So here’s the thing.

Taylor’s trolley problem doesn’t look like this:

It looks like this:

I’m not sure upping the scale like this without balancing the options against each other does the dilemma any favors. It just makes Taylor appear far more selfish if she chooses to send the trolley down the lower line, which I believe she will.

Unless I’m wrong about that, this is what sets Taylor apart from the archetypal super good hero (not to be confused with a typical Worm superhero) – a strong touch of selfishness in her heroic actions. She’s not actually interested in the greater good, only protecting those specific people she personally considers herself responsible for: Dinah, Danny, her team, her territory and – arbitrarily – Charlotte.

I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, though. I’ve been getting on Taylor’s case for focusing too much on Dinah and not being selfish enough. I don’t want to put the burden on her of having feel the same way about the whole world’s population as she does about the people she’s in a position to actually help.

No, this is something that goes beyond Taylor. This is why the archetypal super good hero who cares only about the greater good and saving as many lives as possible is not to be confused with a Worm hero. Worm heroes (and villains) are allowed to have the “flaw” of valuing some few people’s lives above many others, which makes them realistic.

(I think the closest we’ve seen to the archetype is Amy, but she’s not actually like that – she just feels like people expect her to be. I suppose Scion might actually fit, given his activity, but we don’t know much of what’s up with him yet.)

But yeah, from what I know about Taylor and the way this section is written, I feel fairly confident that she is not going to attack the Nine. With that as a foregone conclusion, making the dilemma less balanced – ten versus 2.3 to 6.6912 billion, instead of one versus five – doesn’t make it a tougher moral dilemma for the reader to consider, but rather a device that emphasizes characterization by showing how even with these overwhelming odds, Taylor picks the few she cares about over literally 33-96% of the population.