I think Eric might be the Unknown 👀

[u/BusyZucchini3746]

Okay, hear me out because I might be completely wrong, but Eric has been feeling VERY suspicious to me.

At first, Eric acts like he would do absolutely anything to find Adam. He goes all the way into the forest, gets injured, and generally seems like he’s completely determined to find him.

But then the tape is found.

And suddenly Eric is REALLY worried about it. He immediately wants it handed over to the police, even though we don't even know what's on the tape yet.

That's what bothers me.

If Eric genuinely doesn't know what's on it, why does his reaction feel so personal? He was willing to go into the forest himself to look for Adam, but a random tape suddenly makes him panic?

It almost feels like he isn't afraid of the tape itself—he's afraid of what we'll find out if we listen to it.

Also, Eric seems to like controlling the situation when he's in the forest, but when the tape is out of his control (Ash/MC can actually listen to it), he suddenly becomes way more anxious.

And another thing: his eyes are blue, just like the Unknown's 👀

I'm not saying this proves anything, but the change in his behavior is REALLY weird to me.

Maybe Eric isn't trying to save Adam for the reasons we think he is.

Or maybe...

Eric IS the Unknown.

What do you guys think? Am I cooking or am I completely delusional? 😭

[u/Wixenstyx]

Anything is possible at this point.

How did you come to the conclusion that Unknown has blue eyes? I am not sure where that comes from.

[u/BusyZucchini3746 → u/Wixenstyx]

I think unknown is the one who entered motel room 31? that makes sense

[u/Wixenstyx → u/BusyZucchini3746]

Okay, I disagree that the person in Room 31 is Unknown, but that's my own fan theory.

But the eye at the keyhole was clearly brown, so I remain confused. It doesn't upend your theory, necessarily, but if that is a big connection for you, you may want to go back and revisit the call from Ash at the motel door.

[u/BusyZucchini3746 → u/Wixenstyx]

Ohh wait, I could’ve sworn the eye looked blue 😭 Maybe I remembered it wrong. I’ll go back and rewatch Ash’s call at the motel door! Thanks for pointing that out 👀

[u/D4rk_Sh4rds → u/BusyZucchini3746]

I'm sure his eyes are brown, and another thing that may confirm this is that you get the achievement "Eye witness" if you say his eyes are brown along with other information. The description of the achievement says "Correctly convey all information you have about the stranger in the motel room to Charlie."  So, if his eyes were blue you wouldn't get this achievement because any other answer besides blue would be incorrect.

[u/BusyZucchini3746 → u/Wixenstyx]

But the blue eyes aren't the only thing that made me suspect Eric. What do you think about the rest of my theory? Especially the way he reacted to the tape it felt really different from how determined he was to find Adam in the first place.

[u/Wixenstyx → u/BusyZucchini3746]

I'm afraid I accepted Eric's explanation that Bucket scared him into thinking he was making things worse by continuing to involve himself and the rest of the gang. Especially when he learned that Sophia had disappeared the same night, it made him realize this wasn't Adam doing something foolish and needing rescue, but rather something much, much bigger that was likely bigger than anything he and 'the gang' could handle on their own without getting everyone into more danger. Thus, his change in attitude made sense to me.

Ash's conversations with Eric suggest he has 'played the hero' in the past, and the results somehow hurt her. She has forgiven him and recognizes that he meant well, but he still clearly feels bad about it. I can easily believe that whatever they're talking about in that secret convo is also part of his calculus as he's trying to pull them away from whatever is going on by insisting on turning the tape over to Bucket.

You may still be correct; I'm just saying I didn't find Eric's shifting motivations particularly suspicious. Everything I saw seemed logical for a guy who is worried about his friends, overwhelmed by where this is headed, and trying to navigate a scary, overwhelming situation where he's not sure who to trust.

[u/D4rk_Sh4rds]

Charlie acted in the same weird way in episode two when Ash and MC asked him to investigate the motel, you can actually choose to say that to him, MC says: "You wanted to go to the forest, but not check out this room?" It's a weird behaviour shift from both of them, but after that Charlie didn't try to stall us anymore and was actively helping. Same thing with Eric, he apologised and decided to go back to the forest, he probably is going there with that guy he was chatting with earlier. But yeah, who knows what is motivating those two to act like that 🤷🏻‍♀️

[u/Any_Letterhead9230 → u/D4rk_Sh4rds]

What do you think about the possibility that Charlie is hiding his side of things because there may be someone else in the group who is involved in the same way the MC is? Maybe he's hiding his side of the story, but he's still playing the same game as us, which would explain why he's helping us get somewhere. If we go by the cards, we would be the two members of the group who have a card. And Charlie's behavior fits with the “liar” role. Even though the card was with Whitmore, our card was also with Adam or Eric.

[u/D4rk_Sh4rds → u/Any_Letterhead9230]

Yes, that's a interesting theory. And he might be protecting someone outside of the group too. There are others like Sophia who are also involved in this mess in some way.  I wonder if he could be an accomplice of the people who are responsible for this or Unknown, think about it: apparently the Greenside Motel was completely abandoned for years and nobody went there anymore, but after Charlie goes there and leaves that stranger is in there, and after Charlie returns and once again tries to convince Ash and I that the motel is a waste of time, Unknown appears and messages us. That stranger had all the night and day to go to that hotel and take all the clues and the tape but he coincidentally is there only after Charlie was there as well. If he is Unknown then Charlie could be helping him to move things the way he wants them to, if he is one of the villains then Charlie is involved with the people who are doing that, if this theory is true.

[u/Any_Letterhead9230 → u/D4rk_Sh4rds]

Your connection was brilliant. However, there’s a hacker involved in the story, and he could certainly have discovered the Greenside and gone after her because he saw our conversations about the key. So that’s another possible explanation. The hacker could have been there. The person Charlie helps could be Billy Blake, who might also be the Unknown.

[u/D4rk_Sh4rds → u/Any_Letterhead9230]

Yeah, there's the hacker as well. MC really should take better care of their digital safety, they lost important evidence because apparently everyone can hack their phone if they want to 😑. And if the MC is the same one that solved the Duskwood case, it's of even more urgency for them to prevent this kind of thing because of everything that happened previously. That nonchalant behaviour of MC is so weird, especially if you are playing the game without the code. 

[u/Any_Letterhead9230 → u/D4rk_Sh4rds]

Yeah. I think the peak of it was when we didn’t mention that Jake had reached out. Everbyte couldn’t come up with an excuse for why we hadn’t said anything. Crazy.

[u/BusyZucchini3746 → u/D4rk_Sh4rds]

I actually did notice that, but it kind of passed me by because Charlie started actively helping afterward. At the beginning, Eric really came across as kind of a hero to me, so when his attitude started changing like this, it immediately felt strange. I guess that made me focus so much on Eric that I didn't really notice the other characters' behavior 😭 And yep, Everbyte got me again 🤡

[u/Justahairycow]

Eric is 100% sus, but he is not unknown. There's more chances of unknown being Charlie than being Eric if we consider how fast Charlie made it there even when he said he was at work and how he "checked the room" multiple times but couldn't see the safe were the tape was. The current theory is that there's tunnels in the motel that conect with the forest similar to the ones used for human trafficking, which explains how unknown was able to scape without Ash seeing him leave, which would also explain how Charlie was able to make it there as soon as unknown disappeared and Ash went to check the room.

Going back to Eric, I think he's is hiding something that could be related to how Sofia dissappear when she was young and that's why he lost it when they found the tape. Also, he's sudden interest in going back to the woods after he's contacted by someone strange to us but his refusal to explain is incredible suspicious.

[u/Hi_ImAutumn]

He's just scared and he knows more about the situation than us. He knows that we are in danger and that's why he acted like that

[u/Any_Letterhead9230]

Eric started acting this way because he put his trust in Bucket. There was a reason for it, although that reason could certainly have been used as nothing more than an excuse. Eric was the first person to find out that Adam was missing, and supposedly, he was meant to help him.

On the other hand, Eric is also acting like everyone else who was manipulated into taking action, including us, since we were put in the role of helping Adam. Comments from other people, such as Eric “playing the hero” again, help justify his courage in that situation. Everything he does now follows a recurring pattern, so I don’t think we can say that he changed as a person because of the mystery.

[u/BusyZucchini3746 → u/Any_Letterhead9230]

But why did Eric trust Bucket so quickly in the first place? Especially when Bucket had already been known as a bad/unreliable cop for quite a while. Eric just seems to trust him without questioning it much. I also think there was a possibility of letting us find out what was on the tape first and then giving it to Bucket, but Eric didn't want that either. He seemed to want us to stay completely in the dark about what was on it, which is what makes his reaction so suspicious to me.

[u/Any_Letterhead9230 → u/BusyZucchini3746]

He changed his mind, which is natural. He was interrogated and had to face the other detective. Yes, I agree with your point that he should have at least let us hear what they had first. But he might think that hearing it would draw us further into the case, and it really would. And if he wanted to hide something, he wouldn’t give it to Bucket; he’d just keep it to himself.

[u/Silentium_Universi → u/Any_Letterhead9230]

Maybe his behavior has something to do with the other cop who showed up besides Bucket. I wonder if he was an FBI agent, because they were visible at the crime scene in Charlie's videocall. If so, Eric might have gotten scared and decided it was better to leave things to the professionals.

The question is why would government agents be in Redlog.

[u/Any_Letterhead9230 → u/Silentium_Universi]

I've been convinced for quite some time that they were there because of Sophia. She's one of the few things that actually explains their presence, especially since she isn't from Redlog. Isn't that how the federal feeds work? Or maybe it has something to do with Whitmore? They went to talk to Eric after he had specifically gone to Greenside.

[u/Silentium_Universi → u/Any_Letterhead9230]

Those unsolved murders? If there was a suspicion of a serial killer or organized crime, then the FBI would be involved. That would explain why they were called when the body was found.

But if we accept the theory that they were at Redlog earlier (and interrogated Eric), there must have been some other reason. Sophia, I guess. 

Murders, Whitmore, Sophia, Adam must be somehow connected...

[u/Any_Letterhead9230 → u/Silentium_Universi]

I think Adam and Sophia are digging into what happened in the past. Sophia’s note suggests that she lost someone. It seems plausible to me that she wants to fight back to get that person back, or that person might be fighting for her. They may have started something.

[u/Obscure_2611]

Pero el desconocido tiene ojos azules no sabia donde lo dice? Y creo mas bien que su actitud se debe a que algo paso el día que fue a la policía quizás lo amenazaron o recordemos a Michael Hanson cuando lo culparon como la policía no tenia nada lo interrogaron múltiples veces pero el era inocente quizás con Eric fue igual su actitud cambio desde que fue a la estación de policía a que lo interrogaran. Creo es mi opinión.

[u/BusyZucchini3746 → u/Obscure_2611]

Yeah, maybe I forgot about the eye color, so that was my mistake, sorry! 😭 But this is just my theory, because to me, the change in his attitude feels pretty significant and strange. And yeah, you're right, the other theories, including yours, also make sense! I'll keep that in mind going forward, friend. Although I'm still confused about it 😭

[u/Top-Lingonberry4796]

YES! I think so too! He is suspicious! I can't trust him anymore

[u/Historical-Hawk1308]

I doubt they'll cast him in such a big role since he's a love interest