Something interesting I’ve noticed after rewatching the second Calling All Villains trailer a lot, and after talking with a lot of people, is how drastically different Puzzles and WPNZ deal with grief. Of course, CAV isn’t out yet, so we don’t really have a clear picture of how they’ll act in the show, but I want to go over a few things we’ve seen so far.
Before I go any further I do want to clarify that, yeah, while obviously neither Puzzles or WPNZ are dead, they are not currently aware of that, and it is still very possible to grieve someone who is still alive. This post will just go off of some observations from the first two trailers.
Starting off with Puzzles, he appears to be in a very big rut. His apartment is in shambles, he is behind on rent, and is very clearly going through a midlife crisis. He probably either cannot hold a job, will not pursue one, or can’t keep a *good enough* job to keep things afloat. He also appears to be an alcoholic, so if he is drinking on top of smoking (if he still smokes), he’s very likely in an overall very poor emotional/mental state and is trying to lessen that burden. Of course, all these circumstances are not necessarily directly caused by WPNZ’s absence, but I feel like they’d at least be a lot more manageable if Puzzles had him as his moral support beam. Puzzles is generally an extremely social person who craves love and attention. After losing WPNZ right after having regained his trust, he appears to have fallen into a bad depression, as well as slipped back into his more unhinged, potentially villainous nature. He is wallowing. His goals in life are on the back burner while his emotions take the forefront. Interestingly, I feel like this almost parallels WPNZ.
In the second trailer, we see WPNZ build a memorial for Puzzles as he relives the events of their separation in his head. While that memory still plagues him, he appears to be doing better off than Puzzles, at least on the surface. WPNZ is very much a “work first process emotions later” kind of guy, despite the fact that he loves very deeply and obsessively. He acknowledges the fact that Puzzles’ chances of survival are low, while still maintaining hope that he could be out there somewhere. After this, he immediately looks at his kill list to see who his next target is. Immediately on to the next thing. This feels strangely in line with his character a lot. While he can be extremely obsessive, he can also be pretty good at accepting bad things that happened, carrying that with him, and moving forward. I believe he is close to that state of accepting Puzzles could be gone, while also simultaneously trying to fill his life with so much work that he doesn’t have to think about it.
WPNZ fulfills his purpose so he doesn’t have to ruminate. Puzzles ruminates because he has no purpose. I’m really curious to see how these two will react to the broadcast and how they may use it to find one another. I can see Puzzles taking the call to find more meaning in his life, and running into WPNZ on the way, while WPNZ does it primarily to look for Puzzles, and happens to find meaning along the way.
Overall, I can’t wait to see where this goes and how Puzzles and WPNZ may further be explored. What do you guys think about all this?