So I’m sure you all remember this part of CH.3, where the Colonel said he was sucked into the board game Jumanji? We all thought it was just a funny reference Mark threw in to make us laugh? Something to make the situation less tense?
But then we get this?
Safari Hunt Gone Wrong. And there’s Colonel, right on the front cover.
I think Colonel was a sane man at some point, but something happened on this trip. What happened, I don’t know, but I think it was enough to drive him a little crazy. It made him more dangerous and unpredictable, but he’s still the lovable Colonel.
But then everything goes crazy, and Damien and Selene are nowhere to be found, and everyone around him is telling him to leave. And he’s not going to leave, he NEEDS to find his friends, and it doesn’t matter who stands in his way. That includes the Detective. And us.
And it’s so sad because Damien and Selene are aware of his lack of sanity. They knew him before he went mad, and they go out of their way to defend him; he was a good person, he’s just too…dangerous. They still love him, no matter how horrible his actions become.
And when we come back as Dark, the Colonel Wilford is elated! He didn’t kill anyone, they’re just playing a prank on him! He’s calling out for Selene and Damien, his best friends to come out already! The jokes over, they got him good, what a prank they pulled! But it isn’t a prank, and we can see the shift from the Colonel to Wilford. The final snap. The last of his sanity and understanding of death gone.
But Dark isn’t mad. No, not at all. Because Dark is still a combination of Selene and Damien, and those two still love the Colonel. Even after the Colonel starts going by the name Wilford Warfstache, he’s still their best friend. And he always will be.
Dark’s glitching and fragmented parts of himself is literally two other halves of him fighting for control. The blue and red are like two very pieces of him warping around, a constant need for vengeance and power. Selene gave him his power, Damien gave him his vengeance.. they have placed themselves into his very being in order to change who he is and bring him back.
The Colonel is hinted to slowly be transforming into Wilford. Can’t you see it? The brighter coloration of his clothing. Starting to deny the fact that he could have actually murdered anyone, as he has done before. The fact that Wilford actually never takes the blame for the death of others stemmed from this moment where he began to go insane. He lost everything.
So, who was Dark before this? A district attorney, who died by gunfire of the Colonel. Going with the Figment idea, this could mean that the man we saw through our eyes wasn’t really Dark at all before this, but a simple man. A man who worked separate and to his own. But he died, and so did Mark. And there was only one thing the fragments could do. They placed Mark back into this body, but there were other things they needed to rearrange.
They placed Mark at the forefront, yes. But they added something else to him. Deceit. Sinister thoughts. The need for vengeance. Possessiveness. Anger. Greed. Lust. Grief. Everything that makes Dark who he is. Mark was reborn, and Dark was born from within him. We witnessed the very first day of Dark’s development.
The colonel would take some time after this. A few more months or years worth of denial and festering before he would take his own life, and become the Wilford that we all know. He too dies, perhaps by his own hand or by Mark riddled with a need for revenge… and must be returned somewhere he can be useful. Into Mark’s body. Another figment. Aloof and happy, but violent and dangerous.
So this means that everything Dark and Wilford were told was a lie. They were not developed with Mark. They were developed with a new Mark. Yes, they were developed at Mark’s birth, but a birth they did not anticipate or understand. Damien and Selene brought Mark back from the dead, and brought two figments in with him to keep him alive.
