In which we have a winner,
OR
In which winning doesn't feel so great.
(Happy Day-After-The-Supposed-End-Of-The-World! I'm glad we're all still here.)
Erik belongs to Leroux and Webber.
Jareth belongs to Henson, Lucas, and Bowie.
Norrington belongs to Disney, Bruckheimer, and Davenport.
Javert belongs to Hugo, Boublil, Schonberg, and Kretzmer.
Erlkönig, Odin, and Arthur Pendragon are mythological characters and belong to everyone and no one.
It's something else, when a very difficult character becomes almost (or actually?) part of you.
The brilliant thing about this arc is not merely the fact that Javert is actually the hero, but the circumstance in which this unlikely thing came about. He was in the middle of something else, something which at the outset had very little if anything to do with him, his history and troubled mind. He was faced with this challenge without warning, in the context of the life he lives, the roles he plays and the duties he fulfills outside of himself- for lack of a better term, his "ordinary" life.
Everyone has two worlds to tackle, in a way. The one around them and the one that only they can see as they see it. Nobody gets to rewrite history, and nobody gets to pull out of life to deal with what is going on in their minds, however difficult it is to get through the events of one's mind alone. Crazy as this world is, it is very real in that respect, and I think that the duality of events and purpose is one of the finest elements of this comic.
And so he is successful, but he has in the process destroyed something, and even in the middle of the group he appears somehow isolated...
Which leads to a question: Did anyone actually see/ hear what just happened?