Having Wilhelm and Emcee thoughts again because I love them (and love putting them in shitty situations). Context is the theory that the two were brothers and the first victims of Ethel's cult.
Okay, so a while back watching it, I realized that Wilhelm seemed to be relatively towards the Emcee, particularly in comparison to how Emcee treated him (when Emcee asked if Wilhelm enjoyed the show and Wilhelm completely ignored him). At first my thought was that it was lingering feelings from when they were first trapped, that maybe Wilhelm blamed the Emcee a bit for getting them into that situation and, even though he doesn't remember why or where those feelings came from anymore, he still harbors some distaste for him now.
However, this never sat right to me for a couple of reasons. 1) It didn't fit the dynamic I imagined for them as humans, as I hc they were brothers with a very close relationship, on a level similar to that of Frankie and Donnie, including after Ethel trapped them here, so the idea that Wilhelm's resentment was strong enough to stay after his memories disappeared didn't make any sense.
2) If anyone were to have been more to blame for it, it would've been Wilhelm himself, not the Emcee. Based on the interactions between him (the farmhand) and Ethel in the beginning, they seemed to have been on very good terms and led to my hc that he was the one to meet Ethel and maybe even convince the Emcee to trust her in the first place.
Thinking back on it, though, I think I have a more satisfying reasoning for it. Instead of Wilhelm carrying over negative feelings towards Emcee for what he did, I think it's him carrying over lingering feelings of guilt over what he thinks he caused. As I mentioned in a previous post, I think the two of them not only suffered from their own loss and transformation, but because they had to watch their brother slowly change and forget themselves over time and neither could do anything about it. With this in mind, I'd assume they didn't degrade at the same pace, especially in such a timeless realm. I think the Emcee would've lost pieces of himself before Wilhelm did. Every time Wilhelm would look at him, he would be different than the day before, but there was always a flicker of *something* there. Something that served as a reminder to him, as both of their minds faded, that his brother was still in there. Some he trusted and cared for was still there with him.
Then one day, he wasn't. The Emcee lost the last of his human memories. He couldn't remember his brother's name. Wilhelm looked him in the eyes, but the light was gone. His brother had disappeared and had been replaced with the entity in front of him. He couldn't bare to look this person in the eyes after that. He hated hearing his voice. Even with the lack of knowledge and memory Wilhelm now has, every word that came from his mouth served as a reminder something terrible had happened. He did something awful. It was his fault. He no longer knows what it was or why the Emcee triggers a subtle yet distinct pain in his chest, he just knows how much it hurts.
He's been killed an innumerable amount of times, but he'd grown numb to it long ago. But this feeling, for whatever reason, never hurt any less.
