Poet's Theatre

 The final level for Alan's side of Alan Wake II is Poet's Theatre, for the chapter called Zane's Film. Like Caldera Street Station and the Oceanview Hotel, we enter this dilapidated space and follow the echoes of Alex Casey's investigation of a murder, but there are a few things that are a little different about this one.

In the previous levels, the echo/flashback stuff seems to be telling the story of how the Cult of the Word managed to kill people who are essentially the "Elite Taken" that Saga encounters in the game - Robert Nightingale in her first chapter and Cynthia Weaver in her third (I still don't have anything to really say about the fact that these chapters don't happen in the same order). There's a story in the theatre that connects to the Thornton and Mulligan, the dirty cops who, in the Cult of the Word version of the story, have sought to join the cult for some kind of personal gain, and are dumping the bodies of the cult's victims into a vent of some sort in an alley out back of the theater, all in the hopes of this act earning them a spot in the cult.

But the echo story gets... weird. And perhaps that's perfect: rule of three says that this third level should bring a change to the formula, and wouldn't you know it: the character being ensnared by the cult winds up being Casey himself.

While we do ultimately find Thornton and Mulligan's corpses in the projection room with the deer mask, arranged like the figures on the float commemorating the Huotari murders in Watery (the vent they dump bodies down feels connected to the Huotari Well - also, do we think that "Watery" is just a bastardization of the name "Huotari?") Casey seems to become the target.

And when we get to the final part of the level, something else strange happens: Alan winds up in an Overlap.

Now, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is true of all the levels - when we get to the big concrete chamber in Caldera Street Station with Nightingale's corpse we see flashes of Cauldron Lake, and when we enter Room 108 to find Cynthia Weaver's body, we see flashes of the bunker beneath Valhalla Nursing Home. But beyond merely getting flashes of the Huotari Well and Coffee World, Alan is forced to go through the same kind of looping landscape that Saga does when she enters her Overlaps - she goes through the woods near the Witch's Ladle when chasing down Nightingale, through a ravine and past the Watery Sauna and past the Huotari Well when chasing Thornton and Mulligan, and through the bunker while chasing Cynthia.

But Alan doesn't have to do these loops in the train station or the hotel - once he gets access to their area, he just walks right in.

Why, though?

Ok, we're not done talking about all the weird stuff, though:

We hear Casey chasing after the cult's "Grandmaster," but he seems to encounter a new version of himself in each iteration of the loop - like each loop is layering on top of itself, so that he's hearing echoes of himself but mistaking them for the grandmaster.

And then, in perhaps the most baffling part of the level, we find not Alex Casey, but Sam Lake (the performer, or the real-world Creative Director of Remedy Entertainment and primary author of these games?) tied to a chair and strongly hinting to us that we should stab him in the heart, but fleeing as soon as we get the knife to do it.

Finally, when we investigate the last echo here, the masked Grandmaster (who I believe is Tom Zane) addresses us directly, pushing aside the idea of Alex Casey to instead focus on Alan.

From there, we find the bodies of the dirty cops and can then descend into the theater to view Yöton Yö (Nightless Night) in... its entirety?

It feels as if there's something significant about this one's placement as the final chapter for Alan to play through before the game's ending. Tom Zane describes his film as the "companion piece" to Return, and thus perhaps it makes sense that this is the most directly personal to Alan of all his levels.

The film itself (which I've delved into pretty deeply) implies that there's some attempt to more or less have Alex Casey take his place in the Dark Place - Tom is playing Alan Wake in the movie (or the Finnish version of him). It's interesting, then, that in the game's ending, the Dark Presence takes over the real Alex Casey when it leaves Alan, but Alan decides to follow him and not simply run after escaping the Dark Place for the first time in 13 years.

Still, let's put forth a crazy hypothesis:

Why does Alan have to go through a looping Overlap?

What if he's connecting to some third place? What if, just as Saga is connecting to the Dark Place by going through her looping landscapes, Alan is touching on some place beyond? He goes through a massive cinema attic filled with film reels, and given the Grandmaster's likely identity, he seems to be connecting with Tom Zane.

Tom Zane remains, as always, an enigma. I've suggested in previous posts that he might be, in some way, a co-creator of Alan Wake. But let's throw out another, crazier possibility:

In Yöton Yö, Tom, playing Alan, has Alex Casey sacrificed to take his place in the Writer's Room. Alan has "taken the role of the detective" by picking up Casey's gun and flashlight. So, in an ironic sense, the "Alén Veikko" of the film is not really Alan, and instead Alex Casey is the character that Alan is tied to, with Tom usurping Alan's means of escape (there's a less sinister interpretation where Tom intends to "play" Wake in order to piggyback onto Alan's own escape, but this still likely involves the sacrifice of Alex Casey, which nearly happens in the end of the game).

Is it possible that Tom's similarity in appearance to Alan is not because of some previous connection between the two, but a method that "Tom" is trying to use to better align with Alan?

See, when we encounter Thomas Zane in the first game, he doesn't sound anything like Alan and, well, we never see his face. But "Thomas Zane" has been cosmically retconned into being a "character" that Tom played in his "most famous film," Tom the Poet. I'm inclined to believe that the filmmaker is not, actually, the "real" Zane, and that the poet was the real one before he wrote himself out of existence.

But if Thomas has become just a character in one of filmmaker Zane's films...

Isn't that exactly what Tom is doing to Alan by making Yöton Yö?

In other words, is "Tom" actually some entity that is leapfrogging from artist to artist, stealing their identities?

Now, if you'll forgive me, there's one last batshit idea I have to throw at the wall like so much spaghetti:

We know from emails from Barry Wheeler to Alice Wake that Barry has moved out to Hollywood to manage the Alex Casey film series - acting as an executive producer to advocate for the studio not to butcher his best friend's and client's novels.

It's in Hollywood that Barry encounters Chester Bless, whom we know from Control to be somehow associated with (likely the kingpin of) the Blessed Organization, an enigmatic paracriminal group that has killed FBC members and seems to be unleashing altered items upon the world (including, it should be noted, a film camera).

So, this is a real Hail Mary of a hypothesis, but:

What if "Tom Zane" is actually Chester Bless?

I'll walk this back a bit immediately, of course: the connections are tenuous. Bless seems based in Los Angeles, but I don't know if there's any strong evidence that he has ties to the film industry. Instead, I suspect that things like the Blessed Wellness Center are likely meant to evoke Scientology, the high-profile cult that worked very hard to ensconce itself in Hollywood. For those of you who don't live here, you might be surprised at the massive properties the cult has, like the "Celebrity Center" across the street from Upright Citizen's Brigade (I have friends who do improv and sketch comedy, so I've been there a few times). While often seen as something of a punchline about how weird Hollywood is, historically the Scientologists were nevertheless responsible for one of the largest infiltration of US Government agencies in something called "Operation Snow White" in the 1970s - with 5000 agents of the church infiltrating and stealing from various offices and agencies.

In the current version of history in which Zane (the filmmaker) had the house that is now Valhalla Nursing Home built, he's described as being something of a cult leader, with the house serving as the kind of cult headquarters. In the Dark Place NYC, Poet's Theatre is the headquarters of the Cult of the Word. Now, its connection to the Huotari Well could simply mean that it's really more connected to the Cult of the Tree's headquarters in the Kalevala Knights workshop, but I think Zane's influence and impact on all of this cannot be discounted.

So - a tenuous connection with Chester Bless to be sure, and I'll happily drop this theory if new evidence arises to separate the two figures.

Still, something about the Poet's Theatre feels special.