Calling Dr. Darling!

 We know from various trailers that Casper Darling, the former head of research at the Federal Bureau of Control, will make appearances in Control Resonant. Darling is, maybe after Ahti, my favorite character from that game, which is funny, because he's a video game character who never shows up in anything but live-action segments (Mr. Door in Alan Wake II is almost of a similar category, except when he appears in the kind of early-flash-game shooter in Time Breaker).

Darling is, of course, played by Matthew Poretta, the voice actor for Alan Wake, but Control did a funny thing, getting the VAs from both of its most most famous protagonists to play new characters who actually used their likenesses, the other being James "voice of Max Payne" McCaffrey to play Director Zachariah Trench in both voice and appearance.

For such a ubiquitous presence in Control, seen in many film strips explaining paranatural concepts to FBC employees, Jesse, and of course the player, it's likely that by the time the game actually starts, Darling has already left our universe, using Hedron to transcend this reality and thereby escape the Hiss invasion.

So where is he, and what will he do in Control Resonant?

Well, last we saw him was in the Final Draft of Alan Wake II (the free New Game Plus mode added a month or two after release). It seems that Darling found himself in the Dark Place, but unlike Alan, he's more just curious than terrified of the place he's found himself in. According to his video message (only seen in this Final Draft mode) he's been in what we know to be the Dark Place (or at least assume to be) for 665 days (that recurring number motif, a bit like the number 19 in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Not sure who invented the trope, but to me 19 is the quintessential "mysteriously recurring number.")

Darling notes that scientific inquiry in a place as subjective as the Dark Place is basically impossible, as reality around him shapes itself to conform to his hypotheses. He posits that he could use someone with more intuitive, artistic ways of thinking, and lo and behold, at that moment, Tom Zane shows up in the video to share a drink with him and discuss a new collaboration. (Zane, of course, looks like Alan but has physical actor Ilkka Villi's voice, so it's literally Alan's body and voice meeting.)

Now, there's a lot in Alan Wake II that leads one to be suspicious of Zane's intentions, even perhaps casting into doubt that he is the same Thomas Zane that we encountered in the first game (who was voiced by James McCaffrey - Remedy is loyal to their actors, though sadly McCaffrey died shortly before Alan Wake II was released).

The footage in the trailers for Control Resonant seems to show Darling in similar videos to the ones we saw in the first game, likely shot within the Oldest House, and so if this is all we see of him, then it might not actually tell us anything about what has happened to Darling since this glimpse of him in the Dark Place. That being said, given the weird way that logic breaks down amidst the paranatural, is it possible that these videos (likely actually film strips, but you get the idea) aren't purely representing Darling in the past, but might be the way that he manifests in our world? Like, is every one of these dorky film strips something he actually shot with a film camera in an office at the Oldest House? Or might some (or even all) of them actually be things that he's brought into existence for the express purpose of reaching out to Jesse?

Certainly his Dynamite music video is for her, though that's a bit different, playing in a room at the Oceanview Motel rather than mundane reality (which the interior of the Oldest House technically is, at least with the exception of its Thresholds).

Darling is a very endearing character - Poretta infuses him with such nerdy enthusiasm that it's hard not to like him. But he's not an innocent, and you could argue he's actually a pretty bad person: it was Darling who oversaw Dylan's abduction and abuse in the name of training him for the Prime Candidate program. Darling might have had good intentions, and genuinely cared for Dylan, but that doesn't change the fact that a government agency (with basically zero oversight) took a recently-orphaned child and kept him locked up inside for 17 years, isolating him from his only surviving family while lying to him and telling him that Jesse was allowed to visit if she wanted.

Dylan seemed to bond with him - we hear him complaining to one of the other researchers after he starts to show violent tendencies that "Casper" isn't there with him. Darling is in denial when Dylan has his initial violent outbursts, trying to minimize the loss of one of his staff, but eventually he concedes that Dylan is a "lost cause," as much as he seems sad to say that.

But he doesn't have the right to wash his hands of Dylan - Dylan suffered a deeply abnormal childhood (which all started with an enormous trauma in the Ordinary AWE) and was denied so many of the things that any kid is owed that help them grow up healthily.

We, like Jesse, have primarily seen this charming side of Dr. Darling, and even a heroic side of him as he first tries to safeguard the FBC from the Hiss and then goes "through the monolith" to seek answers.

But with our perspective shifting to Dylan, who suffered so terribly that he didn't resist when the Hiss took him over (I wonder if this is why it didn't destroy him like it did other hosts, and why he was able to survive being purged of its influence,) I really think we need a reckoning with Darling, even if he's on another plane of existence.