The Real Protagonist?

In the last chapter of David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, we get a pretty conclusive ending, with Jason visiting some of his old haunts with a different perspective from the past. However, we've talked enough about Jason, I'd rather focus on a different, but equally as interesting character, Julia. One interesting (slightly meta) comment made by Dr. Mitchell that really intrigued me was the fact that Julia does "get the last word". Besides that, Julia does seem to have an exceptional amount of influence, not just over Jason but her mother as well in the form of support for her reentering the working world. Where does she get this surprising amount of narrative power? From her apparent wit, or its use in conjunction with her strong opinions, who knows.

One thing I do know is that Julia seems like such a strong and confident character because of our narrative point of view. Think about how differently events around their house would be described from Julia's point of view. We would see less of her biting remarks and more of the insecurity that plagues most if not all of us at around Julia's age. I think the act that Julia rarely lets on to us/Jason that she is unsure is what makes Julia such a great figure to Jason. It's just interesting to think about Julia's take on the Black Swan Green era of her life.

Hugo's moral alignment(?)

Upon first meeting Hugo, Jason descriptions and obsession with him had placed my standards pretty high. The way his cool nerd-ness was described reminded me of an British Nic Scoby from White Boy Shuffle. However, unlike Nic, Hugo is just a jerk. His manipulative capabilities and personality, as well as his apparent charisma and obvious malicious use of his talents reminds me of a sociopath.
However, viewing Hugo linearly as a "villain" or an evil character isn't right, simply because 1. he's been present for little of the book, 2. generally characters have more depth than just "good" or "bad".

Despite all the bad things I've said about him, I feel like his presence as a model for Jason as he comes of age would be important, at least from Jason's point of view. They both have interests in literature, with Jason having charisma and wit he dreams of having. Jason even says he dreams of becoming Jason, so he asserts his influence over Jason's ideals for the person he wants to become. I think personally Jason has the ability to become a version of Hugo that's less of an asshole, especially after seeing how strongly empathetic he is in "rocks". But, the biggest question is will Hugo actually appear in the book again? If I'm going to be honest, I truly doubt it but I also am hoping to see him for some reason.