Deciphering Martin Whitly A.K.A "The Surgeon"
I have been pondering what exactly caused Martin Whitly a.k.a "The Surgeon" to become the serial killer that he became? To understand this we have to delve into the limited information we know about his victims from the tidbits mentioned and shown in the TV Series "Prodigal Son".
The topics that I am going to cover are as follows:
1.) The limited victimology we do get from the show
2.) The possible metaphorical meaning of limited victimology.
3.) His coma state when he was stabbed by Malcolm in Season One of Prodigal Son.
and
4.) What Martin Whitly's childhood trauma could be and how it shaped who he became.
The Limited Victimology We Do Get From The Show:
In Prodigal Son we get snippets of Martin Whitly's Modious Operandi (M.O.). The snippets we get are the following
--Victims are lured to his house via something mundane as a phone call
-- Before the victim can make the call he chloroforms them and/or gives them tea laced with ketamine
--Then he strips the victim down to their underpants and puts them in a box
--When he's ready to murder them he transports them in the back of a station wagon (a vehicle used as the vehicle he took his son Malcolm on a "camping" trip in once)
--in the secluded cabin he puts music on just in case someone might hear the victim's screams.
--then he paralyzes and surgically tortures them to death (what he actually does isn't explicitly stated and is more implicitly implied by the moniker "The Surgeon" that he was given when he was active and that stuck when he was caught).
The Possible Metaphorical Meaning Of The Limited Victimology:
In the show, it's plainly stated that Martin Whitly is a predatory psychopath who has some form of narcissistic personality disorder coupled with the ability to be super manipulative. This knowledge compared to the use of chloroform/ketamin, a paralytic agent, and the victim being put in a box are all indicators that Martin at some insatiable level desires control over his victims.
This desire for control could stem from not having a sense of control over his mind and/or his body in his childhood. So him using chloroform/ketamine to subdue his victims before stripping them down to their underpants and stuffing them in a box could be a metaphorical representation of his powerless childhood mostly because of his father more than his mother (put a pin in this, we'll come back to this thought later on).
It's also important to note that he strips his victims down to their underpants before putting them in the box. The act of stripping away the victims' clothes and leaving them in their underpants could be representative of the possible abuse that he, Martin, could have suffered as a child. Martin could have been forced to strip to his underpants before being forced into a box by his father as punishment for a perceived wrong. The stripping down to the underpants could also symbolize Martin's own vulnerability and feelings of "nakedness" in his childhood or it could indicate the more intimate abuse he suffered as a child, such as emotional, psychological, or even sexual abuse (though it is important to note that it's hard to figure out what kind of abuse Martin suffered at the hands of his abusive father).
The surgical torture (assumed by the knowledge of the moniker "The Surgeon") is also a metaphorical reflection of having power over someone's body. In this case, it's Martin's way of dealing with the powerless feelings he had as a child due to having no power over his mind and/or bodily autonomy. It could also be an indicator that his puberty possibly made him feel powerless over growing up. The act of cutting out a man's heart (this tidbit is mentioned in the first season of Prodigal Son during the scene where Ainsley, his daughter, interviewed him) could be an indicator that he thought his father was heartless. You don't get what he did to his female victims, though one can assume it was a bit more restrained and more symbolic of his mother choosing to love him too much and/or choosing to not love him enough.
It's also important to note that his victims were men AND women meaning his victims could have been surrogates for his actual parents. The male victims were surrogates of his abusive father, the man who had power and control over him in his, Martin's, childhood, while his female victims represent his mother, the woman who should have stopped the abuse but didn't, and was also being abused herself. (NOTE: this is possibly Martin's mindset, not mine because domestic abuse situations are complicated and terrifying).
All that said, we don't have a solid confirmation about whether or not the above is true or not. However, it is known that narcissists have extremely poor self-esteem and obsessively desire power and control in their lives. So taking the psychology of a narcissist and putting possible scenarios that could cause narcissistic personality disorder we can fairly assume that Martin was abused as a child and part of that abuse involved a box.
His Coma State When He Was Stabbed By Malcolm In Season One Of Prodigal Son:
Later on, in the first season of "Prodigal Son", Martin is stabbed by his son Malcolm so that Malcom's mother, Jessica wouldn't have to do it. When Martin is taken to the hospital he ends up in a coma. It's in this coma state that he has a lucid nightmare about his supposed final victim. In this dream, the supposed final victim asked why he abducted her and tried to kill her. His response is as follows:
"Because I wanted to...
No.
Listen, listen.
I'm not being flip, that's the truth.
Anything else is-is a guess.
No, it-it-it's this brain I was born with, or because my mommy didn't love me enough, or maybe she loved me too much, or because daddy [hesitation] did horrible things to me.
Because, because, because.
What does it matter if the end result is the same?"
The main point to focus on is this:
"...my mommy didn't love me enough, or maybe she loved me too much, or because daddy [hesitation] did horrible things to me..."
The reason why the above quote, which very briefly mentions Martin's mother and father is important is because it gives us a positive motivation behind WHY and HOW Martin ended up going down the path of serial killing.
It doesn't paint a complete picture but it does give us something important. It tells us that Martin loved his mother more even if she didn't consistently love him and it tells us that Martin's father is most likely the one who abused him and his mother. The reason for this possibility is the fact that Martin slightly hesitated when mentioning that his "daddy did horrible things to him", which could possibly indicate that his father was an abusive, narcissistic asshole who abused Marin and possibly Martin's mother.
The non-hesitation when talking about his mother could possibly indicate that he didn't hate or fear his mother. He probably just didn't like how bipolar she was when it came to loving him "too much" or not loving him "enough".
The other thing to take into consideration is the fact that Martin, himself doesn't really know why he did what he did to the 23 victims and the sole survivor. This could also indicate that the serial killing was more impulsive rather than meticulously thought out. For instance, when we get to see what sort of happened the day he lured the sole survivor to his house, the woman had a sprained ankle, so, being a doctor, he told her she could come to his house so he could help her with her ankle and that she could make a phone call.
It's important to note that he didn't decide to help until he noticed she was hurt. This could indicate that he lures unsuspecting victims to their deaths by being a kind doctor who happens to be out and about that day instead of, I don't know, at the hospital. This also indicates that Martin was more often than not, on call with the hospital he worked at so he could prey on the "weak" in and around Central Park and less trafficked parts of New York close to his hospital and close to his house.
What Martin Whitly's Childhood Trauma Could Be And How It Shaped Who He Became:
From the limited victimology and his brief explanation for why he thinks he did what he did, it is safe to assume that Martin Whitly( whose last name wasn't Whitly when he was a child) was in a domestic violence and abuse situation. That said I want to give you what I think Martin's childhood was like. Please keep in mind that there's no way to prove or disprove what I am theorizing due to there not being enough details on his victimology, no pictures and/or flashbacks showing what his male and female victims looked like, and the fact that his son's Malcolm's psyche is fractured and an unreliable narrator throughout season one of Prodigal Son.
Without further ado here's what could have been Martin's childhood:
I believe that Martin wasn't born into a rich family, on the contrary, he was born into a lower-middle-class family. His father was possibly an alcoholic and most likely narcissistic and cruel, though not when he first met Martin's mother, who was probably meek and co-dependent. The mother was most likely abused first before Martin was born and possibly during her pregnancy with Martin (which could have caused slight brain damage in Martin, IDK for sure).
When Martin was born, his father was probably not really there when he, Martin, was a baby. The father also probably didn't start abusing Martin until he, Martin, was like 6 years old. The abuse consisted of punishing Martin by making him strip down to his underpants and forcing him to get in a box (for how long? unclear). The other possible abuse could be physical, emotional, verbal, and/or psychological abuse, and possibly sexual abuse (though it is unclear if the sexual abuse happened or not and the other abuses are more guesstimations to the aggressive powerlessness he gave his victims). The main abuse we assume most likely happened was physical, emotional, and psychological (this is because Martin is super manipulative and uses someone's mind against them, so he had to have learned from someone (i.e. his father)).
As time went on Martin didn't develop the way average children and/or boys his age developed. So, as he got older, he got meaner, aggressive, and possibly killed his father (his first kill that was most likely self-defense). This possibly resulted in his mother being taken to a mental health facility and Martin being put in the system (government foster care system that is) where he probably stayed for the remainder of his childhood/adolescence before going off to college and becoming a surgeon.
It probably wasn't until med school that Martin noticed he was different. In fact, I have a theory/head cannon that Martin's first victims were him practicing and perfecting his surgical skills until he graduated and he continued to kill to get off and make love to Jessica Whitly, whom he married shortly after graduating from college.
Whether or not the above is correct or not, we'll never know because "Prodigal Son" was canceled after season two concluded. This is just a theory and is not concrete. As I said before, there is very limited victimology and vague details discussed throughout the first season, and Martin's coma state may not be entirely reliable. That said, it's safe to say that Martin's childhood wasn't a happy one.
