Why Evan?
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR BLOOD, BRASS, AND GRIT!!!!
Now that that's out of the way, why did The Entity take Evan Macmillan rather than Archie? Based on the last few entries of BB&G, Archie definitely killed his wife and brother. He quite possibly was the one who blew up the mine, and then Evan killed him to avenge his friends. The only other explanation based on the entries is that Evan blew up the mine with his dad inside it.
But the cinematic is what confuses me the most. In it, we see Evan working in the mine, hearing something, seeing his father beating the snot out of a worker, then he wakes up with bruised knuckles and looks at a picture of himself and his father. I see two interpretations of this.
The first is a literal interpretation of this as a memory. This would line up with the description for Macmillan's Phalanx Bone (the map offering for Macmillan Estate) which says Archie's body was found in the mines. Presumably, Evan then hastily blows up the mine to kill Archie or kills Archie and blows the mine to hide the evidence. However, there are two problems I see with this: first, why is the boss's son pushing a mine cart? And second, how did Evan's knuckles get injured?
The second interpretation is a symbolic approach that looks at the cinematic as a dream. This implies Evan saw himself as on the worker's side rather than his father's and saw Archie's anti-union actions as killing the workers and blew the mine with everyone in it to kill his father and make it quick for his friends.
What I think happened is a little bit of both. I think that to make the cinematic, written entries, and Phalanx Bone work, what happened is that Archie blew the mine, Evan killed him, but then felt guilty and somehow put his father's body in the mine so that he, Evan, would take the blame and his father's memory would be untarnished.
But however you interpret BB&G, it's pretty clear that Evan was conflicted, and Archie was just plain cruel and selfish. So why didn't The Entity take Archie? It's not because he died, that's never stopped The Entity, and based on the pieces of metal in The Trapper, he had to be tortured into obedience, so it wasn't convenience. I got nothing here; what do you guys think?
Comments
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The way I look at it, BB&G is essentially a prequel to the Trapper's existing lore. It tells us how Evan went from a sensitive, conflicted young man to one who "idolised his father", did whatever he asked of him, and "became his enforcer in what would become known as the worst mass murder in modern history".
I believe, as stated in the original lore, that Evan and his father massacred the miners together, and Evan was on board with this because he became more and more like his father as he grew older and eventually came to admire and respect him, and see the workmen as the "maggots" that his father did.
"Evan lead over a hundred men into those dark tunnels before detonating the explosives and sealing them to their fate" - to me, this sounds like he used his previous friendship with the miners to trick them into following him to their deaths. My theory is that Evan eventually told his father about the union, and the two of them planned the massacre as a way to both punish the miners for their insolence and prevent their revolution from coming to a head.
Archie was later "found trapped in the locked basement of his own warehouse - starved and abandoned". We know Evan was conflicted, and there was probably always a small part of him that knew what he and his father were doing was wrong. My theory is that after the massacre, Evan was so filled with remorse for his betrayal and the deaths of his friends, and resentment towards his father, that he flipped back the other way and sought retribution against Archie for both the deaths of the miners and the way he had manipulated Evan into being a part of it. He probably despised himself for what he did both to the miners and to his father.
As for the cinematic, I definitely think it's a dream sequence. I believe it represents Evan's conflicting loyalties, and is maybe set at a later time when he is bending to his father's influence but that part of him is still trying to pull away. In the dream, he witnesses his father beating up a worker before the mine collapses around him. When he wakes up, we see that his hand is bandaged (the same hand his father was using to punch the man in the dream). Perhaps Evan was actually responsible for beating one of the workers, and in the dream his guilty conscience was projecting his own wrongdoing onto his father, maybe because he felt it was really his father's fault for pushing him in that direction. At the end, the camera pans onto a photo beside his bed of him and his father standing together, suggesting that is where his loyalties now lie.
So to answer your question, why Evan and not Archie, I would say it's because Archie was not a killer. The Entity seems to take people who either enjoy killing and have motivation to continue, or people who are already broken and vulnerable to the Entity's influence, and who may have done terrible things in the past but are still sympathetic characters for one reason or another. Archie was neither. He was strong and self-righteous, not vulnerable to manipulation, but he also killed the miners for a very specific and personal reason, and had no drive to continue killing beyond that.
Evan, on the other hand, was a completely broken man by the time the Entity got to him. He might have fought the Entity's influence the way he fought his father's, but in the end, he was tortured into submission in much the same way as we see happening in BB&G.
(Sorry for the essay - hopefully it's interesting and not crippling to read!)
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Very interesting ideas, I like it a lot! The only thing I'd disagree with is that Archie killed his wife and brother as well, but this doesn't contradict your larger point since it sounds like he killed them because they were bad for business.
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In the original lore, it is implied and almost confirmed that it was the massacre of the miners what allowed the Entity to create a connection between its realm and the “real world”. That, combined with Archie being a very old man, with limited mobility and senile, could mean that the motivation of the Entity to pick the less evil and conflicted Evan was just a pragmatic one: Archie wasn’t good villain material anymore, while Evan was young and full of greater emotions and turmoil to feed. Yes, the Entity could have just restored Archie, but spent “resources” on that when you can have a more cheaper and stronger Killer with his son?
Of course, this if, by the time that the Entity entered the world, Archie wasn’t already long dead after being left for dead by Evan (possible, I agree that Evan may have left him there as a late revenge for his abuse), which could have happened or not. It is implied that the default mask of the Trapper is made of the bones of his father or at the very least, he clearly did spent time doing something to his body:
Archie MacMillan's remains were later found. A silent skeleton with a taunting man-made grin upon his meatless skull.
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From what I got, I thought Archie beat the ######### out of a worker for snitching on Evan. Showing Evan in a sense that you can't trust no one and that as long as Evan listens to his Father, Evan will be okay and he will mentor Evan how to be cruel and navigate this cruel life. Like he broke Evan's jaw before.. He didn't this time, this time he beat up one of Evan's "Friends". I think this action open Archie eyes on how to convince Evan how to think like him. You can kill your wife, you can kill your brother yet it's very hard to kill your son..
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I saw it as once Archie found out Evan didn't tell him about the Union and his drawings, that was what made him snap. It says in Trapper's official lore "When Archie MacMillan finally snapped, Evan became his enforcer in what would become known as the worst mass murder in modern history."
I say this because instead of hitting Evan like usual, Archie simply walks away, as said in the final entry for BBG.
As for the cinematic, I saw it as Archie simply beating a worker to show Evan a lesson, but now am leaning more towards the dream idea presented here. We see Evan's knuckles are bandaged when he wakes up, and see that as projecting his father onto himself, implying he beat the worker just like his father would.
It also infers to this by having Evan look at a picture of himself and his father, implying that he feels he is becoming more and more like his father. Maybe the dream gave Evan the idea to cave in the mine?
We also know that Evan served Archie dearly, "Becoming his enforcer in what would be known as the worst mass murder in modern history."
A common theory I see is that Evan took Archie's place as boss of the mines as he became sicker and weaker, before eventually abandoning him, seeing him as too weak to have a place in the mines, weak like the maggots he used to rule over, and the mine is no place for maggots.
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I like your theory about Archie's death - that's another compelling one I hadn't considered.
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Evan was taken like everybody else for his potential to become a killer. He was very sensitive and then conflicted at first. We know what happens at the end, but it is very surprising he had to be tortured for a long time for him to finally submit to the Entity.
It appears to me the original killers are not evil in the first place. Trapper was conflicted, Wraith killed for justice, and Hillbilly was just a savage boy and probably had a "territory-holding" mentality (a bit like Jason).
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Basically Evan loved his father.
Then Evan kills his father.
10/10 writing
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Kind of related and kind of not related but I think the reason why he does the killings in the trials for ha father. Think about it. The Entity has been stated to manipulate them right? So why can't she (yes they called the entity a girl so fight me lol) trick him into seeing his father ordering him to kill those miners who are the survivors. He doesn't see a Meg or a Dewight, he just sees a maggot worker who needs discipline. Also another reason is because he's based of Jason right? Well Jason was mother little boy keeping the camp safe. Why can't Evan be Dad's little man keeping the mine safe?
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