Spill the beans about William, bestie
So like. Motivation wise he's just super interesting because he has this mixture of motivations, right? Initially, your thought when you find out he's the killer is that he's doing this to avenge his father but then he reveals it was also - in part - because he wants to "fix" the force (by murder) with Zeke.
And that's really fucking interesting because he says himself, he was 12 when he started to want to kill officers. And that it was fifteen years ago his dad died. That means that William has held such a deep rooted hatred for fifteen years. His entire teenage life, and the beginning of his adulthood, has been consumed by this anger and resentment and hatred that, when we see him at 27 in Spiral, he's mellowed out but it's always there. Just below the surface. And the furthest he gets to showing it is when the entire facade drops and he just turns apathetic and pushy to kill Zeke's dad.
His mind has somehow intertwined the ideas that he needs to fix the police force - and the only way to do that is through murder - and that Zeke is going to be the only one willing to help him.
And I think that the fact that he wants help to be so damn interesting because he doesn't need it! He kills, at minimum, five people, across THREE days, and has part in killing a sixth (there's a removed death of another cop later on), and he did that by himself. He doesn't need Zeke's help. But he's got it in his head that it'll work better if he does get Zeke's help. And having that as one of his motivations is why I think he wants, in part, to kill his dad.
Because Zeke's dad is obviously a dirty cop, but Zeke needed to be there and understand that he couldn't save his dad - just like William wasn't able to - in order to, I guess, get him to understand why he's doing all of this? Like. It's a "in order to understand, you need to go through what I went through. I'm going to show you what happened, I'll give you motivation like you gave me" and that's why William repeats the action of shushing Zeke like Zeke did to him all those years ago. Because it's the parallel.
And I honestly think that, if Zeke turned and shot William, William would have accepted that as his death. By that point, he is also a dirty cop. He won't be blamed for any of it either - Zeke is alone, his fingerprints on the murder weapon, his dad (who he's known to have issues with being in the shadow of) strung up, bleeding out. William has done what he needs, he's not wanted by Zeke, he doesn't need to live.
And I'm just so. Let me chew William's brain honestly. And like!!!
The fact that Zeke didn't shoot William is also extremely telling, too. I think Zeke, to almost a fault, wants to trust William and his words, because he understands why he has issue with the system that he's working in. Zeke has seen the dirt of the station, and he wants to stop that just as much. So when he's faced with "saving his dad" or "killing William", he's going to save his dad.
And I am so interested by this decision because he chooses an option that doesn't stop the murder. Like. He knows that William, if he gets away, is going to continue to commit more murders on the police force. And yet Zeke choses to let William live, trust that it'll save his dad. Even though like. None of the other traps have had any method of letting the police get out alive. None of them.
AND THATS WHY I LOVE SPIRAL. It's got like. Traps that are intentionally created by the original creator to be inescapable. A murderer with more motivation than "value your life" and his desired apprentice wants nothing to do with it. And I want a sequel purely to show how Zeke deals with the knowledge that the supposed dead man "William Schenk" is the killer. How is he going to navigate that? Who does he tell, if any? Does he get found by William after it all to continue the murders? Does he ever go along with it?
Because I don't think Zeke, initially, wanted to kill any others.
I know he said he would help to William, but I honestly don't think he would be able to do that with a clear conscience.
I think he could be pushed to that, absolutely.
Like if he came back talking about how it was William, and nobody believes him because why would they? And he gets even more shit because they all low-key think it's him but because there's no other evidence than him just. Being at the last crime scene when it went down, he can't be arrested or something. But like.
I do think he could get there in time and it would be an interesting dynamic to explore, especially since the other jigsaw apprentices in the past were so like. Wrecked through everything else that they, honestly, had nowhere else to turn? Especially Mandy. Love her but she needed therapy, not murder.
Yeah. Now I'm rambling more about spiral as a whole instead of just William. I just think he's super interesting as a jigsaw copycat. :)))))
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