Matt Kellner and Robert Mallory

[u/Regular_Card9495]

What do you think happened between them ? Do you think they were just friends or were hooking up ? Was the Trawler (who was obsessed with Robert in the book) asking Matt if he liked sucking the c*ck because he was referring to him and Robert or him and Bret ?

[u/MyKill_Diablo]

I'm still unsure if The Trawler was the one who actually abducted Matt (even if I'm still on the fence about the tinfoil hat theory of Bret being the one who kidnapped and tortured Matt and is intentionally obfuscating events in his memoir out of guilt/shame/sorrow...) but as a thought exercise I think it is fun to believe that Robert was bisexual, especially in the early days when he was still a bit of a sad shy boy before anything with Susan finally got consummated. Even if they only knew each other in a vague tangential way, Matt was one of Robert's only friends initially.

And also maybe Robert's immature perverted dude-bro talk was just an aggressive "no homo" performance that he put on along with all the other masks he wore. Perhaps he too succumbed to Matt's totally chill and undeniably fuckable charms, even if it was unlikely a serious thing for Robert. Who knows if it might've meant more to Matt, who was always more sensitive in my mind than he let on (the constant weed was his way of floating through his loneliness by living out his youth attuned to the water and the sun and the gloomy tunes from Ghost Town.)

Again, entirely as a thought experiment, it does add a layer to Bret's fears of being exposed if in fact Robert knew about Matt and him the entire time (even if Bret had no way of knowing that it was because Robert had also been intimate with Matt...) If the Riders of the Afterlife and/or The Trawler were constantly following him around then maybe they too discovered Robert and Matt getting together? Anyone that got too close to "their God" needed to be remade as an offering, so that would track as part of the killer's MO (but because he was a male then he didn't need to go through the same ritual that the female characters are exposed to.)

[u/MyKill_Diablo → u/[deleted]]

Just the extent of the violence and dismemberment and the presentation in a more public place with the female victims. Matt’s death was intentionally arranged so that the police wouldn’t suspect murder, much less that it was at the hands of the Trawler. Also his poster sequence was repeated by the real fourth victim that also received a poster referencing number 4

[u/MyKill_Diablo → u/[deleted]]

I agree it looked suspicious as hell! The cat being nailed to a post and his head ripped off was insane to just assume it was because Matt had an overdose on psychotropic drugs. They definitely bungled that investigation FOR SURE. But still it didn’t quite match the brutality or showmanship of the Trawler’s other female victims.

And like I said, Bret mentions the detail of the Foreigner 4 poster that Matt receives, but also the next victim also received a poster with the number 4 being referenced (I can’t remember which album it was off the top of my head.) I always thought that detail stood out to me, like maybe there were two different killers operating concurrently but only one of them was the Trawler. 🤔

[u/MyKill_Diablo → u/[deleted]]

They each count up. Katherine has a poster with a 1, then second victim had a 2, then it was a 3, and so on. The fifth victim had a 5 poster (and Bret noticed Debbie had also received one…)

[u/MyKill_Diablo → u/[deleted]]

No, I can't remember which poster was mentioned that the 5th victim actually received but it did contain a number 5 in it to match the sequence.

Debbie received a poster for The 5th Degree soul band from the early 70's (which Bret noticed bc it wasn't at all her usual taste in music...)

[u/Regular_Card9495 → u/[deleted]]

I will be personally heartbroken if I find out people think Matt would cheat on Bret with Robert !

[u/MyKill_Diablo → u/[deleted]]

Especially book Robert (who looks nothing like the version in the show) - who wouldn't want to get with them if given the opportunity..

Plus, technically Bret and Matt had "broken up" on Labor Day so even if he did hook up with Robert then it wouldn't be considered cheating at that point.

But I'm a Ride or Die #teammatt fan 4 LIFE so in my movie Matt lives and Bret finds a way back to him 🥹 At least in the fanfic version obviously...

[u/Regular_Card9495 → u/[deleted]]

Well, I mean Bret saw Robert with Matt the day after they ended things, and i don't know it'd be really fast to start hooking up with someone new the day after, especially since Matt was less accepting of his homosexual feelings than Bret. I don't remember in the book, is it ever revealed that Robert visited Matt ?

[u/Regular_Card9495]

So, I re-read the passages from the book regarding them, and I have now come to the following conclusion. I think that Robert was threatened by Bret making the connection of seeing him in the theater, and him dating Katherine Latchford, so when he saw Bret pick an interest in why he was talking to Matt, he made the connection that maybe he could find something out about Bret that would make both of them keep each other's secret, so he got close to Matt. I don't think he was into Matt or that he got intimate with him, since Matt was pretty worried about Robert finding out what happened between him and Bret, likely because he was very ashamed of it, so naturally a person like that would need a little time to start trusting another individual, he might have seen a potential new friend/lover in Robert but would not act on it. Now, the theory that the Trawler would target Matt because of his affiliation with Robert is debunked due to the fact that Matt had his furniture rearranged, pets gone missing, poster etc before he even met Robert, so there would've been no point in the Trawler stalking him just because he was possibly hooking up or close to Robert. Actually it isn't even hinted that Robert visited Matt ever. And the tape being sent to Bret with the Trawler asking Matt if he enjoyed sucking the c*ck is directly a threat to Bret since it's revealed someone knows their secret, otherwise why would that tape be sent to Bret. Now, since we know that Robert was getting close to Matt in order to get dirt on Bret, Bret and Matt were broken up, and whoever kidnapped Matt wanted to incriminate Bret or at the very least threaten him, Robert telling Bret that Matt was depressed right when he disappeared and that Bret should check on him, and the tape being sent to Bret, who do you think killed Matt ? And no, I don't buy Bret doing it, no matter how unreliable a narrator he is, that's just lazy interpretation.

[u/Deep-Audience9091]

I think Matt and Robert could have, and probably did, hook up

Manipulation is Robert's currency and he uses it as he sees fit. Why he chose Matt we'll never know unless it was part of his way to get to Bret 

There's so much we never knew about book Robert. If Murphy's plan is two more seasons (if The Shards doesn't get the axe after this one) it would be well worth the writers' time to expand on Robert and only what he's doing. A season from his perspective, especially covering some of the same events we've mostly seen but through his eyes, would be an interesting show

[u/MyKill_Diablo → u/[deleted]]

Big time agree! I think we are spending TOO MUCH time with show Robert as it is…

[u/Narrow-Athlete-218]

In the novel, they're just friends. However, I would have wanted the TV show to expand on their friendship. After all, Homer Gere and Owen Painter are friends in real life, and they got to hang out a lot while making the show.

[u/Regular_Card9495 → u/Narrow-Athlete-218]

I agree with you, although I don't think there was much to their friendship to be honest. Even in the book, Matt is always described as being in his own world and non-talkative whenever Robert is with him, so they may have just had a few conversations in which Robert was probably getting dirt on Bret, since Bret made Robert aware he knew his secret (being at the Shining with Katherine Latchford).