Something that stood out for me in new episode is that Bon called himself "Bon the hare". I was always under the impression, that Bon was a bunny :p Was him being hare confirmed before?
And then in story Bon told Rosemary he called himself a rabbit?
Am I overthinking this or Martin just uses Hare and Rabbit interchangeably?
This is a bit of a deep cut, but Martin mentioned in a Q&A at some point (I believe...?) that Bon was originally conceived by Rosemary as Bon the Hare, but that it ultimately got changed to Bon the Dancing Rabbit to sound friendlier for kids.
So I found it really striking, to hear this audio as Rose comes to Bon for comfort, as she shows Bon affection in a way he almost certainly hasn't felt before, and to hear this dialogue of her recognizing Bon as her art. Recognizing the Bon that originally was, the Bon she created, Bon the Dancing Hare, not the character who was taken from her, perverted and twisted unrecognizably by this black hole of a business venture that ruined her life.
So it's amazing seeing Bon later, himself, identify with Rosemary's Art. Identify with her vision of the character she created. Bon's new identity wasn't the smiling cardboard cutout Felix and his company shovels out onto TV and merchandise. He found himself in Rosemary's work. In her Bon.
That's what makes this scene work so well. That's why Rosemary feels so compelled by the image Bon paints for her, so compelled by the promise of being made anew. To Rose, Bon sees her, what she really is, not the image that everyone else has superimposed atop of her. Rose has spent the last months of her life caught in a depressive spiral, desperately buckling beneath her own desire to destroy herself, to debase herself completely. It enrages her when the people around her treat her like she's something fixable. When they treat her like she's a good person in a bad situation. When they treat her like a kicked dog, a wilted flower. Rose wants to believe that she's beyond saving. She wants to believe that she's become so disgusting that no avenue of human redemption could possibly fit her.
Bon doesn't feed her these inane little platitudes, doesn't insist that she's a Good Mother despite all evidence to the contrary, doesn't ask her to see her own life as valuable, as saveable, as something she can learn to accept and grow into. Bon sees her agony and tells her that she's right to think reality has failed her. That she's right to want to turn to something else. Bon sees her desperate, cloying desire to die, sees her fiery, burning hatred of herself, and tells her that its okay to want to die. It's okay to not want to live like this anymore. It's okay to be done with the life you have.
He tells her he has the solution. He figured it out. He was just like her, and now he's new. He doesn't have to be the person he was anymore. He doesn't have to live with anything he did, anything that happened. Doesn't have to sit with all his anguish, his regret, his agony and sorrow. And he'll take her there. He'll bring her to this place where she never has to look back. That's intoxicating. Of course she finds comfort in it.
