Epic Finale (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 19 June 2014.

Some further ideas about Steffi.

Glaucus and Scylla

She needs to start out very young and innocent seeming, so I don't see her clawing her way to the top at an earlier part of her life. She was an undergraduate from Oberlin at the time of the pilot program, but didn't know (or seemed not to know) what she had signed up for. Overall, she affects a Midwestern sensibility and is the last one you would expect to become a sea devil. But the same could be said about Scylla, who just happened to be loved by Glaucus, who was in turn was loved by the witch, Circe.

Could she show up as an ostensibly naive and wide-eyed girl at an event for Arthur White and express a lot of interest in and admiration for Will and/or Arthur?

It may or may not be known at that moment that she is a Farthington student/cult member. Will lets down his guard thinking that this is some know-nothing groupie and maybe they end up going home, but, at the moment of anagnorisis, Will realizes that she was the one who took something essential (what, I don't know). And why did she take that critical thing? One of two reasons: (1) Farthington put her up to it or (2) she had already resolved to supplant Farthington and was now making moves of her own. In either case, she does supplant Farthington (maybe--I like your idea of him faking his death or disappearance regularly).

I like that moment in the tunnels being unclear, because the whole Schrödinger's cat/mascot suit thing depends on it.

But at least a couple episodes will pass with us not suspecting her at all, just thinking, "Wow, how weird that Will had this random encounter with a Farthington follower." I like that you are confused at this point, because one of the interpretations of the "turbulent reversals" is that everything becomes ambiguous, all narrators become untrustworthy, and the "many worlds interpretation" of Schrödinger's cat kicks in. That's officially the moment at which your exacting explanations cease to make sense and my crazy ones start seeming sensible!

I do like the jawless Steffi and/or Farthington, but I'm not sure how we find that out.

I find it much more terrifying to never see the actual carnage, but to hear about it in one or more ways. By the time one or both of them resurface, it is inside the mascot suit, so we have no idea what the situation is. I like the idea that, at some point, someone has another chance to shoot Steffi or Farthington encountering her/him clad in the mascot suit. I like having to shoot without knowing who is inside the suit. Then, the shooter gets to remove the mask and we get to decide who is in there. I think it would be really cool to see the blood slowly diffusing through the foam face. I like it being someone relatively insignificant, perhaps the worker who supposedly was buried in the cement while building the Chrysler Freeway, which, by the way, Detroit is thinking of rebuilding or ripping out.

Now, going way back, it may turn out that Steffi was not just a young co-ed who got corrupted and then destroyed her master, consuming and assuming his powers in the process. Again, could it be that "hers is the hand that holds the apple" and that, as she siphons away Farthington's powers, she has to prop him up, splicing into his lectures material from her own childhood, a childhood that included killing her own grandparents with apples.