u/Evening_Formal_7833

I’m currently rewatching season one for the first time since it came out and wow. That scene at the end of episode six is so much more disturbing than I remembered. I recall at the time being confused by all the Daphne hate online but yeah, now that my brain has been cooking for a bit longer I definitely get it.

However, I’ve been mulling it over for a few days and think I understand the nuance of the situation a bit better now. I’ve had the time to separate my thoughts from the very strong emotions I was feeling fresh off watching the scene again. So would love to hear other people’s thoughts too!!

Disclaimer (1): the point of this post is absolutely not to excuse or justify what Daphne did. I just think it’s an interesting exercise to analyse the in-universe circumstances that led to the character’s decision.

Disclaimer (2): I know I have quite a wordy and formal writing style. I’m not using AI, I’m just a neurodivergent person with an English degree. Pinky promise. Hate that this is something I even have to clarify but this is the age we’re living in (yippee).

Disclaimer (3): I haven’t read the books but my understanding is that this scene is a lot worse in the book. I’m only going to be talking about the events that take place in the show.

One thing that I think is really important to consider is that most people are critiquing Daphne’s actions through a twenty-first century lens. Armed with all the understanding of intimacy and consent that the modern day offers. I’m usually not a fan of people using “it was a different time!” to try and excuse inexcusable actions. But in this instance I feel like it’s unfair - and slightly ridiculous - to expect a sheltered debutante from the 1800s (who, until very recently, didn’t even have the most basic understanding of the mechanics of sex) to display the same intricate understanding of consent as a woman in 2026 would. Plus, the show makes it clear through Simon’s reaction that what she’s done isn’t right. If the writers had included her actions in the show, and not drawn attention to how messed up it was, I think I’d feel differently.

Another thing to think about is the power dynamics at play here. Obviously Simon and Daphne are a romanticised representation of a Regency era couple, but the period typical power imbalances are still very much present in the story. Daphne is totally isolated from her friends and family at Clyveden. Not only does the Duke have a higher status than Daphne by virtue of his inherited title, but he basically has total control over her quality of life. If she addresses the lie with him outright, he could easily have her shipped off to one of his other estates to live an even more lonely life (like the countess Eloise mentions in episode one). She could even be facing a difficult life with a limited allowance, since he’s in total control of her finances too. If an English woman in the modern day is betrayed by her husband, she has far more agency to deal with it than Daphne does.

A huge part of Daphne’s character is that she’s very shrewdly aware of her place in society. She understands, with alarming clarity, the limitations that have been put upon her by her station and gender. She also understands that Simon is prone to avoidant, changeable behaviour and he has already proved earlier in the series that he has the capacity for abandonment. I’m not saying that was done with malicious intent either. Obviously, he had Daphne’s happiness in mind at the time. I’m just highlighting how precarious Daphne’s situation might feel from her perspective. Couple all of that with the fact that she’s a deeply emotionally stunted person with painfully underdeveloped communication skills and it’s not difficult to see how she arrived at such a misguided, harmful decision. Again, I’m not justifying what she did, I just it’s important to consider context when critiquing a character’s decisions.

On top of his status as a Duke, Simon also benefits from a much more detailed understanding of sex than Daphne. And, even if he claims otherwise, it’s very clear that he took advantage of her naivety around intimacy to repeatedly lie to her about ability to have children. Which does just feel a bit icky I’m sorry. The first instance at the duel, I can totally understand. He worded it like that with the expectation that it would make her change her mind about marrying him. But once they were married and finding so much physical and emotional intimacy with one another, the choice to keep her in the dark feels more and more deliberate and calculated the longer it goes on. This obviously does not mean he deserved to be SA’d. But it does amplify Daphne’s feelings of betrayal and humiliation when she realises the truth.

I definitely think that in terms of the act itself, what Daphne did is objectively a lot more fucked up that what Simon did. But I feel like people are often really quick to jump on the Daphne hate train without really considering the circumstances that led to her actions.

Would love to hear some other opinions in the comments though. Always up for a lively debate. Expressing your disagreement is obviously fine, just try and keep it respectful please and thanks xoxo

So, I know there’s been a lot of discussion around what exactly “Wish Nikki” is. Curry Barker has stated explicitly that Obsession is not a possession movie, at least not in the traditional, demonic sense. Theories range from Nikki being under hypnosis, to Wish Nikki being an altogether different kind of “entity.” To Nikki being possessed by Bear’s dead cat (oh TikTok, how I love thee). There’s also been a fair amount of debate over how many of the film’s events Real Nikki was actually aware of while they were happening.

I’ve thought about it a lot, and have collected my thoughts into the following yapathon.

A FEW DISCLAIMERS, because the internet can be a bit of a turbulent place to hang out:

Firstly, I’m aware I have quite a wordy and awkwardly formal style of writing. In this blessed age of AI we live in, I’m often accused of using ChatGPT (or similar) to write stuff. I don’t use AI, I’m just a vaguely autistic person with an English degree. Promise.

Secondly, I’m going to be referring to “Real Nikki” and “Wish Nikki” throughout. This doesn’t translate to me thinking that Nikki is possessed in an ooky spooky Insidious/The Conjuring/The Exorcist way. It’s just the easiest way for me to differentiate between which “version” of Nikki I’m referring to. Otherwise things are gonna get real confusing real fast.

Thirdly, I’m going to be speaking quite definitively at times e.g. “this happens, then this happens, which causes this…” This doesn’t mean that I’m presenting my perspective as the objectively correct one. Obviously, only Curry Barker can really do that. I’m just walking you down my train of thought. Join me for a stroll if you want. And if you don’t want, that’s fine too!!

Fourthly, feel free to let me know in the comments if you think I’m talking total and utter shit. Love a lively debate. Just try and keep things respectful, please and thanks x

So, in the wise words of Yuriy, okayyyyy let’s go…

I don’t personally think that, immediately upon Bear making the Wish, Wish Nikki snapped into being. Fully formed and entirely separate from Real Nikki. It seems more like the Wish magic begins by essentially sedating Real Nikki while funnelling Bear’s desires into her mind. This allows the Wish to pilot her body, without her even being fully aware of what’s happening. That’s why, on that first night, both times she “snaps back” outside the car and on the bed, she seems totally unaware of what she’s been doing or how she got there.

In other words, the Wish magic is putting Real Nikki in a trance and semi-successfully convincing her that she wants Bear at first. Think of Wish Nikki, in the earliest stage of her evolution, as a well-hidden computer virus. Working away in the background to rewrite parts of Real Nikki’s consciousness and influence her actions without her knowing. And as for those two instances of Real Nikki breaking through on the first night, you’re telling me you don’t stall a couple of times when you drive an unfamiliar car? She’s brand new to this body and brain, give her some time to adjust!!

I also think that’s why Wish Nikki finds it easier to imitate normalcy in the beginning (on the whole anyway, her bouts of weirdness being more subtle and easier to explain away). Partly because her feelings for Bear, although much more intense than before, are still a continuation of Real Nikki’s own feelings. Whether Real Nikki did fancy him or not (this is deliberately ambiguous so no answer is really right/wrong), she definitely felt a lot of affection for him. And at the start of the film she’s craving love, as she isn’t getting it from her current romantic partner(s). So it probably wasn’t a huge cognitive leap for her to start behaving romantically towards Bear. I’d guess that Real Nikki felt some confusion about her actions on that first night, but was able to explain them to herself in a similar way to how Bear did e.g. drugs/alcohol/mental illness.

Wish Nikki’s only purpose is to love Bear. That’s what she was created for, it’s the only thing she knows how to do. In fact, it’s the only thing she’s permitted to do. So, when those feelings are being reciprocated by Bear, her mindset is still relatively peaceful. Making it easier for her to keep Real Nikki complacent and “sedated.” Which, in turn, makes it much easier for her to feed off Real Nikki’s memories/personality. Meaning she’s still able to present a somewhat passable impression of Real Nikki, while influencing her emotions and actions with her own desires. At most, Real Nikki probably had moments of sentience where she thought “huh, it’s a bit strange that I feel suddenly intensely in love with this person.” But it would have been much easier for Wish Nikki to quell those doubts at first, while she was still piggybacking off Real Nikki’s consciousness.

Not to compare one five star movie to another, but think about The Matrix. Being unaware of the fact that you’re being controlled makes it easier for the architect of said control to trick you and oppress your mind.

In the interest of fairness it’s also worth mentioning that, since the entire film is from Bear’s perspective, it’s possible that Nikki was just acting bizarrely from the off. That lovey dovey montage at the beginning could easily have been him romanticising his time with Nikki, wilfully ignoring red flags until they became too obvious to avoid. It’s also made quite clear throughout the film that, even though he claims to love her, Bear doesn’t really know Nikki very well. He’s fallen in love with the idea of her and not bothered to try and understand her beyond the surface-level information required to feed his infatuation. So it’s also possible that someone who knew Nikki better would have picked up on her acting unlike herself much sooner than Bear did. He’s blatantly someone who would choose to live in denial in pursuit of satisfying his own ego and holding onto this fantasy relationship with his “dream girl.”

EDIT: I’m thick and apparently forgot that both Sarah and Ian do point out very early on that Nikki’s acting strangely. Although it’s framed as though they both have their own ulterior motives for bringing this up with Bear.

As Bear begins to pull away from her, following his moment of realisation in the restaurant, Wish Nikki feels less secure, and subsequently starts acting more erratically. As Wish Nikki’s behaviour starts to deviate more severely from how Real Nikki would act of her own accord, it becomes impossible for the Wish magic to convince Real Nikki that her motivations still align with Wish Nikki’s. This dissonance creates the “split personality” effect that we see in acts 2 & 3 of the film. Real Nikki is now fully aware that something is very, very wrong and is actively fighting to gain back control of her body. Occasionally managing to push her way to the surface. At this point, Real Nikki is fully conscious and aware of everything that’s happening externally around her. She’s watching from the passenger seat as someone drives her car full speed towards a brick wall. Trying desperately and (usually) fruitlessly to grab the wheel and swerve off course to safety.

Bear’s avoidant complacency creates a vicious cycle. He becomes more distant. Wish Nikki perceives this as rejection and behaves more irregularly. In response, Real Nikki fights even harder to gain control back and stop herself from acting this way. Wish Nikki then acts even more scary because of the cognitive dissonance between the template she’s trying to model her behaviour on, and how the Wish is compelling her to act. so Bear becomes even more distant. And so on…

Imagine for a moment that you’ve been brought into existence by a God and told very clearly that you have one sole purpose. While trying your hardest to fulfil that purpose, the God is constantly telling you that you’re doing it wrong. Without offering any meaningful guidance on how to do it correctly. Personally, I think we’d all go a bit insane in that situation. We see this early on in that relationship montage. When they’re watching tv together and Bear turns her head away from him and back towards the film, her expression turns sinister. Even the tiniest perceived rejection by Bear is an indication to Wish Nikki that she’s failing at the one objective that is her entire reason for existing in the first place.

Furthermore, Wish Nikki’s identity is a direct reflection of Bear’s infatuation, she was made in the image of his obsession. So, as Bear’s feelings about Nikki become more complicated, Wish Nikki’s instructions on how to behave also become progressively unclear. Bear never really saw Real Nikki as a complex, three-dimensional person with an interior world of her own. It never occurred to him to dig deeper and uncover all those lovely flaws and quirks and contradictions that make us human. So the template that Wish Nikki has been ordered to imitate isn’t sufficient for her to successfully act like a real, fully rounded person. Sure, it’s workable when things are nice and simple during their honeymoon period at the start. But once they start to encounter real, complicated issues, she simply doesn’t have the tools to tackle them properly. She’s a half-formed, patchwork person trying to stitch together the scraps of stolen personality she’s been given into a presentable tapestry of personhood. When she runs out of prompts, she starts pulling from the world around her instead. Sculpting herself into a twisted, uncanny copy of anything that Bear expresses affection for.

This is why, as much as I personally find the cat theory a bit ridiculous, I do think there’s something to it. Not a literal possession by Sandy’s spirit. But, rather, more evidence of Wish Nikki searching for guidance on how to correctly display her devotion to Bear. Like okay, Bear needs to feel loved and adored by me, and who loves you more unconditionally than your pet? Pets wait dutifully by the door for their owners to come home, so I mustn’t move a muscle while he’s at work. Even if that means I piss and shit and vomit all over myself. Cats like to follow you to the bathroom and wait outside the door, they do this because animals are most vulnerable while they’re doing their business. So of course Bear will feel safe, protected and loved if I do that for him!! Bear is sad about his cat dying, so Bear must really love his cat. I love Bear so much that I want to consume every part of him. Therefore, eating his cat’s remains will make Bear happy and bring him comfort about Sandy’s death.

She’s desperately searching for examples of behaviour that will make it clear to Bear, her creator, that she’s doing what he demanded of her when he brought her into this cursed existence. But she hasn’t been gifted the critical thinking skills to understand what’s contextually appropriate. It’s like she’s been given extremely basic cliff notes of a really complex novel. She could recount the plot decently enough. But ask her to have an in-depth discussion about the themes, metaphors and deeper meanings within the story, and she’ll inevitably misinterpret stuff. She has one source available to reference from when it comes to love, and it’s an extremely unhealthy version of it. So of course she’s incapable of pursuing romance in a healthy manner.

We obviously see this more clearly at the end too, when she dresses up in Sarah’s clothes/tattoos and imitates her mannerisms. Bear likes Sarah, so I must be Sarah in order to earn his love. It would never occur to Wish Nikki to just be herself, because she has no sense of self at all. Without Bear, she literally ceases to exist.

I also think it’s an interesting and deliberate choice from Inde Navarette and Curry Barker to have Wish Nikki act so infantile. She’s relying on Real Nikki’s memories at first, to coach and guide her as to what’s “normal” and how she “should” be acting. When Real Nikki stops cooperating and that crutch is taken away from her, she reverts to a childlike creature. Stumbling blindly through life, trying to navigate social situations and romantic relationships without any guidance whatsoever. There’s a reason why children have to be actively taught empathy and morals and conscience. Mind you, I’m not saying that all children who don’t get coached on these turn into brick wielding maniacs. There’s obviously a supernatural element here which takes things to the extreme. But hey, that’s showbiz baby!!

The only sticking point for me here is the scene where Bear hears Real Nikki screaming on the One Wish Willow helpline. That definitely seems to imply that Real Nikki’s consciousness is somewhere else entirely, while Wish Nikki controls her body. And this directly contradicts the idea that both Nikkis can exist within the same body simoultaneously. It could be that the One Wish Willow people have some kind of insight/access to Nikki’s mind, since their magic is controlling it. It could also just be that Bear broke the terms of the Wish, and they’re punishing him for it. The instructions clearly state that any Wish which attempts to control the feelings of other people is not allowed. So maybe they manifested that audio out of thin air and made him listen to it, to drive home the fact that what he’s done to Nikki is unforgivable.

I guess a big question here, assuming we take my hypothesis as fact, is “would things have gotten so horribly out of hand if Bear had just continued to reciprocate Wish Nikki’s feelings?” Ultimately, I think the answer is yes. Bear, by definition of his Wish, simply couldn’t have maintained a relationship with Wish Nikki that made her feel secure. The intensity with which Wish Nikki loved and obsessed over him could never have been matched by anyone who wasn’t also under the influence of a One Wish Willow. We have to consider how Bear and Nikki’s relationship is written to mirror various real-world relationship dynamics. If we remove the context of the One Wish Willow, their relationship can be interpreted in several ways:

First, and most obvious, are the parallels to toxic, codependent relationships. Anyone who’s ever had a partner who displays possessive, controlling tendencies like Wish Nikki will tell you one thing: no matter what you do to try and reassure your partner, it will never ever be enough. The possessive behaviour will escalate and escalate until it reaches breaking point. Maybe not a breaking point as dramatic as removing all evidence of someone’s facial features with a brick. But still, that level of toxicity is impossible to maintain long-term. Even in the real world, without any supernatural factors, those situations often end in violent tragedy.

Second is the representation of the manic pixie dream girl phenomenon. Men like Bear develop intense infatuations with women based on a handful of shallow, usually “quirky” personality traits that they believe make these women “different” or “special”. They fail to recognise that they don’t know these women deeply enough to truly love them. And they are fundamentally uninterested in forming real, deep connections with those women, much happier with a shallow infatuation. Oh they love the idea of being with them, sure. I’m not even saying that this is inherently malicious, most of the time they’re not even consciously aware of these thought processes. But you simply can’t build true, healthy connection with a flattened, simplified, polished, idealised version of a person.

Even if the wish hadn’t worked, and Nikki had entered into a relationship with Bear of her own volition, it would always have been doomed to fail. As soon as Nikki started displaying behaviours that contradicted the neat and tidy version of herself that existed inside Bear’s mind, he would have started to lose interest. In fact, he would have felt cheated by having that version of Nikki, his Nikki, ripped away from him. But we’re now veering into Bear-Rant Territory, which is frankly its own yapathon. So I’ll wrap this shit up shall I?

In conclusion, whether you agree with my theory or not, I just think the fact that there’s so much debate and discussion happening around this (and all aspects of the film) is a testament to the quality. Great art provokes analysis!!

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk xoxo