes in DS9 and Enterprise are dimly lit and darker, but even that hints that he’s not ‘normal’.
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He also behaved weirdly with Admiral Cornwall who knew him well and she even mentions that he’s not the same person she knew.
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He actively set her up for something he suspected to be an ambush and then refused to go save her despite risking the ship repeatedly before. Something Saru even questioned at the time.
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He’s even eating the same food that Burnham is served in the Mirror Universe.
Like I said. Isn’t much of a rug pull if you look down.
He was still far more interesting to me as a guy suffering from PTSD and having to often choose between two bad options. There are a lot of ways a character like that can grow and evolve.
But he was never that. Ash Tyler was the one set up for having PTSD but the only thing close to it for Lorca was when he jumped Admiral Cornwall when they were sleeping together. But at the end of that episode we see him purposefully set her up to fail and then abandon her.
I mean, if human and terrans are identical, expect for the dim light thing, you can expect any terran to have ptsd. If you put a human brain with its psicology and needs, every single person will have ptsd from the traumatic life of violence, betrayal and torture they must endure.
