I...am very indecisive on how I feel about Wheatley.
I do think he needed to be punished, but...you gotta remember, he didn't have very much control over his actions since being attached to Glados' body was messing with his thoughts. Just think for a minute--twist the mind and force an addiction to science and testing onto something that was specifically built to make poor decisions: OF COURSE IT'S GOING TO MAKE BAD SHIT HAPPEN. What if you were attached to a machine that screwed you up a bit mentally and caused you to do horrible things--which, are things you would NEVER normally do under any other circumstance and you had no knowledge that this was going to happen to you beforehand, would you accept being launched into space to drift for a very long time (essentially, basically subjecting yourself to the same fate you had before meeting Chell---being alone for hundreds of years with only defective machines for company) as a suitable punishment for something that was beyond your control?
In fact, when he first attaches himself to the body and brings the escape pod up, if you stop and listen before going inside it, he actually says other things like "Oh wait, this body is too big to fit in the lift...oh I got it, all I gotta do is detach myself from here and then I can fit into the lift with you!", so he had every intention of still wanting to help you escape and want to come with you to the surface before the powertrip screwed him up. Plus, the creators did say that his apology at the end was sincere, so...
I think in the end, everything that happened to him was the result of bad-decision making all around and one stupid mistake of thinking that doing something like that was a good idea to get himself and Chell out of a horrible situation and that, really, everyone is at fault in some way for how things turned out, not just pushing all of the blame onto Wheatley.
I apologize for this rambling here
I do think he needed to be punished, but...you gotta remember, he didn't have very much control over his actions since being attached to Glados' body was messing with his thoughts. Just think for a minute--twist the mind and force an addiction to science and testing onto something that was specifically built to make poor decisions: OF COURSE IT'S GOING TO MAKE BAD SHIT HAPPEN. What if you were attached to a machine that screwed you up a bit mentally and caused you to do horrible things--which, are things you would NEVER normally do under any other circumstance and you had no knowledge that this was going to happen to you beforehand, would you accept being launched into space to drift for a very long time (essentially, basically subjecting yourself to the same fate you had before meeting Chell---being alone for hundreds of years with only defective machines for company) as a suitable punishment for something that was beyond your control?
In fact, when he first attaches himself to the body and brings the escape pod up, if you stop and listen before going inside it, he actually says other things like "Oh wait, this body is too big to fit in the lift...oh I got it, all I gotta do is detach myself from here and then I can fit into the lift with you!", so he had every intention of still wanting to help you escape and want to come with you to the surface before the powertrip screwed him up. Plus, the creators did say that his apology at the end was sincere, so...
I think in the end, everything that happened to him was the result of bad-decision making all around and one stupid mistake of thinking that doing something like that was a good idea to get himself and Chell out of a horrible situation and that, really, everyone is at fault in some way for how things turned out, not just pushing all of the blame onto Wheatley.