Is Wave and the Old Man fragments of the same person?
Oof. Okay, so lots of Wave theories lately. I'm almost done with my exams, so I thought to finally write down some thoughts I have about Cinderella Boy stuff, so forgive me if I'm spam posting.
Earlier yesterday I posted a theory about how Wave might be controlled by the Old Man, but this is one of the various possibilities that I'd like to consider about his situation.
In this post I'm gonna very briefly mention some stuff about another theory centering around him, aka the theory about Wave and the Old Man being the same person. Which, DISCLAIMER, I don't believe is exactly the case, but it's fun (?) to think about (it's actually not fun at all), so I'd like to speak on it a tiny bit.
So anyway, I was re-reading the Violet-centric episode (ep43 s2) and came across this quote:
"Even from his own men, he hid the keys."
At first I thought that the figure that's entering the Old Man's office might be Wave. Their body types look similar, so I think that's fair. However, the Old Man is hiding the keys from him, which wouldn't make sense, since Wave clearly knows about the keys.
Now the problem here is inconsistency again.
Violet said that the Old Man was hiding the keys even from his own men. And if her words are to be trusted, that means the Old Man likely wouldn't send Wave (or anyone else) in the books to do his job.
So why the hell is Wave being sent into books? What does the Old Man play at?
Well, all of these speculations lead me to believe that Wave might actually be a disguise of sorts, for the Old Man to go into books by himself. And the reason is exactly because he doesn't trust anybody else to do his job.
I mean think about it.
Wave knows lots about the keys, stuff the Old Man had no reason to tell him (such as how the Lover Key works) or where the Narratonin is stored. He gives off the impression that he can provide information. At the same time, he uses the apparent existence of Narratonin in the Old Man's estate as bait to get the characters' there. He also paints the Old Man as someone who can afford to make people disappear, but physically isn't a threat. Which might as well be a lie.
That's a smart strategy. The Old Man likely WOULD do that, if he had the chance. However, if giving out false information to the characters while posing as someone else was his intention, he has one problem. If they keys aren't awake, they can't disguise him. Also, each key specialises at something (as Buddy informs us in Little Shadows), but Violet (aka the one who specialises in transformations) isn't in the Old Man's possession anymore, therefore he can't force her to transform him when he enters books.
So, what does he do??
Well, he either steals an appearance from someone else or disguises himself using magic that doesn't stem from the keys. And all that to go into books by himself.
I mean, he was the one who commented on how the book traveling in Party Crashers went. Which might be proof that he was the one who experienced it instead of Wave.
Wave really could be a delivery man for the Old Man, as the picture might be indicating. The Old Man somehow might have caught him and be using his appearance when he travels into books, so the Wave we know is actually the Old Man.
Real Wave's fate might be unknown.
Now there are stuff that don't make sense with this theory. Like the fact that we've seen Wave and the Old Man in the same room before.
However, it is notable that each time we have view of Wave's face, the Old Man has his back turned to us.
And the most recent time that happened, we didn't even catch sight of the Old Man.
We just saw someone with a very Old Man-y dialogue speaking to Rose, who is terrified. Rose calls him a wrinkled monster, so I think this pretty much establishes that it's the Old Man, or at least someone very old that knows about the keys and can get Rose scared.
But what bugs me is that suddenly Rose turned the other way and stopped being scared, and instead started mocking Wave. Having an attitude, looking at him angrily, as though the threat of the Old Man just disappeared?? He was just speaking to a terrified Rose, but a second later the terror faded at once from his face.
At first I thought Rose's expression was a "Well, aren't YOU gonna say anything?" expression, but now I'm re-reading I'm starting to think it's more of a "Why the fuck would you do that?" expression. Oof, a variety of words here.
It's like Rose stops being scared due to a realisation. Perhaps that Old Man's words are actually produced by Wave, which WOULD make sort of sense sense, since the moment Wave opens his mouth, the Old Man stops participating in the convo.
Anyway, perhaps the Old Man is a part of Wave and Wave is part of the Old Man, KIND OF like a Jekyll and Hyde situation.
Wave is using the Old Man's appearance and voice to scare/trigger the keys into giving him info about their siblings' whereabouts, while the Old Man is using Wave's appearance to get info out of the keyholders.
What I also find to be interesting is that we never ONCE have we witnessed a dialogue between the Old Man and Wave. It's always one of them talking and the other listening, never one talking and the other responding. And to add to that, we've never seen the speech bubble leading to the Old Man. We can just tell that it's him that's speaking, because he pronounces the words slowly, compared to the other characters.
Also, do you see the difference between the speech bubbles? It's almost like the Old Man's are entirely made up/not normal. Like an illusion of sorts. Maybe it's to highlight how much non-human he is, maybe it's plot relevant. I suppose time will tell.
Also, there's the focus on the specific room décor both times we caught sight of the inside of the library. Candles and a mirror. And Silver said that the key lies in the reflection. Plus, mirrors are often associated with illusions
Whatever that means.
Thoughts?
