#randall cross

[aneurins-barnard]

BARKSKINS // 1.06 The Wobble

[calamity-bean]

Okay Barkskins fandom, I have. A weird one for you. I’m not even letting myself edit this before posting, because it’s almost certainly completely wrong but I like it so I just have to release the idea while it’s wild and free. One of those theories where I’m throwing out the question of whether it’s actually realistic/likely and more just saying “hey wouldn’t this be COOL.”

It basically hinges on me rewatching parts of 1.01 and being like, “Hm. Is it just me, or does this dead guy kind of look like Father Clape?”

The short beard, the thin face with prominent, rounded cheekbones... It’s not definitive, but it got me to thinking. The dead guy is from the beginning of the episode, one of the people killed in the raid by the creek. Specifically, he’s the one whom Renardette literally stumbles upon, accidentally planting her hand square on his chest as she flees, painting her palm with his blood. As for Clape... Renardette is a mystery in that nobody in Wobik recognizes her, but Clape is his own mystery in that it’s unclear how he survived the raid. Marth and Lafarge are adamant that there were no survivors. They missed Renardette because she hid in a tree; did Clape hide as well? Or was he not missed at all?

When Hamish and Yvon meet Clape, he’s shirtless (so: unclear if his old shirt would have, say, been bloodstained?), wearing nothing but good ol’ 17th century undies, praying over the body of a boy. He’s also clearly a bit out of it, which I don’t fault him for; even disregarding all supernatural theories, he’s been through a horrifying thing. But I do find interesting his what he says upon seeing the wolf: “Don’t you see it? It is Azazel. Sprung from the abyss” -- and then that scream. When our Company boys try to follow the wolf, they find no trace of it... Instead, right where the wolf lead them, they find Renardette. 

So, like. Just to go nuts here. Many of us have already discussed the idea of Renardette possibly being a witch or otherwise having some sort of witchlike themes. So what if Clape didn’t survive the raid? What if that was his body Renardette stumbled upon? What if, whether or not she meant to, whether she even knew she had the capacity, what if when she touched him she brought him back from the abyss, and Clape’s strange words and strange behavior are due not only to the trauma of the raid but also to the trauma of having died?

And then there’s Cross! Also notable for his strange behavior, also connected to Renardette! And remember in 1.06 or 1.07 when Cross pulls that body out of the river? When asked who it is, he says, “It is me.” Ostensibly, it’s a settler from the creek -- a settler that Cross killed, in fact, immediately before Renardette came upon him: “I killed him in front of his son. And then... the girl came. She smiled.” But honestly, the first time I watched that scene, I straight-up thought the body in the water was going to literally be Cross, that he literally had died and was pulling his own body out of there. And now I’m just looking at that dialogue again and thinking... He killed the man in front of the man’s son, you say? And immediately afterward, Renardette came upon them...?

I know Clape is a priest, obviously, and although idk about today, I’m assuming Jesuits in that era weren’t supposed to have kids. But who’s to say Cross, at least, didn’t simply think that this boy we see Clape burying was Clape’s son.

I do NOT know, man! I’m stringing together this theory in pure pepesilvia.jpg mode. It’s confusing, too, because what we see happen to Renardette at the beginning of 1.01 doesn’t explicitly match up with Cross’s version of events; when did they run into each other? Before she ran into the woods? After she came down in the tree? Or as it somewhere in the middle and we simply weren’t shown it? (Lafarge says Cross was there when the action started but then vanished into the woods during the attack; at what point?) Did Clape actually die? Did Cross actually die? Even if that body at the beginning wasn’t Clape, could stumbling upon that body have been around the moment Renardette met Cross? What is the meaning of Renardette’s smile? 

This is all weird and interesting enough when only Clape and Cross are considered, but, of course, I have another reason for being invested as well. Because when it comes to the concept of how death might be reversed, or affected, or even simply witnessed by Renardette...

Well, suffice to say there’s an ongoing situation that I’m very interested in seeing play out.

[windsweptlassie]

Thinking about the symbolism surrounding Hamish, Randall, and the prune tart...you know, something something about how the tart is first introduced as something Randall Cross likes, and it becomes one of Hamish’s favorite thing, to the point that it’s a joke among people who know him, and the fact that Hamish seems to be fate-bound to walk the same path as Randall, that he’s always been irreversibly tied to Randall Cross. Like, the prune tart is shorthand for that red string of fate between them, like it’s symbolic of a bloody body (cut it open and find out what’s inside), like the tart is used as a tactic of negotiation AND intimidation by Mathilde and Hamish. And trying to figure out what it all means.

[megaalodon-archive]

Hamish’s and Cross’ conversation about Alice in episode six is very interesting, I think. The part about her eyes, especially. “Her eyes. Cold, black stones” is a curious line anyway, but this specific part of the conversation comes back on the previously on-segment in the next episode, in which Cross meets his end at Hamish’s hands. It could just be there to demonstrate the broken state of Cross/his relationship with Alice, but the choice of words is still intriguing and my brain insists that there is some connection to be made there, especially in regards to Cross’ eerie death scene. This might be complete bullshit, but now it sits in my head and wont leave me alone.

[girlinthebrightbluejeans]

“I’ll be back for the beans.”

- Randall Cross, Barkskins S1Ep7