Wayne's fate & meltdown (compact)
In plain terms: what becomes of Wayne (killed by the separatists for turning against them, or exposed and finished at the Academy but not killed) and how his on-air collapse happened (accidental self-poisoning versus a dosing).
Where the text lands: his fate is a question the finished text does not decide -- the text gives only that he is alive and posted at the dig, and the two best-known fan reconstructions, made independently, both land on recruited-for-the-dig-then-killed. His collapse being a mistaken self-ingestion is the best-supported reading. Among readers: a split between the killed and the not-killed readings of his fate.
For the meltdown, both in-text accounts (a post-hoc reconstruction and the Academy's public allergy version) disagree on the substance but converge on Wayne taking a pill himself (p. 899); the slipped-into-food rival has no carrier in the text. See Wayne, the AFR & Avril.
The question
This reading answers the crux what happens to Wayne in the missing year.
The ruling
Weighed in the adversarial ledger Wayne, Avril, and the A.F.R..
Scenes in evidence
Sources
- 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 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)