Kinger's Dark / Light Craziness Inverted
I'd like to point out that in this final scene, Kinger's eyes move before anyone else's. His pupils follow the initial drop of the lotion basket, then he briefly looks at everyone else in concern. Kinger's sane enough here to recognize how serious of a situation this is.
Everyone else is so shocked that they keep staring at the spot Caine left for a while.
Also, here when they first find out Caine lied to them, Kinger doesn't look upset at all.
He knew all along that this was an adventure, that escaping the circus isn't possible. Right now, he's simply observing and thinking. Then, he puts together the pieces about Scratch.
The thing on his mind at the very end isn't being shocked or upset himself. It's the sadness of seeing the people he cares about feeling hurt. If only he got the chance to tell them sooner as his sane self, maybe it would've hurt less. I bet he figured out Caine's game while thinking in the fort, and was going to tell Pomni before the light made him crazy again.
Which leaves a question: In the end of the episode, why is Kinger crazy in the dark, but sane in the light?
If Kinger was sane in the console room when it was still dim, he would've ruined the surprise. Kinger's a smart cookie and incredibly in tune with the emotions of others, he would've told the others immediately to spare them from a worse heartache. Caine could've deliberately messed with Kinger's sanity to keep him from spilling the beans.
If this is true, it implies that it's possible Caine is the one making Kinger crazy in the first place. Does Kinger himself know this, or is he chalking it up to his mind being worse for wear after Queenie's abstraction and living in the circus for so long?
If Caine is the cause, he must be doing it through temporary modifiers. This episode revealed that Caine is able to use temporary modifiers on mental state but not permanent changes (without abstracting someone, at least).
Despite Caine suggesting the only purpose of these is to make adventures more interesting, we know for sure the effects can persist outside of adventures because we saw Ragatha still stupid sauced out of her mind laying on the couch upside down at the end of Ep 4.
Why attach the craziness modifier to a condition like light or dark? I don't see the purpose of Caine limiting the modifier like this, except for two possibilities:
1. Keeping Kinger crazy all the time would be equivalent to a permanent mental edit, meaning he would abstract. While Caine does some messed up things, he doesn't actually want the humans to abstract, so he toes the line and allows Kinger's mind to recharge / recover at night until it's safe to make him crazy again when he has to interact with the others. Maybe it's not the act of editing characters' minds itself that causes the abstraction, but spending an extended amount of time in a mind-edited state. When Caine finds out through Abel or his all-seeing-eyes that Kinger is unexpectedly coming along, he could have planned for the exact moment the cast enters the console room to 'swap the polarity' of the craziness modifier, so to speak, to prevent Kinger from ruining the big reveal. But this quick fix gives the unintended consequence of Kinger staying sane enough during Jax's outburst and Caine's nervous rambling to reach conclusions about Scratch and reveal critical info.
2. Kinger being sane in the dark isn't actually an intention of Caine, but a sort of immunity Kinger built up to Caine's muddling. The biggest piece of evidence for this is that Kinger tells Pomni in Ep 3 that he's sane in the dark because it reminds him of Queenie's last calm moments. Maybe recalling the connection he had with Queenie is enough of a grounding force for him to snap out of Caine's modifier. Caine is likely aware of this by now, so he could have momentarily upped the strength of the craziness modifier or slapped an extra modifier on Kinger's vision increasing perceived brightness while in the console room. Other triggers for powerful positive memories and emotions could potentially lead to the same immunity. If this is the case, what else did Kinger remember at the very end of the episode that allowed him to be sane in the light? I don't have a good answer for that one, so let me know if y'all come up with something. Can the others snap out of Caine's influence the same way with their own grounding memories?
