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Theories on the mastermind in "Mercy"
Ok, I rewatched "Mercy" with the squee turned down a little, and thought about it in light of some conversations I've been having with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
juxtoppozed and mbcorp and comments made by latxcvi and bop_radar, so now I have some theories on the mastermind in SV: "Mercy".
I rewatched "Mercy," and I'm still undecided as to whether the mastermind of the whole thing was Lionel, Lex, Jor-El, or simply Lincoln Cole, but here are what I see as the most likely theories, from most to least likely, with supporting evidence:
(1) Lincoln Cole was the ultimate mastermind, but Lionel did manipulate the scene in the elevator with Martha to his advantage. On rewatching the episode, this now seems most likely to me for a couple of reasons.latxcvi pointed out that the producers never really trust us with subtle interpretations of the plot; when manipulation is going on, it is usually acknowledged somewhere in the text of the episode. Clark, in the last scene, accuses Lionel of knowing there were no bullets in the gun. When I was rewatching that scene, it is true that Lionel plays with the gun for about a minute before handing it to Martha, and I think that obvious bit of business was to show us he figured that the gun wasn't loaded, and therefore used this as a way of gaining Martha's confidence.
So Lionel really wasn't willing to sacrifice his life for Martha; he was manipulating her, having figured out by evaluating the weight of the gun or something like that that it was unloaded.
At first I thought this explanation was unsatisfying, because it leaves Lincoln Cole as this villain who comes out of nowhere and doesn't really advance the seasonal plot very much. But thenbop__radar in her review called attention to Cole's speech about puppets and people who pull their strings, and it suddenly became clear to me that Cole is paralleling Jor-El: both of them are controlling Lionel to their own ends, and perhaps even for similar purposes. I'm sure Jor-El's main purpose in controlling Lionel is to somehow protect Clark (and possibly to continue the tests he is setting for Clark), but on rewatching the episodes I also wondered if Jor-El is, like Cole, punishing Lionel for his misdeeds. I suggest that because the first two times Lionel gets headaches in the episode are (a) immediately after he has fired those people he was talking to over the phone and (b) immediately after he has been a total jerk to Lex.
More importantly, I think Jor-El is setting up Clark to get rid of Lionel. I think it was Jor-El, not Lionel, that Clark encountered in the last scene. (The rest of the episode I think it was pure Lionel). My reasons are as follows: not only does Lionel, in that scene, call Clark "Kal-El" and say "I've been expecting you"," but more importantly, JG was playing that scene AS Jor-El. Not with the accent, but with the body language. Lionel is always leonine: large, energetic, in motion, flamboyant in his movements, whereas JG has always played Jor-El as very contained, with a sort of stillness, very precise movements and closed-in body-language. That is the body language JG was using in that final scene with Clark. I now read that scene as Jor-El taunting Clark and trying to push him to aggressive action toward Lionel, possibly because Jor-El realizes Lionel now knows Clark's secret, or possibly related to some other larger plan of his. That little half-smirk at the end of their conversation, when Clark has just threatened him, I read as triumph that his plan succeeded. And then he surrenders control of the body back to Lionel.
(2) Possibility #2 is that Lex set up the whole situation--maybe found Cole and set him in motion. I'm not entirely sure why he would do this--revenge? To set up a situation where he might find out information Lionel has been concealing? To draw Clark back into his orbit and find out more about his secrets? Even though I now think this possibility is less likely, there were still a couple of textual pieces of support for it, I thought:
--the fact that he is teaching Lana to play chess, and talking about anticipating your opponents moves. I really read that as a statement about his larger chess game with his father. We all know Lex hates to lose, and Lionel kind of rubbed it in his face that he always beat Lex at chess, but Lex didn't really respond emotionally. That may just show that now that he has the upper hand, he doesn't react emotionally to his father's jibes--but I wonder if it signals some deeper game that he's playing. Especially since that line "I'm not playing to win, I'm playing to instruct" seemed so apropos to the instructional tortures Lionel went through in this episode.
--the fact that there were, actually, clues for Clark and Chloe to find and trace. Why would Cole have left behind the figurine with the camera, if it was inactive? Why was there a sheet of paper saying "game over" on the monitor? Why leave any clues at all for trackers to find, unless you're expecting people to be tracing you and you *want* them to find you at a specific time? Plus, if Lex set up this scenario, it would be precisely like what he did in "Mortal," except he upped the stakes a little bit. Furthermore, the *last* time Lionel and Martha were taken hostage it was an inadvertant result of Lex's actions; it would be nicely symmetrical if this time it was a deliberate result of Lex's plan to gain knowledge about his father (and knowledge about Clark).
--Lex was acknowledged to be the one who found Cole, at the end. Possibly because he knew exactly where to look?
(3) Possibility #3 is that Lionel set up the situation himself. That I also find less plausible, now, after having conversations withmbcorp and juxtoppozed and latxcvi about it, since there is really no reason why, for example, he would force himself to walk through fire when no one was watching. I did think, however, that the scenes with Martha were so incredibly useful to Lionel's ends that they had to be contrived.
(4) Possibility #4 is that Jor-El set up the whole situation to get rid of Lionel or for some other purpose that we don't now know. I still believe, however, that if Jor-El was physically manifesting in the episode, it was only in that final scene with Clark, not throughout the rest of the episode--though maybe the headaches occur when he tries to break through unsuccessfully? Or maybe, as several people have suggested, Jor-El's possession is causing permanent brain damage to Lionel.
juxtoppozed and mbcorp and comments made by latxcvi and bop_radar, so now I have some theories on the mastermind in SV: "Mercy".I rewatched "Mercy," and I'm still undecided as to whether the mastermind of the whole thing was Lionel, Lex, Jor-El, or simply Lincoln Cole, but here are what I see as the most likely theories, from most to least likely, with supporting evidence:
(1) Lincoln Cole was the ultimate mastermind, but Lionel did manipulate the scene in the elevator with Martha to his advantage. On rewatching the episode, this now seems most likely to me for a couple of reasons.
latxcvi pointed out that the producers never really trust us with subtle interpretations of the plot; when manipulation is going on, it is usually acknowledged somewhere in the text of the episode. Clark, in the last scene, accuses Lionel of knowing there were no bullets in the gun. When I was rewatching that scene, it is true that Lionel plays with the gun for about a minute before handing it to Martha, and I think that obvious bit of business was to show us he figured that the gun wasn't loaded, and therefore used this as a way of gaining Martha's confidence.So Lionel really wasn't willing to sacrifice his life for Martha; he was manipulating her, having figured out by evaluating the weight of the gun or something like that that it was unloaded.
At first I thought this explanation was unsatisfying, because it leaves Lincoln Cole as this villain who comes out of nowhere and doesn't really advance the seasonal plot very much. But then
bop__radar in her review called attention to Cole's speech about puppets and people who pull their strings, and it suddenly became clear to me that Cole is paralleling Jor-El: both of them are controlling Lionel to their own ends, and perhaps even for similar purposes. I'm sure Jor-El's main purpose in controlling Lionel is to somehow protect Clark (and possibly to continue the tests he is setting for Clark), but on rewatching the episodes I also wondered if Jor-El is, like Cole, punishing Lionel for his misdeeds. I suggest that because the first two times Lionel gets headaches in the episode are (a) immediately after he has fired those people he was talking to over the phone and (b) immediately after he has been a total jerk to Lex. More importantly, I think Jor-El is setting up Clark to get rid of Lionel. I think it was Jor-El, not Lionel, that Clark encountered in the last scene. (The rest of the episode I think it was pure Lionel). My reasons are as follows: not only does Lionel, in that scene, call Clark "Kal-El" and say "I've been expecting you"," but more importantly, JG was playing that scene AS Jor-El. Not with the accent, but with the body language. Lionel is always leonine: large, energetic, in motion, flamboyant in his movements, whereas JG has always played Jor-El as very contained, with a sort of stillness, very precise movements and closed-in body-language. That is the body language JG was using in that final scene with Clark. I now read that scene as Jor-El taunting Clark and trying to push him to aggressive action toward Lionel, possibly because Jor-El realizes Lionel now knows Clark's secret, or possibly related to some other larger plan of his. That little half-smirk at the end of their conversation, when Clark has just threatened him, I read as triumph that his plan succeeded. And then he surrenders control of the body back to Lionel.
(2) Possibility #2 is that Lex set up the whole situation--maybe found Cole and set him in motion. I'm not entirely sure why he would do this--revenge? To set up a situation where he might find out information Lionel has been concealing? To draw Clark back into his orbit and find out more about his secrets? Even though I now think this possibility is less likely, there were still a couple of textual pieces of support for it, I thought:
--the fact that he is teaching Lana to play chess, and talking about anticipating your opponents moves. I really read that as a statement about his larger chess game with his father. We all know Lex hates to lose, and Lionel kind of rubbed it in his face that he always beat Lex at chess, but Lex didn't really respond emotionally. That may just show that now that he has the upper hand, he doesn't react emotionally to his father's jibes--but I wonder if it signals some deeper game that he's playing. Especially since that line "I'm not playing to win, I'm playing to instruct" seemed so apropos to the instructional tortures Lionel went through in this episode.
--the fact that there were, actually, clues for Clark and Chloe to find and trace. Why would Cole have left behind the figurine with the camera, if it was inactive? Why was there a sheet of paper saying "game over" on the monitor? Why leave any clues at all for trackers to find, unless you're expecting people to be tracing you and you *want* them to find you at a specific time? Plus, if Lex set up this scenario, it would be precisely like what he did in "Mortal," except he upped the stakes a little bit. Furthermore, the *last* time Lionel and Martha were taken hostage it was an inadvertant result of Lex's actions; it would be nicely symmetrical if this time it was a deliberate result of Lex's plan to gain knowledge about his father (and knowledge about Clark).
--Lex was acknowledged to be the one who found Cole, at the end. Possibly because he knew exactly where to look?
(3) Possibility #3 is that Lionel set up the situation himself. That I also find less plausible, now, after having conversations with
mbcorp and juxtoppozed and latxcvi about it, since there is really no reason why, for example, he would force himself to walk through fire when no one was watching. I did think, however, that the scenes with Martha were so incredibly useful to Lionel's ends that they had to be contrived. (4) Possibility #4 is that Jor-El set up the whole situation to get rid of Lionel or for some other purpose that we don't now know. I still believe, however, that if Jor-El was physically manifesting in the episode, it was only in that final scene with Clark, not throughout the rest of the episode--though maybe the headaches occur when he tries to break through unsuccessfully? Or maybe, as several people have suggested, Jor-El's possession is causing permanent brain damage to Lionel.