what happens to Wayne in the missing year
This asks what happens to John Wayne in the missing year. The text itself confirms only that he was alive, masked, and posted at the grave-dig; the fan reconstructions in the archive's visual materials both carry the same further arc — recruited for the dig, then killed by the separatists — but that arc rests on the fan artifacts alone, so the question stays open on the page.
Scenes
Adjudication
This crux has an adversarial ledger: Wayne, Avril, and the A.F.R.. The per-reading verdicts are below.
Theories on this crux
| Reading | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Minor fate cruxes (registered for the sighting count) | favored |
| Wayne's fate & meltdown | favored |
Discussed in
- I Hate Infinite Jest ep. XXXII (pp. 938–981, the end) — guest Tim Eastwood: the ending-theories finale — the Lyle-toothbrush DMZ walkthrough, the single-quote narrator argument, and the Marathe ER identification
- IJ Book Club Ep. 42 (S3 Ep 8 by feed position): Harold James and Michael Matthew have a spat — Gately's football boyhood decoded (the Quo Vadis endnote, the misspelled-words file) and the Hal/Pemulis viewing-room stand-off (pp. ~902–911)
- IJ Lecture IV: The Year of Glad (Hardcore Literature) — the wraith orchestrates, Hal wraith-dosed with DMZ (and maybe shown the film), the too-late head-dig, and the AFR-victory missing year (pp. 795–end)
- Infinite Jest visual materials (fan & scholarly images collection)