can i ask if you have a theory about what's happening with Leo Mckern's No. 2 between his episodes? like the impression I get was he almost succeeds in getting a confession from No. 6, people are a bit miffed that he didn't but he was philosophical, and then later he seems to come back with a death wish? what was going on with him in the intervening, do you think?
Okay, gotta stress that this is purely headcanon that some fellow Prisoner enthusiasts would think is extraneous and beside the point of the series, but I like fleshing things out for my favorite characters so :Þ to them:
It does seem like "Chimes of Big Ben" is the closest the Village gets to extracting a confession from Six. You could even say that Two at the very least succeeded in his secondary mission of demonstrating to Six that escape from the Village is essentially a fantasy. Of course success is relative considering that Six isn't broken enough by the experience to outright give up, but it's the last time in the series (if you view it in production order which is my own preference lol) that he allows himself to trust another "prisoner" enough to formulate + enact an escape plan with them. (Also probably worth pointing out that he's the closest any Two gets to developing anything even close to a rapport with Six.)
Some Twos appear to be sent on other missions when they've finished their tenure, but then there are cases like Colin Gordon in "A, B, and C" where failure seems like it's going to be punished in a really final way? So at the very least, McKern Two probably didn't displease One enough to be killed or whatever they do with Twos that fail. I guess I imagine that after the events in "Chimes", he's "released" but with the knowledge that he's still basically Village property and and can easily be dragged back at any time. He's the only Two to verbally acknowledge that he has no choice in being there and does so in every episode he's in ("we're both lifers", "you brought me back here", "not altogether by accident that one day I should be abducted...").
By the opening of "Once Upon a Time" he's presenting a vastly different figure than he does in "Chimes". Number One is outright threatening him with Rover, Six has not budged even a bit, and he's clearly in the midst of a breakdown. Maybe by this point in the story, he's so sick of this awful place, of these people, of this impossible task of trying to break a guy who will just not break under the Village's normal means that part of him is like "Fuck this. If I die, I die*." Considering the genuine state of desperation he's in, I don't think that he necessarily wants to die, but also knows that if he yet again fails to deliver the goods, then it's probably not going to end well for him anyway...
*I have to assume that he had no idea that these fuckers were capable of literally bringing him back to life...
...but only to chastise + make an example of him. Like damn, Number One, this guy straight up died in the interest of your awful, stupid cause and he's still getting punished?? (ಥ_ಥ)
