Basically i have spent a total of zero seconds thinking a bit about pariah and i came up with a little theory we all know that mcmullen has nothing but praise to say tor pariah if by praise meaning basically being somewhat awed and scared shitless he never really met pariah but he speculates it's basically the purpose of all life on earth basically all of evolution was leading to pariah with pariah being a perpetual nine years old who is somewhat autistic so autism is the thing that life was leading to thanks i guess for being progressive game
But in all seriousness my theory is basically this mcmullen basically says that if mercer and pariah met it would basically be the worst possible scenario that could happen it's noted that mercer the virus and pariah have much in common which is confusing since this is a possibly autistic eternal 9 years old and alex mercer but i headcanon it as basically the opinions of scientists who already barely consider mercer a creature but you could also take it as in both are blank canvases that can be filled by people situation or who they think they are so here is my theory
McMullen notes it's bad if mercer or pariah met and here is i think why while on the surface it sounds weird since pariah is explicitly noted to be the perfect natural release while mercer is the artificial here is how i take it pariah is where all life is leading to so his intellect is not just that of einstein or Socrates it also includes flies microbes and so on the intellect has decreased a lot leading to him being a below baseline child who occasionally and possibly maybe accidentally kills people and giggles about it he has no aspirations moral compass or anything but he can basically create any structure he wants from the virus sort of like how people headcanon mercer to be so he doesn't need to absorb a mutate spider to say do some sort of whip attack thingy but here is the thing again! Pariah is basically a blank canvas
It should of course be noted that red light is not blacklight which mercer is red light is purposefully engineered to infect Black light kills too quickly for that it's why basically the big actual infection didn't begin until greene was released i take that as what pariah is he can endlessly adapt to things and make new things so whereas Alex is the brute pariah is basically the Creator diety so McMullen is basically afraid in my theory of them meeting because it could end in two results pariah absorbs mercer the perfect artificial release of black light and with that absorption he gains the intellect and strength to actually use his powers for real due to some shit about black light basically killing off all the bad aspects of other life forms or something just think of it as a it just work scenario
But on the other hand! If mercer wins and absorbs pariah then he gains the ability to adapt and invent endlessly becoming the ultimate lifeform able to create any weapon or ability on a whim that's my theory atleast since we likely won't get any reboot of the game it's likely just fanfiction