After defeating Enya and her Stand, [Justice], the first episode of the week came to an end with that unbearable feeling of being cut off at the best possible moment. JoJo fans barely waited for the screen to fade before rushing straight into the second episode. Now that they knew Enya was one of Dio's direct subordinates, the main group decided to keep her with them, at least until they could squeeze some useful information out of her. But before any real interrogation could even begin, the moment they reached the next town, they were ambushed by yet another Stand user.
It was [Lovers].
And with it came a face the domestic audience recognized instantly.
A veteran actor.
It had been a while since he had drawn this much attention, but the second he appeared on screen as Steel Dan, wearing that offensively smug grin and carrying himself like a man born solely to make the world hate him, countless viewers widened their eyes at the screen.
On the set of another production, a younger actor couldn't hold back his curiosity and turned to Mark.
"Is this guy close to Alex? Why did he cast him of all people?"
The question was valid. From the way the episode was unfolding, it was already obvious that Steel Dan was going to be the villain of the week. Maybe it was only a short appearance, but it was still a striking role, visually strong and highly memorable. And for plenty of people in the industry, any role tied to Alex was already an opportunity to get closer to him. The young actor stared at the screen with a mix of envy and confusion. In his mind, it was impossible not to think he would have fit the role far better.
Mark had been frowning ever since the veteran's face first appeared.
"I thought it was strange too. As far as I know, Alex isn't even close to him…"
In the end, he scratched the back of his neck and cast a sideways glance at the actress sitting nearby.
"This has nothing to do with you, does it?"
She puffed out her cheeks at once, feigning indignation.
"And why would it?"
But deep down, she felt a warmth she couldn't quite suppress.
Could it be that bastard was actually jealous?
The idea was absurd. Ridiculous, even.
And yet… she liked it far more than she should have.
The conversation died there, because no one could keep their attention away from the screen for long. The episode had already entered that phase where tension tightened around the audience's neck like a rope being slowly pulled.
Using [Lovers], Steel Dan infiltrated his Stand into Joseph's body and linked his own nerves to Joseph's, turning any harm done to him into a direct threat to the old man's life. Armed with that grotesque advantage, he began humiliating Jotaro without the slightest shame, shoving himself right into his face, spitting out provocation after provocation, stretching the limits of patience to the breaking point.
He ordered him to shine his shoes.
Ordered him to steal for him.
Then, just to make it worse, he had security guards from a luxury store swarm Jotaro, punching and kicking him as though venting their frustrations on a human statue that simply refused to fall.
And what made the whole thing unbearable was the fact that Jotaro could have ended it at any moment.
He had the power to crush Steel Dan in a second.
But he couldn't.
Not while Joseph's life was still on the line.
So he endured.
Endured in silence.
He endured the commands, the humiliation, the blows. Blood began to run down his forehead, sliding across his face, staining his uniform, and still Jotaro did not answer with a single unnecessary word. His expression only grew heavier, colder, quieter - and that was exactly what made the audience's anger boil over.
On the other side of the screen, thousands of people clenched their fists almost at once.
"Damn it, this bastard is even more infuriating than Hanged Man."
"One was cruel. This one is just disgusting."
"That one made me angry. This one makes me want to crawl into the screen."
"Relax. If it's a character played by Alex, there's no way he'll let himself end up on the losing side. The more humiliating it is now, the more satisfying the payback will be later."
"He really understands catharsis. He's winding up the punch."
The comment section looked like a pressure cooker on the verge of exploding. Plenty of viewers were already genuinely furious at Steel Dan's behavior, but at the same time, no one believed for even a second that Alex would let that kind of villain walk away unpunished. After everything the series had delivered so far, the audience already understood the pattern: the more unbearable the antagonist, the more brutal and satisfying the downfall.
And the instant Jotaro, his face still smeared with blood, quietly pulled out his little notebook, a nearly wicked smile spread across countless faces in front of their screens.
There it was.
Exactly that.
Anyone who knew Jotaro knew he was not the type to swallow humiliation. And anyone who knew Alex understood it even better: whether in fiction or in real life, he had never been a man known for forgetting who owed him a debt.
Elsewhere, Melissa was watching the episode while leaning against Emily, completely absorbed in the story. When she saw that entire sequence, she turned with open curiosity.
"Did this actor do something to Alex?"
Emily raised a brow slightly without taking her eyes off the screen.
"Who knows? That man is notoriously petty. Wouldn't surprise me if this veteran stepped on his toes without even realizing it."
She had already heard that Alex had considered several other names for the role before making the final decision. In the end, though, the character needed someone with presence - someone not too ugly to ruin the visual impact, but someone who could carry a very specific kind of punchable smugness when the time came. There had been several candidates on the table. Some missed the timing. Others simply didn't fit. And a few weren't even worth the trouble.
In the end, this was the one who remained.
Melissa kept staring at the screen, something strange glimmering in her eyes.
She had been around Alex long enough to understand the pattern.
That kind of role never ended gently.
And worse, there was an unavoidable side effect: when a villain was hateful enough and the performance convincing enough, part of the audience inevitably transferred that hatred to the actor himself. It wasn't the first time entertainment had done that to someone. There had been performers chased through the streets for playing characters far less revolting than Steel Dan.
And Steel Dan was revolting on an entirely different level.
When the second half of the episode began, the tension finally shifted direction.
With help from Kakyoin and Polnareff, Hierophant Green and Silver Chariot managed to force [Lovers] out of Joseph's brain. The moment it happened, the backlash hit Steel Dan in a grotesque way: a huge gash tore open across his forehead, and blood began streaming down in endless lines.
The camera cut to Jotaro.
One second.
That was enough.
He understood.
His companions had succeeded.
Victory was already turning the tide.
And yet, even with everything slipping out of his hands, that piece of filth still tried one last desperate move. Steel Dan's gaze snapped toward a little girl passing nearby, trying to use her as a hostage through his Stand. But the instant he attempted to activate it, he realized he no longer could.
[Lovers] would not respond.
By the time the Stand returned to him, its body had already been tracked by Hierophant Green and came back completely bound, twisted up, cinched tight like a rope wrung to its limit.
The audience's reaction was instant.
During a filming break on the new set, several actors watching together sprang up at the same time and pointed at the screen, unable to hold back their excitement.
"That was incredible!"
Boris Andersen, who had only recently arrived on set, merely smiled, a little bashful under the praise. But deep down, he knew better than anyone where the real credit belonged. It wasn't him. It wasn't the scene alone. It wasn't even the cast's charisma.
It was Alex.
Only someone with that level of control over rhythm, tension, and payoff could make an entire sequence choke the audience's breath away and then return it all at once, like opening the floodgates of a dam.
Maybe because he had spent too many years trapped in bad productions, Boris recognized even more clearly than others just how frightening Alex was when he was in full form.
On screen, Steel Dan dropped to his knees.
The same man who had been laughing, trampling, spitting, and threatening just moments ago was now trembling like a coward on the verge of falling apart.
"P-Please… spare me, Lord Jotaro! I'll never show my face in front of you again!"
The veteran's performance in that miserable state was so convincing that even people who had hated him through the entire episode felt a dark kind of pleasure at seeing him reduced to that. He slammed his head against the ground, begged, his voice cracking, his whole body shaking.
Jotaro lowered his hat slightly, his eyes submerged in an almost glacial coldness.
"If you want to beg for forgiveness… then do it before the innocent people you killed."
Steel Dan panicked even harder.
"D-Dio gave me an advance! I'll give it all to you! All of it!"
Jotaro slowly lifted his eyes, and the expression on his face was pure disgust, as though the man's very existence offended him.
"Yare yare… you really are the most pathetic kind of scum."
In the next second, Star Platinum surged forward.
There was no hesitation.
No mercy.
That first punch buried itself into Steel Dan's stomach with such terrifying force that his entire body folded like a crushed can, lifting off the ground before his brain could even process what had happened.
And then the rest came.
"ORA!"
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA - !"
The barrage began like a storm, and in less than a second it felt like something beyond that. Straight punches, hooks, uppercuts, blows exploding in from different angles without allowing even the slightest space to recover. Steel Dan's body was hurled from one side to the other by the uninterrupted chain of impacts, as though he were being ground apart in midair.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA - !!"
The scene lasted long enough for the audience's pleasure to turn into full-blown euphoria. It was that perfect kind of choreographed violence - righteous, anticipated, deeply desired. After nearly half an hour of accumulated rage, watching that punishment felt like cleansing something from the chest. A lot of viewers laughed to themselves in front of the screen. Others shouted along with the battle cry. Some didn't even blink.
And in the middle of all of it, one utterly useless question started surfacing among the audience:
How much of Alex's throat had he sacrificed recording that sequence?
Because the man sounded like he had poured his entire soul into every single "ORA."
In the final strike, Star Platinum gathered all of its force into one last fist.
"ORA - !!"
Steel Dan flew like a kite with its string cut and slammed violently into the wall of the building behind him, embedding himself into the concrete in an image that was as satisfying as it was humiliating.
Silence came immediately after.
Jotaro lowered his gaze, pulled out the little notebook, and wrote a line with the calm of someone finally closing out an old debt.
Then he let the slip of paper fall.
"Keep it safe. Here's your receipt."
The line landed hard, firm, magnetic.
With both hands in his pockets, he turned and walked away without looking back. The note bearing the name "Kujo Jotaro" drifted through the air, carried by the wind, while his silhouette receded into the distance. The scene froze on that final frame, beautiful and brutal at once, ending the episode with the precision of a blade.
And in front of that image, the viewers finally released the breath they had been holding since the suffering began.
It felt like taking a gulp of ice-cold soda in the height of summer.
Like pulling out a splinter buried too deep.
Like watching an old debt get settled down to the very last cent.
Everyone had already expected Steel Dan to end badly. Even so, when the moment actually arrived, the satisfaction surpassed every expectation. Timelines exploded. Comments, memes, clipped scenes, gifs of the "receipt," endless chants of "ORA ORA ORA" reverberating everywhere - everything spread at an astonishing speed.
Inside the industry, though, the feeling was a little different.
Alongside the audience's excitement, there was also a collective chill running through backstage chat groups and private circles.
Because seeing that hateful, vile, cowardly, unforgettable role come to life so vividly made a lot of people ask the same question:
Just what exactly had that veteran actor done to end up in Alex's sights?
Mark, who had thought the same thing, cast another discreet glance at the actress beside him.
And nearly froze.
Because she was no longer merely watching.
She had that distant, softened, almost dreamy expression - the kind of look that gave away a mind entirely occupied by one person.
Mark felt his scalp prickle.
Damn.
Don't tell me she's actually falling for him…
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