About Episode 4 Season 2 of The Creep Tapes...
!!SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON 2 EPISODE TITLED "AVA"!!
Omg what an awesome episode fr! I never expected this series to talk about Josef's pass encounters so directly before because I just assumed the series was trying to distance itself from the movies as well as making each episode uniquely distinct and unrelated to each other. So you can imagine my surprise being hit with multiple callbacks from not only the movies but also season 1 of this series! Anyhow I just wanted to semi-analyze the references that were made and how I interpreted them!
First off Aaron:
Josef was sooo spot on about Aaron being a giraffe. They're tall, strong, and are usually friendly. In the intro of the episode Josef mentioned how the giraffe had on one of those pee monitors much like the one Aaron wore when he was a kid. I like to think that this is the story that genuinely stuck with Josef. It was embarrassing and raw. The type of rawness Josef was looking for in someone else. It was nice as it was fucked up to see that Josef still claims that Aaron is his favorite while he held the giraffe figure with an axe stuck to his head.
Secondly Jeremy:
I think Jeremy is supposed to be either a penguin or a puffin. Out of the little animal figures that Josef either bought or actually carved himself (it's hard to tell with him being sociopathic liar and all), Jeremy's is different because it's wearing the outfit Josef wore when he got murdered. Maybe it was a statement on how Jeremy didn't really stand out despite his desperate attempts. He only stood out because of Josef not in spite of him. He was also one of the three figures that didn't get named in the episode.
Next up Elliot:
Much like Aaron's, Elliot's animal figure was directly named after him. It is also extremely fitting that his figure is the 'American Avocet' aka the exact bird that Elliot was desperately seeking when he first encountered Josef. Of course, he did eventually manage to spot the bird right before getting murdered. Elliot's episode is one of my personal favorites because of how much he resembles Josef. His obsession over birds was much like Josef's obsession over people. It makes sense that he would be directly referenced in this manner because of how connected Josef felt with him so immediately.
Now for Sara:
SARA!!! I might be wrong but I think this episode is the second time that featured a Creep 2 callback. I think the first time was back in season 1 episode 6 and even then it just mentioned the song "Sara Loves Her Juicy Fruit". She's one of my favorite characters in this franchise so I was really hoping that she would have survived her encounter with Josef. The episode is still quite vague about what her fate ended up being but I think it's heavily leaning on that he did eventually kill her sometime after he recorded the subway video. Or maybe he just wishes he did? Her being represented as a doe is fitting in regards to how Josef saw her. In the film, Josef saw her as a woman. A woman he wanted to have sex with, a woman he viewed as a maternal figure, and a woman that got away from him. Depicting Sara as a doe is innately misogynistic because she ultimately wasn't any of those things. She was just someone that wanted to exploit him but did manage to understand him fairly quickly. This primary character trait of hers is quite similar to this episode's main victim...
Ava & Sara:
It's funny because prior to watching this episode, I was thinking about how wild it is that Sara has been the only woman that might've been killed by Josef. Her death hasn't even been confirmed yet (from what I am aware of). This episode introduces us to Ava who has very similar personality traits as Sara. When confronted by Josef unique mannerisms, they both saw an opportunity to gain something from it. They both saw an opportunity to gain financially and fame of some kind. Despite being weary of him, they were both ready to go along for the ride. While Sara was going along with what she thought was a delusional guy who 'believed' that he was a serial killer, Ava confronted a guy she just thought was struggling with a mental illness and unresolved trauma. Ava's death is arguably the cruelest one we have seen in the series thus far. I mean she was lit on fire. Typically, Josef kills his victims by hurling an axe towards them, choking them, or through the use of a shovel. It makes me wonder why 'she' had to die in this manner because she's far from being the only one that wanted to exploit Josef. I think Ava died the way she did because he reminded she reminded him so much of Sara. So either he's resentful that she managed to escape him or he feels regret for eventually killing her.
The sloth:
I honestly don't know for sure who the sloth could be. The only clue given is the sloth's apparent head wound which is how Mark (Season 2 Ep 3) was killed when he got attacked by Josef and his axe. Also Mark being slow in figuring out the riddles and sloths being notoriously slow creatures, it could very well be a pretty straightforward depiction of him. I also thought that sloth could've represented Brandt (Season 1 Ep 5) purely because he was so late to his and Josef's previously agreed on meeting time.
Feel free to talk about your own interpretations about the episode in the comments, I'd love to see more opinions!!
