Every Mass Effect Trilogy Companion Character Ranked By Moral Reprehensibility

With the recent release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, many are either returning to the series after time away, or are experiencing it for the first time. While these games are largely beloved across the gaming community, their politics and characters are rather messy upon closer (or really any) inspection. If you want any more details on the fraught politics of this series, check out these insightful pieces from Grace Benfell and Yussef Cole. To be dragged from here to heaven about your problematic faves from the original trilogy, read on but be warned: this post does contain spoilers for the entire trilogy). 

Literal War Criminals

Mordin Solus

Mordin had a chance to allow a wrong to be righted on its own when it came to the genophage, and instead decided to continue it. The arrogance that inspired this decision stays with him throughout his time in the series, even during his redemption arc. One of his most famous quotes reflects this: “Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.” The Salarians on a macro level, and Mordin on a micro level thought they knew what was best for an entire species, and both stuck with that mentality to the end. Many like to cite the feel good vibes of Mordin’s redemption, but ultimately, it feels like too little, too late, no matter how many krogan babies they named after him.

Zaeed Massani

Between founding the Blue Suns and being known as one of the most brutal and ruthless mercenaries and bounty hunters in the galaxy, there’s no way Mr. Massani doesn’t have some war crimes under his belt. Even when he joins Shepard, the man clearly doesn’t have a compassionate bone in his body. The easy way to earn his loyalty involves leaving civilians to burn to death in a fire Zaeed starts himself so that he can exact revenge on his former Blue Suns co-founder. Shocking no one, his change of heart towards Cerberus is influenced by business gone bad, rather than any moral objections. 

Javik

As the physical embodiment of the Prothean ideal of vengeance, Javik is not a man to fuck around with. Though the Protheans were victims of the Reapers as well, they were also raging imperialists who took over as many societies as they could and who turned the Rachni basically into bio-weapons. Javik’s mentality clearly reflects that, as he often encourages Shepard and crew to force other species into cooperation, rather than actually aiding them, and looks down on the current races which he views as “primitive.” You cannot look me in my two eyes and tell me this four-eyes hasn’t racked up some war crimes in his day. 

More or Less Serial Killers

Morinth

Though I empathize with the fact that Morinth’s condition is out of her control, what she ends up doing is pretty unforgivable. She’s a femme fatale in every sense of the word, and while that is absolute Ty bait, I also recognize that even before she met Shepard she was out there banging people to death and creating murder cults in her own honor. Compelling, especially when you factor in her tragic attempts at contacting her sisters, but not enough to excuse her. Plus if you recruit her she has you kill her mom and then steals her identity, and that’s just a lot. 

Thane Krios

Thane is another one whose life wasn’t entirely his own for a while. After all, he was taken to be trained as an assassin as a little kid. But, even with a photographic memory of every kill, and a chance to leave assassinations behind him, Thane continues this bloody work. I understand doing what you know to a certain degree, but there has to be a line somewhere. While his religion may justify what he’s done, he’s not the first to say that; there are plenty of religious killers out there. Thane’s work distances him from the family that he loved so much, and ultimately makes him think his own life is worthless, or at least expendable.

Not Great™

Garrus Vakarian

I know that Garrus is everyone’s precious baby-angel-cinnamon-roll-man, but I’m here to tell you that he’s uh…not great. The man goes from being a cop on the Citadel to a Batman-wannabe, without ever having a single thought stir in his faux-bird head about the real reasons for crime and poverty in his community. Garrus is literally every cop who has a Punisher sticker on their car. He’s an authoritarian who wants to take the law into his own hands to deal with crime violently. And instead of using his combat skills to help Mordin protect his clinic, he decided to play super hero. Go help with some mutual aid initiatives, ya jerk. 

Miranda Lawson

One could, in theory, argue that most, if not all of Miranda’s worst traits stem pretty directly from the trauma inflicted by her shitbag father. And while I don’t entirely disagree, we also have to take responsibility for our bullshit eventually, and Miranda has a lot of bullshit to account for. Her work with Cerberus and the Illusive Man were spurred by an upbringing that emphasized human interests and investing in a terrorist group. It takes all of Mass Effect 2 for Miranda to realize that Cerberus is bad, actually, but there’s no way to know the amount of damage her work has already done. Another aspect of Miranda that simply sucks, despite it perhaps not being entirely her fault, is her embodiment of eugenicist ideals. Her whole schtick is centered around her being a “perfect” person, and even though she supposedly hates her father for how he created and treated her, she parrots his descriptions of her body, skills, and appearance to a tee. Miranda goes from Pretty Bad to Not Great due to all of this, and her decision to remain entangled with the Alliance after everything.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Jack

While child murder is never great, I find it hard to feel that Jack is an evil person in the way others are due to her experiences at the hands of Cerberus and the prison system. Most of the people she kills are those that have directly hurt her, which while I don’t know that I can necessarily condone her actions, I can’t quite condemn them either. Her redemption arc and resulting relationship with the Alliance is fraught as hell, but man if I’m not a sucker for her trying to protect those kids from Cerberus. 

Tali’Zorah

Tali is in a weird spot when it comes to the politics of Mass Effect, largely due to the very messy legacy of her species and father when it comes to the geth and how that interacts with the quarian position as a weird Romani/Jewish diaspora metaphor. The cultural attitudes she grew up with are definitely apparent, especially in the first game. That said, Tali’s arc eventually leads her towards compassion rather than the pursuit of extinction. While she may not be an activist for preserving the geth (depending on how you play), she’s not going out of her way to destroy them, like other companions in this series. She’s also willing to accept new information when it’s presented to her, instead of digging her heels into previous conceptions. 

Not that bad, all things considered

Kaiden Alenko

When it comes down to it, Kaiden is simply a basic bitch. He’s the middle of the road, Wonder Bread wonder, and that means he’s also not that bad of a person, especially when compared to uh…literal war criminals. Should he have gotten his old and highly dangerous implants retrofitted? Probably. Is it weird that apparently FemShep can charm or intimidate him into being more xenophobic? Yeah. But when we look at the rest of these rascals, Kaiden’s crimes don’t really stack up. 

Ashley Williams

I know, I know “she’s a space racist.” And yes, she is. But when we’re looking at the scope of these characters and their politics, Ashley’s wariness of other alien species, while obviously stupid and bad, is not on the same level as characters who created genocidal plagues or who are members of extremist pro-human groups. Ashley’s biggest crime is honestly being part of the human military machine, which is pretty much the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the problematic faves this series has to offer. 

Urdnot Wrex

Despite being a literal warlord, Wrex is actually one of the least bad characters these games have to offer. He takes the reins to make actual, sustainable change for the krogan, and is willing to adapt to new ideas. While he cares deeply about his people, he’s not above hearing different perspectives and finding new solutions if it can benefit them in the long run. That said, he’s still pretty stuck in his ways when it comes to other topics, like the Rachni. But hey, nobody’s perfect.

Liara T’Soni

Though she goes from nerd to murderous hot girl shit, Liara is still pretty tame on the one-to-war criminal scale. Her actions as the Shadow Broker, while often violent, aren’t any more heinous than the stuff Shepard and the crew have been doing anyway. Sending Shepard to Cerberus knowing they’d use the Commander for their own purposes probably wasn’t the best decision, but again, not the worst one this team has made by a long shot. 

Jacob Taylor

Jacob is basically a libertarian who comes to realize that really is just code for being a racist. Not only does he defect from Cerberus, but he helps others do the same. On top of that, he ultimately refuses to return to the military, instead doing his own work towards putting an end to Cerberus alongside the others who left.

James Vega

Meathead is really the most apt description for James. He’s just a big, bulky military dude without too many thoughts bouncing around that skull of his. The ones that do seem to show up are mostly related to objectifying people and worrying about re-taking Earth. He’s fairly sheltered which tends to make him ignorant, but that ignorance at least doesn’t manifest as outright xenophobia, hatred, or cruelty like some of the other companions.

As good as it gets tbh

Legion

All Legion wants is for the geth to be treated with respect, instead of hunted. While I don’t love the whole “oh we’re the good geth” rhetoric of it all, Legion is willing to fight and die to give the geth the life the quarians denied them, and I respect it. Even in the final showdown with the Migrant Fleet, it’s not the geth that are the aggressors, only becoming truly destructive when the quarians refuse to cease fire. In short, Legion both has a soul and is my friend. 

Samara

The title of Justicar certainly gives off cop vibes, but the game’s text begs to differ. The Justicars are a monastic group entirely separate from the police, even on Asari-controlled worlds, as evidenced by the fact that Samara is in police custody when she meets Shepard on Ilium, and blatantly tells them she will escape no matter the cost after 24 hours have passed. Beyond that, Samara has a track record of not only rescuing slaves, but providing them with weapons and resources so they could start over in relative safety. And ultimately, she is a loving, if imperfect, mother. When her two remaining daughters are in danger, Samara does everything she can to save them, despite their condition, and would rather die than kill her remaining child when the Ardat-Yakshi temple is destroyed.

Kasumi Goto

I realize there’s probably some of you who take issue with me saying that a character whose main trait is “thief” is amongst the least bad of this crew of bad people. But she is. Kasumi steals from rich people, and dodges one of the super space cops that’s on her tail, not even through violence, but through trickery. She also didn’t need Shepard to have a conscience, having rescued slaves in the past with her old partner Keiji. I can’t say if it was the right decision, but she covers the secret Keiji died with to prevent another war, which likely saved more lives than the collective Normandy squad has. 

Grunt

To put it simply: Grunt is baby. A gigantic, murderous baby, but baby nevertheless. He was raised with certain ideals being literally drilled into his brain, and yet he pretty clearly wants to make his own decisions about who he is and what he thinks of the galaxy.  He’s violent and somewhat rowdy, but his actions are ultimately to help his people and to contribute to the future Wrex (and to a lesser extent, Wreav) see for the krogan. Grunt stays in his lane, not looking to go back to krogan conquering, but just wanting to help his friends and mentors while kicking some ass. 

EDI

Honestly, EDI is just kind of there. She doesn’t get to really start doing stuff until the very end of Mass Effect 2, and most of her time in 3 is spent on her relationship with Joker. Her newness to the world also means that she’s still doing a lot of figuring things out in terms of her own beliefs and relationship to the world around her.