The play may be over, but the show goes on

What are you doing here?

Thjazi neglected to check up on Casimir's status with the Crow Keepers

Thjazi asked both Hal and Aranessa to leave the rest of their families for him

Thjazi simultaneously worked with Azune and the company that separated him from Mayali/stranded him as a child

Julien's significance to people Thjazi cares about didn't factor into the decision(s) to harm and endanger him, threatening others by extension. "By extension" is a concept Thjazi really ought to wrap his dead head around, because his stunt for Thimble, who didn't require Julien's help and previously told him to leave, could have resulted in the deaths of Occtis, Mara, and Alba. Thjazi's disregard for that jerkass knight he's stuck with could have caused some of the most suffering to—of all people—Thjazi's widow, his sister-in-law, and his closest partners

Bolaire, despite hating Thjazi, wouldn't have cut him with the shears, because he has other relationships he wants to preserve. Thjazi discounting this resulted in a punch attempt that would have hurt Misha, not just Bolaire. Feels rather emblematic

So it turns out that Murray IS a Mag'nesson after all. However, it is clear that the Mag'nessons are not who they appear to be.

Here are the relevant facts:

Murray described herself to Tallbarrel, her very old friend, as "a shitty little squatter dwarf from the gutter" at the time that they met, and Tallbarrel saved her from that fate. She also clearly has personal experience of poverty (I could list examples all day but how she relates to Demodus is clearly as one poor person in academia to another).

Murray used to be much dirtier than she currently needs to be, as described during her encounter with Pimley Morn. She was doing her job as bursar of the Penteveral in a dishonest and criminal way from the start, even if it wasn't for her personal enrichment, and she thinks she's a "shit person" likely because of this.

In episode 24, she quotes her mother saying "Love flies out the window when money walks out the door" and then explains to Azune that the saying is about divorce.

In episode 24, Brennan says to Marisha, "you're aware that the Mag'nessons haven't dealt in mining in over ten years. They do something else now," without specifying what.

So here's my new Murray Mag'nesson theory, based on these points: she did come from a gem mining family, but at some point before her Hucklewend, the mines ran dry and her family went into crisis. Her parents divorced. Murray, her mother, and whichever other family members were reduced to whatever gems they had left in inventory and had no new source of income on the horizon, much like Orus Blade right now.

When Hal blew up at Bolaire in episode 24, hurilng a mask at the wall and shouting, "You have no tongue and you hid everything from me," while Azune moves right into the fray, Murray studiously avoids it. Watching Hal and Bolaire fight seems to affect her quite deeply:

"She's skirting around the edge, like a dog who knows she's in trouble."

This sure sounds like the trauma reaction of someone who heard her parents fight a lot before they eventually divorced.

This theory is pretty circumstantial, but it compels me, so I'm going to lay out the scraps of evidence I have. Thanks to @mayapapaya33 for first planting this idea in my brain.

We know that Thjazi did something to Bolaire besides the blackmail:

"Any sins that I have would pale in comparison to the things that I have done for him or the things I have seen him do." - episode 4

"I have done my best to hold my tongue about my feelings about your brother. But this, the part of him that he hid from you, this is almost kind for him." - episode 24

I know many people in this fandom do not believe Bolaire when he says these things. I put to you that there is very good evidence that Bolaire cannot lie, and also that these statements are subjective. Whatever it is that Thjazi did to Bolaire besides the blackmail was worse than anything Bolaire ever did according to Bolaire, which can be true for him even if you the audience member would not agree.

So what did Thjazi do to Bolaire? We have no reason to believe that Thjazi has ever been needlessly cruel. Even Bolaire said in ep 4, "He didn't hate me. He thought I was a thing." So it looks like Thjazi used Bolaire in some way that was very useful to him without any regard for how it might affect Bolaire.

What I put to you is that Thjazi used Bolaire as a tool to interrogate prisoners. He'd have a sketchy-ass Sundered House flunky or three tied up in one of his hideouts, put Bolaire on them, ask Bolaire to tell him everything they knew, then either put Bolaire back on his original body or let him keep one of the prisoners as payment for services rendered.

Why do I think so? Because it's the same thing the Sundered Houses did in the episode 24 cold open. They found former rebels, read their minds, and then killed them. Eight years ago, Thjazi said to Thimble:

"You know, I had heard from Cas that apparently one of the guys that was in her crew, you know, got nabbed. The sorcerers, the Sundered Houses have mind readers. You don't even have to rat." - episode 24

What if Thjazi decided he wanted to be able to do the same thing? With Bolaire, he could. From Thjazi's perspective, this is very useful. From Bolaire's perspective, it's a total loss of bodily autonomy just like he experienced before he decided to run away and be his own mask in the year 53: being passed from body to body with no control.

If this were true, it would explain another thing I've been wondering about: why does Bolaire think of himself as an interrogation tool? It's come up over and over. In episode 19, Bolaire mentioned that he could question Aubrus to see if he knew anything, and it was part of his motivation for body-snatching the Crow Keeper in episode 22. And Bolaire said this to Hal about Romina:

"I hate to put this in your head, but if you get the sense that she's holding back, I might be able to help, as a last resort." - ep 21

This clearly comes readily to Bolaire's mind as a thing he is useful for, but where did he get that idea from? That's not what he did in the Fatal Play. That's not what he did in the Falconer's Rebellion, where he simply acted as a temporary warlock patron for whichever soldier was wearing him at the time. What if it was Thjazi who taught Bolaire that he is a weapon of interrogation and espionage as well as a weapon of theater and war?

I no longer think that taking hosts is 100% a matter of survival to Bolaire (though it certainly partially is); it's also a matter of punishing people who he believes are deserving. However, crucially to this theory, we now know from episode 31 that Bolaire did not know how to hate before he met Thjazi; he was simply a soldier newly taking control of his own life, as we saw in the episode 13 flashback, who did not yet feel such things.

(By the way, we know that Bolaire must be telling the truth about this, because he does not / cannot lie.)

Now this is very interesting, because the way that Bolaire treats his hosts now is very hateful. Watch him spitting at Adora "You are judged, you horrible woman!" and torturing Rulius with the sight of his brother dying in episode 30, and tell me that's not hateful. But if Bolaire didn't feel hate before he met Thjazi, then how did he treat his hosts? We have no evidence that Bolaire starved or tortured Castep, his first host as a "free mask" in the episode 13 cold open. In fact, he actually made a promise to Castep to fight in the Falconer's Rebellion on his behalf, a far cry from anything he would do for his victims now.

If Thjazi used Bolaire for interrogations, then it would explain a lot about how Bolaire's attitudes toward his hosts may have changed. Thjazi was ruthless, but his goals were noble. He almost certainly would have used Bolaire to interrogate some really nasty people. It's very possible that Bolaire had never experienced wearing an awful person before, nor torturing his hosts before (beyond the basic fact of stealing their bodily autonomy, which is pretty torturous in and of itself.) Thjazi may have, therefore, planted the idea in his mind that his new purpose could be as a weapon to torment, interrogate, and punish people who had done terrible things.

We also now know that Bolaire has an astonishing array of tools available in his mind theater to use for good or for ill. In episode 30, Bolaire says of his liminal theater void: "This is a thing I found way later." He hasn't had the mind theater available to him all 73 years of his existence. What if he discovered the mind theater because Thjazi saw his potential as an interrogation tool and pushed him to find out more about where he kept his hosts in his mind and what he could do to them?

He can forge documents. He can lie by omission. He can phrase things ambiguously. He can mislead. He can state subjective statements and opinions. But he cannot directly say something he knows to be false.

This theory arose in the Halaire Enjoyers server from a moment in episode 24, Good Tidings. Bolaire comes home and checks on Demodus. Brennan describes the way Demodus has decorated the apartment with fun and shiny illusions. Taliesin rolls a die without explaining what it is, then says in a pained voice, "I love what you've done with the place," then immediately takes it back.

This would seem to suggest that Bolaire needs to pass some kind of check in order to be able to lie. He does serve truth, after all. He is the bane of the Trickster: cold hard reality. As Bolaire said, "the weight of reality can crush most things."

It would take a long time for me to go over every single line of Bolaire dialogue to check for lies, but what I can do fairly easily is review scenes where he would have a strong incentive to lie.

When Thaisha Touched Termina

When Thaisha opened the coffin and touched the mask we now know to be Termina, Bolaire understandably reacted very strongly to that, but he didn't want everyone at the funeral to know why. So what did he say?

"I touched the wrong thing many years ago and have had this thing stuck to me ever since. Half the people at the museum have been maimed touching the wrong thing. Whatever else shows up tonight, do not touch it if you don't know where it came from!"

Rating: TRUE. Bolaire touched the wrong thing (a humanoid body) many years ago and has spent his every waking moment since then with a humanoid body stuck to him.

Body-Snatching Aubrus Drime

Bolaire does not lie at any point in this transaction. Aubrus seems to have been promised a "treasure" by Bolaire, and he brought money to pay for that treasure. Bolaire didn't say that "on screen" but it gets a Rating: TRUE. Bolaire did bring an artifact to give to Aubrus: himself.

Cormoray Meeting #1

Lady Cormoray interrupts Bolaire's confession of his nature to the other Schemers, and Bolaire makes the following excuses to try to get her to go away:

"I have my own carriage, but I also say I'm actually putting away some work for the next hour or so that's dangerous to say the least, which is why if you would excuse it."

"I have an emergency. The thing downstairs is volatile and can hurt people so I'm going to need you to leave."

Rating: Misleadingly phrased but TRUE. The work he's doing with the other Schemers is dangerous, and the situation with them downstairs was volatile and could hurt people (indeed, it hurt both Hal and Bolaire.)

Cormoray Meeting #2

The next day, Lady Cormoray returns to the Archanade. She asks Bolaire a pointed question about how Rauwyn died. His response:

"Oh, well, that's the trouble with that one. It was a very, very large piece of destruction. We know where it happened. It was one of the sacred theaters and there were no survivors. It took everything. It's just a crater where that theater used to be. No record, no survivors, and the few people that made whatever weapon that was... died very early in the war."

Rating: TRUE, from Bolaire's perspective. Bolaire does not consider himself or his siblings to be people, and by that metric, nobody survived the Panto.

"Have you ever met Halandil Fang?"

"Yes, a few times. Why?"

Rating: BORDERLINE. "Few" is an ambiguous word that's hard to pin down. "Met" is also ambiguous, in that it's something you do with someone you don't already know well. I think there is enough wiggle room in these words to say Bolaire is just about telling the truth.

Playing Cards with KIng Gus

Bolaire has a Disguise Self up and he's pretending to be someone else while playing cards with King Gus in episode 21. Surely he must have lied, right? Wrong!

"And what might I call you, my good man?"

"Oh, you can call me Delex."

Rating: TRUE. Bolaire didn't say his name was Delex, he said "you can call me Delex."

"What's your trade?"

"Antiquities, actually."

"Antiquities? Fascinating. That's a very fascinating trade. Do you work in a private shop or with a collection?"

"Mostly with a collection. Although, I'm in between collections at the moment. Things are a bit topsy-turvy, times being what they are. But I do a little bit of business, mostly above board."

Rating: TRUE. I'm particularly awed at Tal's wordplay with "in between collections at the moment." Bolaire is literally in between collections because of the big switch of artifacts between the Lloy Wing and the Selodyne Wing.

"I have a friend at the museum, if you're ever in the mood to take a look at a few things. I have many friends there. But just look up Bolaire Lathalia, I think it'll be worth your time if you ever want to see things around."

Rating: TRUE. Bolaire does have friends at the museum. He never said his friend's name was Bolaire Lathalia.

Cormoray Meeting #3

Everything Bolaire says in this very tense sequence with Lady Cormoray is inarguably true. The only bit that's borderline is this exchange:

"What motivated you to try and steal the blades?"

"I was attempting to return them to their owner."

Rating: BORDERLINE, but can be fairly easily interpreted as true. Either a) Bolaire fully intends to return the pariah blades to the Lloys once Thaisha returns to Dol-Makjar, or b) Bolaire considers the pariah blades to belong to all the Rungjani, and therefore bringing the blades to the people's theater is bringing them to their owner.

It's also worth noting that Taliesin repeatedly says throughout that tense sequence things like "like anything I do, it's lies of omission" and "that's basically true", as if reassuring himself and the viewer that Bolaire is not lying.

Caveat: The Cold Open

The only point where I could find any straightforward, clear falsehoods stated by Bolaire was in the flashback, the episode 13 cold open. Bolaire says this about Castep when one of the soldiers asks why he's watching the play:

"No, he's enjoying it so much. I was just letting-- I was letting him through. He seems to want to watch."

Rating: FALSE. It's possible that Castep liked the play, but Bolaire was not "just letting him through."

"Castep, you all right?"

"Yeah, it was-- It was so odd."

"You got the mask off on your own."

"It was-- It was like it was afraid, too. It was worried about what it was going to become, and it let me put it to sleep."

Rating: FALSE. Even if we stretch so far as to say that Bolaire was referring to Castep as "it", Castep did not let Bolaire put him to sleep; Bolaire hadn't even fully stolen Castep's body at this point.

Bolaire's nature seems to be different when he's being a warlock patron to other people vs. to himself, and he is quite different now to who he was then. It's possible that before Bolaire made that decision to run away and become his own mask, he was able to lie more easily.

A lot of people are talking about the horrific implications of what Bolaire does to survive, but I haven't seen anyone talk about what other choices are available to him. I wanted to bring this up because Bolaire has clearly thought about these alternatives, since he brought up to Hal before The Stab that he could choose not to put Bolaire on a new body, so long as Hal didn't leave him in the sewer to be found.

The choices that Bolaire has available to him, other than body snatching, are:

Find a way to destroy himself permanently.

Find a way to have himself sealed away in a dormant state.

Allow himself to be used as a weapon again.

Option 2 is, for Bolaire, pretty much the same as option 1, since he has no consciousness or life when he's not being worn. The main difference is that option 2 could be reversed, which would land him back in option 3, or body snatching again.

I think it's pretty clear that Option 3 for Bolaire would be a fate worse than death. The life he led before he ran off with Castep's body, if it can be called a life, was nothing more than slavery in service of mass death. And if anything, he got off lightly compared to how bad Option 3 could get for him. Can you imagine what someone like Primus Tachonis or Yanessa Halovar would do with Bolaire? It'd be a lot worse than simply being wielded by a soldier to slaughter the enemy.

So let's return to options 1 and 2, because there's a strong argument you can make that these are Bolaire's only ethical choices, and furthermore, Bolaire himself has intense body dysmorphia and doesn't actually enjoy snatching bodies, so he's surely contemplated these options.

Option 1: suicide. We don't actually know if Bolaire can be destroyed outright, and Bolaire himself may not know either. There are high level spells like Disjunction that can destroy magical items but with legendary artifacts and such, even a ninth level spell like that is not a guarantee. But let's suppose Bolaire wants to give it a try: how would he achieve this?

Well, to even have a shot at his assisted suicide actually working, he would have to recruit the assistance of a high-level sorcerer or wizard. So his options would be the Sundered Houses or the Penteveral. But these options are both very risky. Bolaire fought in the Falconer's Rebellion against the Sundered Houses, so he would distrust them, and rightly so. He would have to explain his nature to anyone who was going to help in the assisted suicide, and once they knew that, well, who knows what a Sundered Houses sorcerer might choose to do with that information? And until he became friends with Murray, which was very recent, Bolaire didn't have anyone at the Penteveral either who he could trust to definitely just aim to destroy him instead of turning him into a magical experiment or a weapon. And even now that he has Murray, she's a third-level wizard and definitely doesn't have the juice to have any chance of destroying him permanently.

Now let's consider Option 2. The benefit of option 2 is that you don't have to be a super high powered wizard or sorcerer to be able to seal Bolaire up in a box or something. The problem with option 2 is that if your Bolaire storage solution isn't absolutely airtight, someone could find him and get him back in the situation of being a slave / weapon / magical experiment. Once again, we run into this problem: who could Bolaire trust to know his secret and do a proper job of putting him away forever? Up until two days ago when Bolaire confessed his nature to the other Schemers, he had no one he could trust with that. It's notable that, as soon as he did have people he could trust to do that, he told Hal before The Stab in episode 22 that he trusted Hal to put him away somewhere safe if he didn't want to put Bolaire on the Crow Keeper. So Bolaire became open to this option as soon as it was viable. Could Bolaire end the campaign by surrendering himself up to Hal to seal him away somewhere secure forever? Very possibly.

Obligatory disclaimer: Bolaire has never done anything wrong in his life ever, and I explicitly morally condone every choice he has ever made. You should go ask your best friend to homoerotically stab you right now so you can follow in his excellent example. Hope that clears up my stance on the matter!

The Life Force Drain

The number one reason this option for Bolaire is not feasible is that he has a draining effect on the life force of people who wear him, and the longer they wear him, the worse it gets. It is a common misconception that Bolaire's hosts die due to starvation, but this is not the case. In episode 4, Taliesin describes the condition Bolaire's previous host: gray skin, eyeballs so flaccid and desiccated the eyesockets appear empty, and chunks of flesh missing around the mouth so you can see the teeth beneath. These are not symptoms of starvation. What's more, one of the soldiers in the episode 13 cold open said that wearing Bolaire for even one day "wreaks havoc on the body."

Given that Bolaire drains his hosts like this, the only way he could get people to voluntarily agree to wear him would be to exploit mentally ill people who wish to self-harm (which is not really any morally better than just straight up body snatching), or to find a group of people who are willing to pass him around, as we saw in the episode 13 flashback with the soldiers. Which brings me to my second point.

Trust

Let's say Bolaire approaches someone for some consensual body-sharing and they say no, or they say yes but then later change their mind and back out. What happens then? Can Bolaire trust them?

The thing is, as I explained in this post, some of the options on the table for Bolaire are fates worse than death, not just for him but for the world at large. Imagine someone turns Bolaire down and then thinks, "Hey, I wonder what House Tachonis would pay me for the knowledge of a secret god-killing weapon that I now have." What do you think would happen if Bolaire were in the hands of an Ethrand? The Tachonis would find some horrific use for him that would cause far more death and destruction than anything Bolaire has ever done personally. Bolaire is a murderer, but he does not want to cause the mass systemic suffering that the Sundered Houses do; indeed, he ideologically opposes it. It's clear that Bolaire has thought about this possibility, because in episode 22, he begged Hal that if he didn't want to put Bolaire on a new body, that he not leave Bolaire to be found. After all, Bolaire was used as a weapon of war, effectively as a slave, for decades before he saw a fateful play and struck out on his own, so he has a pretty clear idea of how bad it could get.

It isn't exactly easy for Bolaire to find someone to approach for potential body-sharing who he trusts enough not to sell him out to a fate worse than death. Of course, he does now have some allies that he does trust that much. But that brings me to my third point.

Autonomy

Even if Bolaire were to, for example, be rotated among his current allies the way he once was shared out among the soldiers in the Falconers' Rebellion, such that he trusted everyone involved and he wasn't draining any one person's life force too much, this still isn't much of a life, either for Bolaire or the people in the group who are wearing him. He could ride along with their lives as an observer or a peanut gallery, but he could not make his own life choices or maintain a consistent persona for the world to interact with. He could not be Bolaire Lathalia, because if he rotated among all these people with a consistent identity, then his nature would become obvious, and then he would be probably be hunted by the Sundered Houses to be used as a tactical nuke.

And on the host side of the equation, how long could any of them keep up with letting Bolaire "wreak havoc on the body" for a day every X days, having him observe their every action and thought? Could they really do that for years on end?

Where does this leave Bolaire?

I still haven't watched the rest of E13 because the cold open took over my entire brain. Based on that cold open and everything else we've seen, I have some thoughts to share about Bolaire's morality (with thanks to @onlyteoristeor for being super smart and helping me develop them.)

I've seen a lot of people talk about Bolaire being amoral. I don't think that's true. It's just that it's blue and orange morality that has little to do with typical human(oid) standards.

Truth

I believe that Bolaire's first moral principle he ever had was about the importance of truth. This makes a lot of sense, since he is the downfall of a goddess of trickery. He is not dedicated to a god, but to the antithesis of that god. Crucially, though, for him the truth does not have to be literal cut-and-dried facts. We saw in the cold open that Bolaire was enchanted when Eunice told him about how the lies of the theater can reveal more profound truths about the world.

We have a bunch of evidence that the truth is still a core principle to Bolaire in the present day. He often manages to avoid lying by either saying nothing or by saying something that is technically true. (A hilarious example from E2: when he told Thaisha "I touched the wrong thing and I got this thing stuck to me!" Technically true, if the "thing" he got stuck to was his human body.) In E11 he described the Cormorays' desire to take over the Archanade and present history in a way that was favorable to their interests as "violent." That makes sense in his morality; to him, doing damage to the truth might seem more violent than actual violence against people. He also agonized in E4 over how much he'd wanted to tell Hal the truth about himself and how much it hurt him to have to lie. I would argue that in Bolaire's moral system, Thjazi forcing him to lie was a kind of profound moral injury.

(I also reiterate what I've been saying for months: Taliesin rolled a natural 20 on persuasion in E4, not deception.)

Freedom

Another principle that Bolaire clearly held even before the E13 cold open was about freedom. He says in the cold open, "I'm fighting for freedom. That's what I do." He booed along, if shyly, with the crowd when the MC of the play denounced the tyranny of the Shapers. He clearly values his own freedom to a very high degree, willing to kill and even lie for it. In the present day, he fights the authority of the Sundered Houses. Of course, the irony is that his own freedom must necessarily come at the expense of the freedom of his stolen bodies.

Fairy tale morality

I believe that Bolaire pieced together more of his morality based on the play he saw in the E13 cold open. It's important to contextualize that Bolaire would have witnessed very little in the way of moral aspirations up until that point. He was used as a weapon of war for decades. When would he ever have seen or heard anyone expressing an ideal of goodness or nobility or anything like that? In the play, he saw a noble knight bring down a god through the power of love, which was making some aspirational statements about what is morally right.

That play, though, had the structure and logic of a fairy tale. The knight lured wicked men into playing the dice game for him, thus taking misfortune onto themselves, in the way that animals in fables get each other into trouble. The play presents the knight as noble for doing this! There is a parallel between the way the knight got the wicked men to play with the cursed dice, and the way that Bolaire got Aubrus Drime to put him on in the E4 cold open. The wicked men chose to play the game, thus sealing their own fate; Aubrus Drime chose to attack Bolaire and "steal his mask", thus sealing his own fate. There is a kind of fairy tale justice to what Bolaire did to Drime.

The play also has the fairy tale logic of exchange and honoring agreements. In the final task, when the knight owes Rauwyn his honor, she makes a change to the agreement and asks that he pay her a kiss instead. Bolaire immediately took that on in his worldview. His existing agreement with the soldier who wore him was that he would temporarily offer his body to Bolaire and in exchange Bolaire would temporarily fight for his cause. Bolaire apologized and said the terms of the agreement were changing; he'd be taking the soldier's body permanently. But he didn't just run off with his body, which he easily could have done! He gave something in exchange. Since the soldier was permanently surrendering his freedom, in exchange Bolaire would fight for the cause until the war was through. It does follow the same logic as the play, where you can change the terms of an agreement as long as you exchange favors of equivalent value.

My point about truth being an important principle to Bolaire has now been explicitly stated in canon; in episode 30, Bolaire said to Termina, "Have I ever not told the truth? I may not tell the whole truth, but I tell the truth."

My point about freedom being an important principle has been reinforced by Bolaire meeting Tsul'rekshi in episode 27, an anarchist demon who says she hates captivity, and saying to her, "It delights me we have so much in common." It is also clear from episode 31 that Bolaire is traumatized by having been used as an object by Thjazi and the many soldiers who used him that way before Thjazi.

I think what I said about fairy tale morality was right, but it's more of a moral framework or a way for morals to be tested and enforced than a moral principle exactly, which was a bit sloppy of me!

This is a question that's been going around since episode 19, when we learned that Bolaire deliberately underfeeds his current body, Aubrus Drime, that I want to try to address.

First, to clear up a common misconception in the fandom: this underfeeding is not the cause of death for Bolaire's hosts. First of all, we don't know for sure that Bolaire has treated all of his hosts this way. Second of all, as much as it is fucked up and unhealthy to feed a human being one piece of bread, one piece of fruit, and one piece of jerky per day, this diet would not cause the symptoms described by Taliesin in Bolaire's previous host: gray skin, eyeballs so flaccid and desiccated the eyesockets appear empty, and chunks of flesh missing around the mouth so you can see the teeth beneath. What's more, one of the soldiers in the episode 13 cold open said that wearing Bolaire for even one day "wreaks havoc on the body." So starving the bodies is adding more suffering on top of what he already does to them, but it's not why they die.

With that out of the way: why does Bolaire starve Aubrus (and very possibly other hosts as well)?

First, I'll list out all of the hypotheses I've seen floating around:

Bolaire has twigged that Aubrus could be a useful source of information, so he's starving Aubrus to soften him up for interrogation.

Bolaire has a sensory aversion to eating and drinking, at least on his host's behalf.

Bolaire is dissociated enough from his hosts that he can't really tell how much food they actually need.

The hosts are not necessarily easy to control (Bolaire called Aubrus "ornery" in episode 4) and underfeeding them stops them from throwing off his control.

Bolaire thinks poorly of people like Aubrus and thinks they deserve whatever they get.

Because he knows that he will drain all his hosts to death no matter what he does (see above), Bolaire simply doesn't see the point in trying to maintain a body that is doomed regardless.

Here's my take on these hypotheses.

I think 1) is unlikely. The piles of rotting food indicate that Bolaire has been buying more food than he actually feeds his hosts for some time now. This didn't start with Aubrus.

I also think 3) is unlikely. I think this was probably the case back when he was used as a weapon, because his dialogue in the ep 13 cold open indicated that he basically forgot to check on the body's needs unless reminded by one of the soldiers. But now, Bolaire knows how much food to buy to appear like a Regular Guy, but does not actually consume the Regular Guy amount of food, thus the rotting food in the kitchen.

Murray is suspicious by nature. She doesn't believe that good people do good things just for the sake of doing something good (even if that good thing helps everyone. In fact, especially if that good thing helps everyone with no obvious additional personal gain). She was pretty clear about that in her conversation with Mara. As far as she's concerned, people do good things because it benefits them. And so she's trying to find the way that this benefits Thjazi beyond the way it benefits everyone. Same with Mara.

Murray is a lot of things. She is intelligent, and she is dedicated. She loves her school, and she loves her students. But if there is one thing she is not, it's selfless. I'd go as far as to say that she doesn't believe selfless people exist.

Murray was never a falconer or a revolutionary. She is an ambitious woman in academia. So, she's gonna keep looking for that personal motivation until she finds one. And if she can't find one? She's gonna distrust to the extreme.

So obviously, she's gonna keep looking for an angle. Especially when it comes to a guy, she barely knew regardless of how many people tell her that "No, he really is selfless. I swear your conception of the world is wrong. Some people are just selfless."

At least for now, failing any massive character arc where she learns that actually people can be that selfless, her response is always gonna be, "But is he, though?"