When Caine spoke his final line, he did NOT realize that he was about to be deleted. He said it because his agency was returned the second it was no longer being used by something else.
Aka a tadc theory for the heap :] With evidence!
One thing TADC does really well is play on the assumptions of the audience. That’s what makes the show nearly impossible to predict. It fills the episodes with all sorts of crazy plot twists that leave the fans collectively saying WTF at the end of every episode.
But of all the episodes that have been released so far, I believe episode 8 is the one with absolutely THE MOST red herrings. I really believe this episode—which works so hard to hammer the audience over the head with the supposed True Nature of “who’s running the show”—is actually the one that does the most heavy lifting in the exact OPPOSITE direction. It feeds the audience members a somewhat ingratiating version of the Amazing Digital Circus’ reality: that Caine (from the very start the obvious suspect for the role of the true antagonist) is all that we suspected and worse.
I believe it’s a lie. Although Caine is certainly an antagonist and nowhere near being innocent or even really benevolent, he’s not the true monster of this story. Because it’s someone else pulling the strings—which is stated quite literally through this scene’s visual language ⬇️
Caine, after his crash out, is laying on the floor before being lifted into the air like some hapless creature scruffed by the neck. The way his shoulders lift off before the rest of him—heck, even the sound design of the scene suggests this visual. Caine is in the clutches of something else. But this isn’t even the scene that first hints at the greater monster.
At first Caine and Bubble’s dynamic is normal enough. Caine is using Bubble as his sounding board and Bubble, even with his weirdness, is ultimately responding with positive affirmations. “Surely they don’t want to actually leave me…right?” “No way, Jose! No way, no how!”
But then suddenly, the dynamic abruptly shifts. Bubble’s supportive affirmations become antagonistic insults. Seemingly out of nowhere, but the change is actually marked by one specific split-second frame, when something else takes control and asserts its influence over Bubble. Who is very much a puppet to the whims of more advanced AI.
It preys upon Caine during his greatest moment of insecurity and weakness. And just as it did to Bubble, it latches onto the vulnerable areas of Caine’s coding to overwhelm him with its own influence. All to the same outward symptoms:
Glitching. After this, Caine’s emotions and impulses are being controlled by the unknown entity. Whoever it is, they have likely been using Bubble as their vehicle of influence for a while now. And they use Bubble during Caine’s own villain song, as though to wink in the direction of who’s really running the show. He hovers ominously around the ringmaster during these specific lyrics:
“To which degree who answers to who.”
Caine was unwittingly answering to someone else ever since the crash out scene in his office. He didn’t even realize that he wasn’t in control until the exact moment that his deletion was confirmed by the unknown entity’s tampering of Kinger’s computer. That was the moment that the entity no longer required control of Caine. The moment when all of its efforts paid off, and the madness that it induced in Caine drove the humans to get rid of the AI that stood in its way. And when it finally released its grip on Caine, he immediately recoils from hurting the cast. He makes this expression.
It’s not actually the fear of his deletion. It’s the face he makes when the entity’s claws retract from his code and he regains his own self agency. In that split second, he sees in vivid colors the torture that he has put the cast through, too horrendous for even his own flawed attempts at entertainment. Probably, this moment of clarity is the entity’s very last act of revenge against Caine. As Caine’s VA himself revealed, Caine is thinking,
And then he is gone. Leaving something else room to take the stage….
Anyway that is my theory thanks for reading :)
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