I need to talk about Egon Spengler's fire pole. No, really.
In Ghostbusters Afterlife, Phoebe finds Egon's underground lab. There's a fire pole down to it.
So, Egon hated using the firehouse fire pole.
In 1984's Ghostbusters, when we see Egon take the fire pole down for a bust, he is NOT comfortable on that thing. Sheer terror, might accurately describe the look on his face. Egon preferred the stairs.
It's Ray who loves the station fire pole.
Why even is there a barn lab fire pole? How would Egon exit the underground lab? Scooch up the pole? No. He probably couldn't climb a fire pole. Not at 70 years old. So, there has to be stairs or ladder down to the underground lab, though we never see them. Physics demand there must be another way in and out. Those stairs, would have been Egon's functional entrance/exit. The underground lab fire pole is structurally unnecessary. Why did Egon, while low on money and time, install it?
Because the fire pole is for someone else. Ray. Egon put it in because he liked to make Ray happy. And he hoped Ray was coming to help.
I think the pole, and the fact that Egon had multiple uniforms hanging ready in the locker, had more than one proton pack, and installed the gunner seat in Ecto1, all point to this- Egon never thought he'd face Gozer alone. This is why it ultimately takes a team to execute Egon's full entrapment vision, which does succeed and capture Gozer, but only when there's finally enough people on the team.
Egon never planned to be alone. He was doing his best but he knew he couldn't do it alone. He was always ready for Ray to believe him.
"We're ready to believe you." -The Ghostbusters
When Egon's mega Gozer trap fails at the beginning of Afterlife and he hides the Vinz Clortho trap in the floorboard puzzle box, who (besides Phoebe) was smart enough to unlock that puzzle? Ray Stantz.
Did Egon know Phoebe would come along? That she would be old enough in time? That she would be in Oklahoma? That she, a child, could handle the battle with Gozer? Perhaps he did.
Or did Egon believe that if he failed, Ray would come finish the job? The book stacks. The number code. The maps. Ray would have recognized everything in the livingroom of that old house, the moment he walked in. He would have recognized everything in the lab. He could have picked up where Egon left off. Only he never answered the call.
Still mad at Afterlife Ray.
Egon's fire pole is proof to me that he loved Ray Stantz, and was waiting on Ray to come, until the end.
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