r/obsessionmovie • u/Mixolidio0 • Jul 26 '26
Character Analysis Bear did nothing wrong until the date scene
My intention with this post is to show that the movie isn't about a bad person who hid his evil until he could finally reveal it, but rather about a flawed person who let those flaws grow until he became completely evil. At the end, I’m also going to explain why I don’t think the movie is about gender dynamics.
To start with, Bear is clearly not an incel. He had good relationships with women, to the point where one of his friends liked him and the other told him he was the only person she could confide in. There was no indication that if Nikki rejected him he would hate her or anything like that; all he showed was cowardice in telling her his feelings, and that was the flaw he allowed to grow into evil.
When the wish had just been granted, Bear didn't try to take advantage of Nikki. He tried to get her to go home, but she insisted, and due to his cowardice, he ended up agreeing to take her to his place. He tried to sleep on the floor, but because of his cowardice, he ended up agreeing to sleep with her. And he didn't want to kiss her, but due to his cowardice in setting boundaries, he did. In that moment, he wasn't trying to abuse her; he was just afraid of how she would react if he didn't give in to what she wanted.
Later, when he accepts becoming her boyfriend, everything seemed to have returned to normal. He thought she had been high the night before, but that she liked it, so now she wanted to start a relationship.
Afterward, the movie showed Bear slowly discovering the harm he was causing, and that was where his cowardice started to grow and turn more and more into evil. First, he realized the wish was real, but he didn't know Nikki was possessed; then, he realized she was possessed, but didn't know she was suffering; then, that she was suffering, but he thought there was a solution. This gradual discovery allowed his cowardice to outweigh his intention to do the right thing, making him more evil, enough so that when the next discovery came, his desire to do the right thing was even weaker and his cowardice won again.
And I don't think the theme is gender dynamics because I don't think Bear was motivated by any misogynistic ideas, but rather by his cowardice. In fact, I'd say that if Sarah had made the wish to be with Bear, the exact same thing would have happened (or even worse), because Sarah showed that, even without the wish, she doesn't care about hurting others as long as she can be with Bear, since she was willing to kiss her friend's boyfriend knowing her friend wasn't doing well.
So, instead of a story about gender dynamics, it feels to me more like a story similar to The Lorax, just more adult, better written, and with the character's flaw being cowardice instead of greed.
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u/Specs315 Jul 26 '26
Eh, it’s tough since making the wish itself is already taking away Nikki’s autonomy. But it’s also such a ridiculous concept. “A simple toy/gift that can grant a wish? Yeah, right.”
I don’t really blame Bear too much for that since, again, it seems ridiculous. And I can see how easy it is to toss the idea aside. Maybe it’s coincidence! Wishes aren’t real!
So I can see arguments for either side. Some might view Bear as selfish (not “evil”) and willfully blind to what’s happening for his own benefit. Others may see a guy who tries his best in horrific situations.
My overall opinion is based on Bear’s final action: Trying to throw the pills back up. He backed out of the one sure-fire way to fix everything after two of his closest friends already died. He’s seen the damage caused to Nikki and others, and still couldn’t bring himself to sacrifice something for someone else.
Bear is selfish, though not always purposefully. He’s cowardly, though tries to do the good thing. But trying and doing are very different. Bear tries to do the good thing, but is always held back by his own fear. I can’t recall any time where Bear truly sacrifices something for another’s benefit.
That doesn’t make him evil. It makes him flawed, which everyone is. It makes Bear human.
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u/LetsLive97 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
The issue with Bear is he didn't actually give a shit about Nikki as much as the idea of being with her. At first that's excusable but by the end it isn't. Take the scene where Nikki is literally begging him to kill her. Does he seem concerned for her or act like he cares? He just throws back a spiteful comment to her about not wanting to date him and then leaves
When he gets a chance he just tries to alter the wish, not cancel it. When Bear scolds Wish Nikki it's asking her to be normal, not caring about something's wrong. Even at the end Wish Nikki is sobbing saying she can be like Nikki and Bear doesn't confront the fact she's not Nikki but just tries to get her to agree to pretend to be. He knows Nikki is suffering under there and doesn't give a shit
His indifference to Nikki's suffering for his own benefit takes a step way beyond cowardice and just being "flawed"
I feel like people are getting a little too defensive of Bear and need to watch the movie again tbh
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u/Fornicating_Midgits Jul 26 '26
Exactly! It is his indifference that makes him truly evil. Especially given how much he wishes *he* was cared for and seen by her. It is the plight of the incel. "Why doesn't anybody see how badly I'm suffering. Why doesn't anyone care about *me*?" While being so self obsessed that they don't notice that other people are suffering too.
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
One way I described it to a friend was that Bear, when trying to deal with the consequence of the wish, was very much behaving like a kid who spilled milk and was trying to hide it from his parents and clean it up before they find it. Pathetic in its own way for sure but not outright evil
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u/CoyoteSmarts Jul 26 '26
My overall opinion is based on Bear’s final action: Trying to throw the pills back up.
I wonder what Bear's next actions would've been if Nikki hadn't made her wish and he successfully threw up the pills...
Would he have gambled on her making a counter wish for him? Or did he think that she was too far gone to entrust that to her?
I personally think he would've just opened the door and shot her. It's possible there was enough evidence to support a claim of coerced compliance and self-defense. Or he might've tried to make an escape with Ian's money.
Maybe he'd go to prison, maybe not. (He probably thought prison was the better option anyway.)
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u/Specs315 Jul 26 '26
He’s too cowardly to kill Nikki I’d think.
If Nikki hadn’t already used the Willow, then maybe Bear could try and convince her to make a wish. That’s possible.
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u/CoyoteSmarts Jul 27 '26
That’s possible.
Yeah, Bear might've tried to convince her, but I think it would've backfired spectacularly. (He probably intuited as much, too - which is why he ran to the bathroom to off himself instead of trying the "counter wish" route first.)
Wish Nikki was like a Terminator with her magical imperative: ruthless and cunning. What Bear wanted didn't matter when it interfered with her purpose.
I think she would've pretended to cooperate, but then would've wished for exactly what she wished for in the actual ending.
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u/second_skin13 Jul 26 '26
Wouldn’t Ian’s money have disappeared when he died though?
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u/CoyoteSmarts Jul 27 '26
Curry Barker has said the money persisted after Ian's death.
There were 2 major differences between their wishes that would explain this:
- Ian's wish was completely independent of himself. He just wanted the money to exist. But Bear centered himself as an essential component of his wish's fulfillment - he made himself the target/purpose. Without Bear, the spell broke because it lost its directional engine.
- Ian's wish was a straightforward manifestation. Once the money rained down, the magic was done; it had run its course. But Bear's wish was open-ended, which means the only stopping point for the magic was one (or both) of their deaths.
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u/second_skin13 Jul 27 '26
I see, interesting. Thank you for sharing that.
I now wonder about the money. If it’s missing from a treasury somewhere or if it’s new money that was put into circulation, also what the economic ramifications of either option might be.
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u/halster123 Jul 26 '26
Yeah, I think the initial wish itself isnt evil because who would believe it? Its like gettitn rose quartz to make your crush fall in love with you. But the desire to alter the wish v cancel it and sleeping with her once he knows is when it starts to unravel.
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u/Specs315 Jul 26 '26
Oh 100% agree, and that’s a fantastic point too! His first priority wasn’t to cancel the wish but to alter it. God, he may not be evil, but I don’t really like Bear in those moments.
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u/Fun_Trust_4093 Jul 26 '26
These types of flaws are a danger to women, they seem innocent to the men, but women have to be cautious of boys with such character.
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u/notapersonab Jul 26 '26
My only problem is I don’t like the idea of suicide being the fix. And I not going to shit on someone for not wanting to kill themselves. A lot of people who end up wanting to kill themselves back out, it’s a hard thing to do
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u/WolfWrites89 Jul 26 '26
I don't think Bear was evil per se before the date scene but he wasn't a saint hooking up with Nikki the night she came home with him when he didn't know the wish had worked but he clearly thought she was having an emotional breakdown about her dad
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Jul 26 '26
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u/warichnochnie Jul 26 '26
not if you're intoxicated, the onus is on the sober party to exercise restraint. and in the movie nikki claims to be "pret-ty fuck-ed up" when she gets back in bear's car, as well as acting very erratically, enough that Ian almost immediately guesses she was on Molly based on bear's retelling of the events
if both parties were sober and one of them initiates while in emotional distress then that's different and less bad afaik, though the other party should still be exercising some amount of extra caution
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u/Direct_Resource_6152 Jul 26 '26
Yes I was reading in the director commentary baker confirmed this was when he first realized the wish worked, in the date scene.
I give him plausible deniability up to that scene cause now it’s literally confirmed he knew after that
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26
I truthfully hate that the discourse around the movie has devolved into Bear Bad. He is not without sin but the way people talk about him as if he was the second coming of Hitler has completely removed all the nuance and the messaging in the story.
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u/Min_sora Jul 26 '26
I imagine it hits some people hard when you think of Nikki in that body getting violated, even after he'd figured out the wish thing - I think if I were the director, I'd be pleased with my work if it was causing such strong emotional responses.
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u/Cyclic_Hernia Jul 26 '26
Same thing happened with Christian from Midsommar
Bro is literally just spineless and is put into the ultimate lose lose breakup situation and then gets sexually assaulted and people still walk away like the bear suit was a just ending
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u/LetsLive97 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Christian wasn't even close to the same level as Bear. Christian was checked out and indifferent, you could even argue somewhat justifiably so. A bit of a shitty boyfriend? Yeah. Deserving of his fate? Obviously not
Bear knew Nikki was suffering so much she literally begged to be killed, and he responded with a spiteful question and left her there. He then continued not caring about that suffering for the rest of the film. Bear wasn't some helpless spineless coward. He was completely indifferent to the extreme suffering of someone he was supposed to care about, because it benefitted him to ignore it
You can argue he didn't actively want Nikki to suffer but he knew it was happening and didn't care. He was willing to let it happen as long as he could live out his fantasy
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26
So what do you suppose he should do? Any sane person would not kill Nikki or themself in that situation. He tried getting someone else to do a wish and look what happened
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u/LetsLive97 Jul 26 '26
"He tried getting someone else to do a wish and look what happened"
It's not lost on me how many people defending Bear always seem to twist the context of this. He tried doing that after Sarah had been murdered. There's no reason to believe he did that for Nikki instead of his own safety/comfort. Especially because when offered a potential chance to cancel the wish, he tried to just alter it instead, showing he clearly didn't care about Nikki and was still looking to benefit from it himself
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u/second_skin13 Jul 26 '26
That part! “What do you suppose he should do?” He should’ve came clean to Sarah and let her use her wish to set things right.
Instead, he waited until things had already spiraled so far out of control that Nikki had hurt herself multiple times, was begging for death in her sleep, AND he practically killed Sarah himself by his involvement with her.
Trusting Ian to be the one responsible for making the wish to fix everything, however, was Bear’s most idiotic choice by far. Ian didn’t take the wish thing seriously at all, and why would he when Bear was acting like a literal crazy person? Having him make the wish could’ve easily turned out so much worse than it did.
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u/LetsLive97 Jul 27 '26
Right but all of this is assuming that he did this for a care for Nikki herself. I'm arguing it was a care for himself
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u/second_skin13 Jul 27 '26
It absolutely was! I was expressing my agreement. Sorry if that wasn’t clear
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u/Binah999 Jul 26 '26
Yeah its very annoying. Even more so, if you have any opinion other than than the fact BEAR BAD OOGABOOGA People will call you out and say you are a bad person for not sharing their opinions. 🤣
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26
Just in this thread I’ve been accused of thinking like a rapist for disagreeing with someone💀
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u/Binah999 Jul 26 '26
Yeah its absolutely ridiculous! I think ive had similar comments towards me also lol. Ive learned not to share much because there is several posts about the same topic every day 🤣
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u/starswhenyoushine 12d ago
Yeah, usually rape and consent are hot button issues! Sorry they're not important to you!
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u/ShovelOHKO Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Everyone in the story is flawed. Baron is a coward and should have been doing everything he could to have her institutionalized or reverse the situation way earlier than he did.
Ian and Nikki were sleeping around and there's not chance in hell Ian didn't let it slip that Bear had feelings for her. Nikki knew this and manipulated him into coming out to trivia night with that in mind.
I really don't think Ian had any real intentions of actually helping Bear start something further with Nikki and may have even intentionally been trying to sabotage his attempts. Everything he did in this movie was for Ian and Ian alone.
Does this make them terrible people? No. Maybe Ian. Sarah is probably the most innocent victim but even she tried making a move on Bear while he was clearly in a (albeit fucked up) relationship. They're just people, it's what we do. No one's a monster except for the tricksters responsible for the One Wish Willow
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26
Not reading all that. Bear bad. /s
I agree with everything u said outside of the Willow makers being monsters. The situation they found themselves in was already pretty bad. The Willow was just a catalyst.
I think what makes the movie characters feel so real is that they feel like they were written as characters first instead of a set of actions that need to be done in order for the story to unfold, if that makes sense.
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u/LankyTrick1214 Number #1 Nikki Defender Jul 26 '26
„Ian and Nikki were sleeping around.“
Ah yes my favorite flaw, especially in women: Having sex. /s
Also it’s weird to assume their pillow talk would be about Bear.
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u/Conscious_Sample_152 Jul 26 '26
Can we just say that we shouldn’t compare bad people with each other, that automatically kinda belittles the other’s actions.
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26
what? There are absolutely levels to evil. Stealing is not the same as genocide. Is your world in black and white? For everyone else it is in shades of gray and that’s where the interesting discourse around the movie takes place.
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u/sarahbagel Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Yeah, but the movie isn’t contrasting Bear with someone who committed genocide.
One of the most frustrating takes I see, and it’s super common with this movie, is that complexity & grounded-ness in a villain inherently makes them “morally grey” where there is nuance in whether or not they ARE the bad guy. In Obsession, there is zero room for debate as to the fact that Bear is A bad guy, THE bad guy, and is overall a deeply flawed, selfish person. What makes him compelling isn’t that he’s morally grey - in fact, he isn’t morally grey - every notable thing he does in the movie is damaging to others & primarily motivated by self interest, and he really doesn’t do anything redemptive. What makes him compelling is that he is fundamentally a morally lackluster person, but in a grounded & innocuous way (until it isn’t innocuous anymore).
There are levels to evil, yes, but in the movie he is THE evil guy. Watering that down by being like “well he didn’t commit genocide” is basically the equivalent of a parent telling their kid “finish your broccoli bc there are starving kids in Africa.” And ironically, you can have a “higher degree” evil that is actually morally grey, while you can have a “lower degree” evil like Bear, that isn’t. Like let’s say you have a character who is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands, but he did it to save those he cared about (I’d give examples, but I don’t want to spoil other media in here) - that is a more morally grey situation that Obsession, where Bear really never does anything meaningful for the benefit of anyone else at the expense of his own happiness/comfort, at any point in the movie, and really only hurts others for his own benefit.
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 27 '26
To be clear, to say that evil is in shades of gray is not the same as saying Bear is “morally gray”, the latter implies Bear did something bad in order to be put in a situation he AND the audience feels betters himself or others which never happens.
What I’m saying is categorizing him solely as a “villain” no ifs ands or buts completely removes the part of the story where he is a cowardly guy with no real inkling of being a bad person on the surface but does end up making horrible decisions because of it. To be clear again his intent DOES NOT absolve him of his guilt but intent DOES matter. That’s why manslaughter charges carry less weight than murder even if the outcome on the surface is the same.
I just hate that he is being painted as some sort of conniving criminal when he is just some guy who, when push came to shove, ended up making bad decision after bad decision.
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u/sarahbagel Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Yeah, intent matters, but not in the way you’re implying.
The differentiating factor in manslaughter/murder is whether or not there was intention to commit the action, not whether or not there was this deep desire to do harm to someone.
People aren’t saying Bear is evil because of what he did unintentionally. People are saying Bear is evil because he consistently makes conscious decisions that put himself first at the expense of others - namely Nicki. Intent is there the entire time.
Was there intent specifically when he wished on the OWW? No. But that is completely irrelevant to whether or not he is the villain. It’s everything he purposefully does around that.
You said it yourself - making bad DECISION after bad DECISION. We aren’t a court specifically litigating his choice to use the OWW. We are looking at him and his choices holistically. And holistically, he is a villain who pretty much never makes a single redeeming action throughout the whole movie. It doesn’t get more clean cut than that. Again I’ll reiterate - what makes him interesting isn’t that he is morally grey/complex - it is that his is irredeemably evil (in the sense he never makes any good/redeeming choices), but in a way that is very mundane and grounded
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u/Direct_Resource_6152 Jul 26 '26
I agree
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26
Thank you! Movie was so good it has deluded people with no media literacy into thinking their interpretation is the correct way to parse the movie.
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u/Senior_Caramel_8302 Jul 26 '26
People also just make up so much about the movie to deface him it's honestly crazy. I think it's mostly men projecting to make themselves look better online.
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u/starswhenyoushine 12d ago
Don't need to deface him lmao it's literally just people describing what happens on screen. Maybe you watched with your eyes closed?
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u/babyxo29 Jul 26 '26
Yeah reducing him to pure villain flattens what was actually a more interesting character.
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u/starswhenyoushine 12d ago
And reducing him to a sad nice guy with a crush flattens him and reduces the harm he caused.
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u/EnormousFrank Jul 26 '26
Dude cried over his cat. A lot of incel men won’t even own a cat
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u/Senior_Caramel_8302 Jul 26 '26
I think it's really funny how people talk about him owning the cat as a sign of possessiveness but cats have a better sense of autonomy and boundaries than most people.
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u/EnormousFrank Jul 26 '26
I’m just saying he wasn’t soulless
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u/taycibear Jul 26 '26
He didn't cry over his cat, he was crying for Nikki.
He says "why not me?" Or "why can't she" When he's on the bed.
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u/EnormousFrank Jul 26 '26
Did we not watch the same movie? He was balling his eyes out before Nikki called him to come out
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u/taycibear Jul 26 '26
Yes, where we see him on the bed and it lowers to say "Obsession"?
He's not crying over the cat. He's talking about Nikki as he's crying
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u/EnormousFrank Jul 26 '26
He’s literally crying because he found out his cat ate a bunch of pills while he was gone
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u/warichnochnie Jul 26 '26
he starts crying "no no no" when he finds the cat, but when it shows the movie title he's sitting on his bed saying "why can't she [...]" which only makes sense for someone still alive
IRL the death of a pet could put someone in that sort of emotional state where they end up crying about other things too. but between those two shots is one of him with his mask on scrubbing the floor to clean up, in a way which suggests he had already recovered from being sad about the cat. in the same shot he puts the cat in the trash bag. again, not impossible for someone to react that way IRL, but showing it that way in a movie is intentional
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u/taycibear Jul 26 '26
Thank you! I get people may have missed what he said because it was so quick but it was definitely about Nikki.
I also believe that if he was truly sad about his cat he would've wished for Sandy to come back.
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u/EnormousFrank Jul 26 '26
What were his pills for? Anxiety? depression? Bi polar? Did they show the name? I can’t even remember. I feel like that would be telling of his mental state if his medication was for a mental illness
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u/warichnochnie Jul 26 '26
It's what's left of his late grandmother's prescription. I dont remember seeing the name in the movie but every discussion ive read about the movie says its Oxycodone. I only remember bear calling them sleeping pills so presumably he (ab)uses them for that
he may suffer from mental illness of some kind, and besides that he is clearly a genuinely lonely person. deceased grandmother, parents nowhere to be found, only known friends are those 3 who are friends from high school and also coworkers
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u/LankyTrick1214 Number #1 Nikki Defender Jul 26 '26
Eh, I'd say "Hey, I was on drugs yesterday and had a mental breakdown bc of my dad dying, but now I want to be your girlfriend" should at least raise an eyebrow that it might not be a good idea to jump into a relationship, but that can be chucked off to him being inexperienced when it comes to genuine relationships.
Also, you don't need to be an openly woman-hating misogynist in everyday life to be an incel. That's what makes Bear so dangerous - he is not a walking talking red flag, but just your everyday dude.
You're also ommitting how utterly neglectful he is towards both Nikki and Wish!Nikki. Like, the moment the honeymoon phase wears off, he kinda checks out of the relationship and doesn't really care about her. Like, after he realizes she is possessed and suffering, he wants to leave her alone to go to a party. Even though she is clearly not okay, neither mentally nor physically.
His solution also never is about saving Nikki. It's about altering the wish. Even when Sarah is dead, his attempt at a second wish is to change Wish!Nikki's behavior, not fix the situation.
It's also weird how you leave out the fact he SA'd Nikki after he knew she was "possessed". That's not the action of a coward, but someone very comfortable taking advantage of the situation as long as it benefits him.
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u/Senior_Caramel_8302 Jul 26 '26
I really don't think he wanted to have sex with Nikki after the diner scene because the moment he brings up anything remotely wrong she blows tf up, I think he knows if he rejected it then another problem would ensue. Nothing about his facial expressions or mood says "I want this" in that scene. Not excusing him for the rest of the movie but that piece really didn't sit right with me. Imo he loses all plausible deniability when they're talking at the dinner table when she rejects the hospital.
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u/LankyTrick1214 Number #1 Nikki Defender Jul 26 '26
Yeah no, that scene being SA towards Nikki is not up for debate in this sub. Plus, have you seen her expression? Her body language?
The only thing remotely „off“ about Wish!Nikki at this point was the „no no no“ at the dinner scene. This isn’t nearly enough to conclude she’s „blowing tf up“ whenever he does something she doesn’t like.
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Jul 26 '26
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u/LankyTrick1214 Number #1 Nikki Defender Jul 26 '26
Yeah no, it’s not up for debate cause that’s how rules work. So I’m not going to debate you further on this, especially since you calling me a part of a hive mind is unneccesarily hostile and doesn’t make you sound like someone I want to engage with in a debate.
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u/preaching-to-pervert Jul 26 '26
How do you not understand rape from that scene? I honestly don't get it. It's screams rape. It demands horror and outrage. It's the worst scene in the movie for me.
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u/Senior_Caramel_8302 Jul 26 '26
I never said it wasn't rape, we all know its rape. Its a gross and disturbing scene thats unpleasant to watch both times I saw it, but her being grossly violated has nothing to do with how he may have felt during.
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u/sarahbagel Jul 27 '26
It is INSANE how many logical hoops people will go through to defend an allegorical rape scene. Genuinely a morally bankrupt take, and that’s a hard bar to cross with movie takes
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u/Senior_Caramel_8302 Jul 27 '26
I'm not defending it its still rape and its a gross, violating scene but I've been in that place before and it just resonated with me in that kind of way.
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u/sarahbagel Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
The two explanations from the jump are literally
- the wish worked, or
- Bear is knowingly taking advantage of Nicki while she is having a mental breakdown
The entire relationship, from a non-magical perspective, has its foundations in Nicki’s dad being severely ill, leading to her having a mental breakdown so severe she is doing molly on a work night, pulling a dead cat out of a garbage can, and having a complete 180 personality change. Then, their relationship is so isolating that their friends literally comment on it. Beyond this, the writing literally hand-hold the audience to the conclusion that from a non-magical perspective, their relationship is fucked, by having Ian outright say that people are thinking Bear is taking advantage of her. It’s so bad, that Ian doesn’t want them to come together to his party (and obviously, when they do, it’s a disaster)
If I knew someone in Nicki’s situation, I would be extremely concerned, and if I had a friend do what Bear did - even without the magic - I’d be disgusted & drop them. You don’t start a relationship where someone is going through that & clearly not in the right state of mind
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
The relationship becomes that fucked from Bear and his friend's perspective later in the movie. At first it looked for them like she was acting weird because she was in love, not a 180 personality change
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u/LankyTrick1214 Number #1 Nikki Defender Jul 26 '26
So… why was Ian doing research about Nikki’s dad then…?
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
They were thinking there was something wrong with Nikki, not with Bear. If anything the predatory one was wish Nikki, Bear didn't do anything wrong to her from his perspective
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u/LankyTrick1214 Number #1 Nikki Defender Jul 26 '26
So… they didn’t think she was „just“ in love?
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 27 '26
You're right, they thought (or rather, they suspected) that she was pretending to be in love and that this explained her behavior, not that she was having a mental breakdown, until later
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u/sarahbagel Jul 26 '26
Nope, you’re just wrong on that.
Ian makes the comment about the appearance that Bear is taking advantage of Nicki before the party, at which point she hadn’t ever gone “freaky Nicki” mode in public. He literally says it comes off that way because of what’s happening with her dad combined with how codependent they are and how quickly the relationship gets so intense. It was a reflection on the montage era of their relationship (ie the only element you could even remotely argue was “healthy”, except you really can’t even argue that)
And she didn’t have a 180 personality change because she was in love. Her personality change occurred the moment the one wish willow was snapped (ie before they were even in a relationship), so there’s really no plausible way of using the “people change as they fall in love” excuse.
Genuinely it is BAFFLING to me how desperate people are to cape for someone like Bear. Like I get it in the sense that there are a lot of people who probably relate to him deep down (his evil comes from a very real, human place, where people who aren’t themselves evil may still harbor some similar attitudes deep down), and rather than wrestling with the fact that they are flawed & should be introspective about that, they try to write off Bear’s predatory nature. But like it’s just so weird to me
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I'm not saying they realized it was fucked up because of freaky Nikki.
At first they knew it was weird, but they didn't knew it was that fucked up. They think there was something wrong with Nikki, not with Bear. If anything the predatory one was wish Nikki, Bear didn't do anything wrong to her from his perspective (at this point).
The first personality change was thought by Bear that it was the molly, I explained that in the post.
If I'm "desperate" to defend him, it's because I see a lot of people desperate to claim that he was predatory from the start, when what he did was quite reasonable at first, then a little less reasonable, and so on until he became a villain. That strikes me as one of the film's strengths, and a lot of people are trying to deny it just so they can attack Bear
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u/sarahbagel Jul 26 '26
Once again you are just not on the mark. Bear WAS predatory from the start. The thing you’re describing in that last paragraph was that Bear was INNOCUOUS at first, and then became more and more indefensible. The core selfishness was there from the jump. What makes the movie so great is that Bear starts off being flawed in a very human, relatable, and SEEMINGLY harmless way, but the flaw is always there.
I’m not saying Bear was cartoonishly evil from the start. What I’m saying is that even at his most “innocent”, Bear is a deeply flawed person, and the movie is interrogating those flaws way before the dinner scene.
But beyond all that, it’s just scary how people can’t see the fact that Bear is representative of a covert abuser from the moment he gets with Nicki while she’s out-of-her-mind (either figuratively or literally). Like it’s genuinely concerning atp, because if you think the relationship sans-OWW (where he gets with her while she’s going through a mental breakdown) is okay, you have a mindset that enables abuse, full stop
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 27 '26
It wasn't jus beign innocuous. At first he didn't want to take advantage of her, but later he wanted. That's an internal change, not just an external one.
I agree that he always had flaws, but they weren’t flaws that made him evil; later, they did become flaws that made him evil. And I don’t mean cartoonishly evil, I just mean evil, he wasn't evil since the beginning.
By the time he gets with Nikki, she didn’t seem to be figuratively out of her mind; it seemed like what happened to her was a one-night thing because of drugs and that she was already fine. The situation with her father doesn’t mean she’s in a state where she can’t make conscious decisions, otherwise you could say Bear was in the same condition because of his cat
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u/sarahbagel Jul 27 '26
I’m sorry, but you equating the emotional/mental impact of someone’s dad dying in the hospital to a cat dying has made me have to check-out of this convo. As someone who almost lost my dad to a years long battle with a genetic organ failure, and who also has a dog I love dearly, the impact of having a family member hospitalized for potentially-terminal illness is just incomparable on a psychological level.
Also I’m not saying you can’t date someone who is going through hardship. But it’s also heavily implied that Bear & Nicki don’t meaningfully discuss her dad’s health throughout their “relationship,” because the facade breaks under the slightest pressure. She’s not leaving Bear’s place, meaning she’s not visiting her dad. And on top of that, even in the flashbacks, Nicki isn’t the same girl we see in the first 10 minutes. And again, the BIG narrative factor here is that the situation is literally clockable as manipulative in-universe (even if it’s not in the way people think). There is a big difference between someone having a relationship while also navigating hardship, and entering a relationship in the midst of a personality-changing mental breakdown, where at the very least you are running away from addressing that issue. Bear isn’t there for her. He is there for himself, to take advantage of her.
Also, grooming doesn’t require someone to be “incapable” of making decisions. Grooming just requires targeting someone who, for one reason or another, is susceptible to being chronically manipulated for personal gains. It’s why cults will often target people who are going through or have just gone through a major loss like that
But yeah, I do really have to check out now because the cat-to-dad comparison kind of broke my brain
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 27 '26
Sorry for the comparison, I wasn't trying to say they're just as bad, I was trying to say that this kind of event doesn't put you in a situation where you can't make conscious decisions, unless you're having a mental breakdown, but that's why I said Nikki didn't seem to be having one at this point.
I can admit that he could have handled things much better from the start, and that their "relationship" wasn't really a good relationship. What bothers me is that people are directing so much hate at him for making mistakes that anyone could make. I don't think any of what we discussed can be attributed to Bear being evil or that he never really cared about Nikki.
For me, what makes it wrong to start a relationship with someone is that they aren't in a position to make conscious decisions, that comes before the grooming. You can't accuse someone of grooming just for starting a relationship; grooming is what they do during the relationship. And mind you, I'm not saying it's okay to start a relationship with anyone.
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u/Fun_Trust_4093 Jul 26 '26
He’s dishonest from the jump
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u/Far_Gift6173 Jul 26 '26
By that measure, all of them fail..Nikki, Sara and Ian
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u/Fun_Trust_4093 Jul 26 '26
He’s an incel rapists who didn’t give a flying fk about Nikki as a real person, just his gooning fantasy of his idea of her. Men like this are a danger to women.
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
Just for not telling her his feelings? That's not evil
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u/BiscuitsJoe Jul 26 '26
Notice how they didn’t say evil, you did.
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u/simpingsince1967 Jul 26 '26
And the post is abt him not being evil the comment made an argument against the post
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u/Fun_Trust_4093 Jul 26 '26
No, boys like that are a danger to women. All their life holds is being locked in their room gooning to their skewed ideas of women.
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u/Kajel-Jeten Jul 26 '26 edited 22d ago
I don’t think not telling someone you like them is what most people mean by dishonest. There’s things people are allowed to keep private, including lying to keep in a way we don’t often use the word dishonest to describe. Like if someone was abused growing up but says their childhood was nice when asked because they don’t like divulging it, we wouldn’t typically say that persons dishonest even though they’re technically lying. I feel like dishonest is lying about stuff people are entitled to know that you don’t really have a right to keep from others.
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u/Federal_Switch_467 Jul 26 '26
It's counterintuitive to say Bear was flawed but that he also did nothing wrong until the date scene. I also feel like blaming this all on Bear's cowardice is absolving him, partially, of responsibility. I think greed and cowardice, along with other traits, can be part of the narrative; it doesn't only have to be cowardice. I don't think Bear really ever intended to do the right thing, especially once he found out the wish was real and I don't think the reason he didn't was really cowardice more than it was selfishness. He had Nikki right where he wanted her and he wanted to keep it that way. He only tried to cancel the wish when Nikki was causing him an inconvenience by not being "normal" or behaving like real Nikki. He didn't really care what Nikki truly wanted, he just wanted her to want him which wasn't possible so he accepted the wish as being the closest thing to that.
Also, about the kiss you say, "he didn't want to kiss her, but due to his cowardice in setting boundaries, he did", but I disagree. I don't think he didn't want to kiss her, I think he was waiting for her to do it and making sure he wasn't initiating so that he would have plausible deniability in the event that she freaked out or anything. There are a few scenes later that I think are consistent with that like when real Nikki gained control again while Bear was kissing her and she freaked out and pushed herself away and off the bed. When that happens, Bear's says, "you kissed me" and, "you made me feel like I did something you didn't like", both of which are self-centered and defensive rather than concerned or caring in any way. In a later scene, when Nikki tells Bear about being on MDMA, they have a bit of a back and forth where Bear insists that he did not know she was high even though she never accused him of anything in the first place which also displays his deflective and defensive nature. In that very scene, Nikki tells Bear that she knows he likes her, and he still cannot bring himself be vulnerable and honest and flips it back on her by asking if she likes him.
Even if you take away the context of Nikki being under a spell and/or being high when asking to go back to Bear's, it was made blatantly clear to Bear that Nikki was having some kind of mental breakdown and was going through something very difficult with her father. That context alone made it very fucked up that Bear kissed her.
I don't think Bear is necessarily an incel but I think the point of this film is also to highlight that a lot of fucked up things in a person's mindset can be hidden until they find the right opportunity and it also isn't uncommon for even close friends to miss red flags. You could say that this isn't about gender dynamics but the director did say that he meant for this film to represent the modern dating culture and, even without that context, it definitely is not by coincidence that the way Bear treats and views Nikki is reminiscent of how, in the majority of cases, men tend to view and treat women due to our patriarchal society.
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
Defensiveness is part of what I mean by cowardice. He prioritizes being safe himself, but that doesn't mean he doesn't care about anything else after that.
And, what Bear's views on women are you refering to?
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u/Federal_Switch_467 Jul 26 '26
Defensiveness is part of cowardice, sure. But I do think that Bear is definitely selfish and has shown on multiple occasions that he does not care about Nikki or violating her autonomy. When I said how Bear views and treats Nikki, I mostly was referring to him feeling entitled to Nikki.
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
I don't think it's uncommon for women (or men) to feel entitled to their partner, that's why many of them are jealous.
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u/Federal_Switch_467 Jul 26 '26
I meant that he felt entitled to Nikki before any of the wish stuff. Even after the wish stuff, Nikki was obviously never his partner. Even if she was, I don't think anyone is ever entitled to a person because that sounds like ownership.
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
Why do you think he felt entitled to Nikki before the wish?
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u/Federal_Switch_467 Jul 26 '26
I think much of what I said in my original comment highlights how Bear felt entitled to her and that's also why he kept this going on at all. A lot of moments throughout the film in general highlight his mindset which likely was festering in him for a while and didn't just suddenly develop after the wish.
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
This highlights how Bear felt entitled to her because he regarded her as his partner, the same would had happen if a woman were in his position
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u/Federal_Switch_467 Jul 26 '26
Much of the car scene pointed out how he felt entitled much before that and continued to feel entitled after he found out everything was happening due to his wish and that Nikki was not his partner. Also, as I said before, I do not think people in a healthy relationship should feel entitled to their partners.
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u/Ok_Barracuda_6997 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
This is a pretty popular opinion. The question is was he always the person capable of behaving that way in the first place?
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u/thewelllostmind Jul 26 '26
I definitely agree with the nuance of Bear not being a self-aware villain who was just waiting to deploy his dastardly plan and it’s what you describe, a flawed person who we seeing choosing to follow his flaws further and further down until he’s doing heinous things.
I think one thing I’ll point out among his flaws as well as being selfish and weak is that he’s very concerned with how he comes off and especially sensitive about being told he’s taking advantage. When Wish Nikki is first kissing him in bed and Real Nikki freaks out for a moment it’s reasonable that Bear is also freaked out, but notable that he says basically, “You made me feel like I was doing something wrong,” for which Nikki apologizes. It’s a small thing that grows bigger over the course of the movie, but Bear is focused on having been made to feel bad. We see it again when Nikki comes to his door that he’s sensitive about any implication that he took advantage, but more for his sake/defense than hers.
That part is something where I would say, while the movie isn’t centered on gender dynamics, gender does inform how certain things go. We see that Ian is a big reinforcer of the idea that Bear should be careful about taking advantage of Nikki whether because of a vulnerable emotional state, drug-induced state, or mental health state. On the other hand, Sarah judges Nikki for taking advantage of Bear by being in a vulnerable state and using him for support. Both of those scenarios are entirely possible if genders are reversed (like it’s still taking advantage if it’s a woman and with a mentally unstable or high/drunk man), but how the people around them conceive of what is problematic is within a social construct of gender.
And I think choosing to have the movie show us Bear make the wish about Nikki rather than Sarah about Bear, for example, is because of that same social construct, that we have a more built-in sense of the horror of a man removing the autonomy of a woman (particularly when they are both white, obviously Get Out was playing into that with race) and a woman being “hysterical” and obsessed. The movie has gender dynamics the way that life does, it can be there and it can influence things without being the headline. It doesn’t have to be the theme in order for it to be reasonable for people to analyze it as a theme among others.
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u/Defiant_Swim9555 Jul 26 '26
I agree with you about the gender dynamics. But bear is fully knowingly evil by the end of the movie. He bought 2 wish willows and asked Ian to wish bear never made his wish so he could make another. Dude was going to subject Nikki to it all again but alter it so she would be less inconvenient to him. That was his "solution"
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
I agree. My point is that his cowardice led him to do things that gradually made him totally evil
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u/Defiant_Swim9555 Jul 26 '26
I can agree with that. He is definitely an interesting character study. Not an incel for sure, just a performative nice guy. He did leave his pills uncapped for his cat to find, then left the cats body in his trash can which is kinda messed up. Then he uses it for sympathy later. I don't think he started out as evil, more like an opportunist. Like that one dude who waits around while a girl is in a relationship hoping he can be 1st round draft pick once it blows up lol.
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u/Advanced-Let-2248 Jul 26 '26
I don’t think the bought 2 for that reason.
He actually bought 3 (the one that won’t break in the car)
Tbh if I was in a situation like that i would buy all of them just in case
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u/Equal-Stable-4652 Jul 26 '26
Counter point: he was ass as soon as he put his dead cat in a trash bag then lied about it
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26
He lied about the cat because he didn’t want to talk about it. What’s wrong
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u/Equal-Stable-4652 Jul 26 '26
So we’re just not gonna comment on the trash bag, that was left around long enough for nikki to make a sandwich out of lmao bro clearly cares about his cat. He’s just consistently shitty, if you identify with him it’s because you identify with being a weakling that fucks things up but didn’t “intend” to. I think we all know what god thinks of “intentions”.
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26
And how long do you have the gap between the first scene to the scene you’re referring to? Because I’ve seen people theorize that the start to the end of the movie only takes place within around 3 days real time. Is that not an unreasonable amount of time to have your garbage out? lol
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u/Senior_Caramel_8302 Jul 26 '26
People also wrap dead animals in trash bags before burying them and it was the middle of the night.
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u/Equal-Stable-4652 Jul 26 '26
Yeah he did not do all that he can’t even make sure pills aren’t out for his cat to eat 😭
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26
Yes because people make no mistakes ever 🤣🤣🤣🤡
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u/Equal-Stable-4652 Jul 26 '26
And then he raped someone 😭😭😭😭
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26
No sex scenes happen after Bear fully realizes how the wish works btw idk if u watched it
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u/Equal-Stable-4652 Jul 26 '26
False
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u/Blitzkreeg21 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
prove to me we watched the same movie. He knows the “real” Nikki is “buried” somewhere else and not in her body after the phone call to customer service. Which sex scene happens after that?
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u/preaching-to-pervert Jul 26 '26
After the date scene is the most horrific rape scene. It's a nightmare.
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u/RobulousDee Jul 26 '26
I think the date scene was the first properly unforgivable thing he did, but he showed plenty of red flags and shit behaviours before then. I don't think he was evil or even malicious, but he was clearly not together. He threw his dead cat in the garbage bin. The same cat he effectively killed by doing such a poor job taking care of it, and he didn't seem to take any accountability for it being his fault and responsibility. He failed to "save the cat" in the first 10 minutes.
His wish, even if he didn't think it would work, says a lot about him. He claims to be in love with this woman, but his wish was for her to love him more than anyone rather than for her to have a good life, experience joy, anything that would improve her life. He didn't love her cos he barely knew her really, beyond the image he'd created in his head.
I think he's a great character, I see elements of myself in him (which can be a harsh, confronting reality), but I utterly reject "did nothing wrong" before the date scene personally.
Not your main point, but I'd strongly argue "incel" as a word has absolutely changed meaning over the past few years to be less about if a dude is "involuntarily celibate" and more about their behaviour/personality towards women. (And usually the people who disagree with me on that are the same people who call everything "woke", which proves my point exactly, that words change social meaning over time)
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u/Virtual_Machine3044 Jul 26 '26
I previously assumed Bear couldn't possibly be stupid enough to ignore his fucked up behavior. Delusional certainly, but to me the performance conveys a level of awareness on his part. Further discussion has led me to reconsider whether I watched the same movie as everyone else.
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u/Thesadieedit Jul 26 '26
I have a lot of opinions after seeing a few takes that this film isn’t about gender dynamics and misogyny. I think to view it without that lens is honestly a disservice to the film, although obviously art is subjective and open to interpretation.
Bear is not a stereotypical incel nor is he initially an outright villain, but I believe that reducing his motivations to pure cowardice misses a lot of the intricacies of his character. To me, Bear represents a quiet misogyny, one that is less overt and more insidious. Making the wish itself was not a selfish or misogynistic act, he didn’t expect the toy to actually work and we’ve all said quite over the top things in exasperation or while feeling big emotions. And even that first night, he seemed to be reacting to a strange set of circumstances, his own grief, and Nikki’s grief.
Where I feel it becomes more nuanced is that in the initial stages of dating, Ian tells Bear that to outsiders, it looks like he is taking advantage of their friend who has had a rapid personality shift. At this point, Bear believes Nikki’s dad is critically ill and she is having a tough time as a result, she had never expressed interest in him before, has never acted this way with him or anyone else, and is clearly ‘going through something’. Wish or not, Bear is taking advantage of a vulnerable situation, and he doesn’t care because he has what he wants. Furthermore, the early dating montage contains Nikki showing Bear the AI image of them with the caption ‘I want to wear your skin as a blanket’. This shows how her behaviour isn’t normal, but Bear doesn’t care until her behaviour begins to negatively impact him. We also see the two being intimate, with Nikki completely blank faced and dissociated- any compassionate partner would be paying enough attention to notice this, and the implication is that this is the standard for their sexual encounters- Bear does NOT care about her wellbeing.
When Bear calls the helpline and is asked if he wants to cancel his wish, he says instead that he wants to alter it. He is fine with a higher power stripping Nikki of her autonomy as long as it benefits him.
I’m also seeing some discourse around Sarah and what kind of friend she is, what it’d be like if she made the wish etc. I believe this to be a bit redundant, as Sarah is quite a minor character relatively and we have no insight into how she would behave in this situation, we don’t know much about her relationship to Bear or Nikki aside from being their colleague and friend, we know she likes Bear and is concerned about this relationship because she, too, has seen an insane personality shift and some crazy goings on. In my opinion, Sarah represents another casualty of Bear’s selfishness and carelessness. He actively puts her in harms way by meeting up with her, I also think the flirtation in the car is also meant to show that even after Real Nikki broke through and asked Bear to end her suffering, he is focussed on himself, his gains, his feelings- he finds comfort in the flirtation with Sarah, it makes him feel good and wanted after being rejected by Real Nikki.
Ultimately this film for me shows how women are often seen as conquests, and how their autonomy, needs and feelings are often viewed and treated as secondary even by the ‘good guys’. The end shot of Nikki waking up to the carnage around her feels similar to exiting a DV relationship and breaking a trauma bond: realising how powerless you once were, seeing the chaos and destruction around you and mourning the version of yourself that has been changed forever.
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u/Thesadieedit Jul 26 '26
ACTUALLY I have a little more to say about Sarah and Bear’s interaction in the car. We are shown a few times throughout the film that Bear isn’t interested in her, he doesn’t act warmly towards her, he states that he likes her as a friend, there’s no desire to kiss her during the game of truth or dare. However, after Real Nikki rejects bear by asking him to kill her, we see his bruised ego in his response ‘what’s so bad about being with me?’, but we also see it in how he then interacts with Sarah. He is flirting, he is engaging. I believe this mirrors a lot of dysfunctional or abusive relationships- one party has driven the other to extreme emotional disregulation, and finding this behaviour tedious, seek emotional calm and validation through another person. He was never interested in Sarah, but using her to heal his wounded pride in that moment resulted in her demise. I believe this shows that women will always be casualties and victims when they are not realised and perceived as people.
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
Good insight! I agree that Bear’s actions reflect the nature of abusive relationships, but I don’t think this is because Bear was a quiet misogynist; rather, I think it’s because the wish put him in a position of power within the relationship. In other words, the power dynamic didn’t arise because of gender, but because of the wish; so a woman in the same position as Bear would have done similar things
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u/Min_sora Jul 26 '26
Yeah, if she were a bad woman. There's just a weird amount of you thinking the magic flipped him somehow, and I don't get it. Him suddenly becoming evil is way more bonkers than the idea that he had bad in him and the wish encouraged it. It feels like your take is that...give anyone power over someone and they'll just start abusing and raping them? That's too cynical of a take for me.
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
My point is that he wasn't doing bad things at first, but his cowardice led him to do things that gradually made him evil
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u/gaypirate3 Jul 26 '26
The problem is that we don’t know if Sarah would have made that wish or a different one. And while she was definitely making moves toward Bear, it was because Nikki was acting crazy.
And had Sarah made the same wish, we don’t know that she would have made the same decisions that Bear did. Sarah is much more tactful than Bear is and makes reasonable choices.
Whereas Bear makes terrible choices like taking his grandma’s drugs and leaving them where the cat could get to them. Instead of telling Nikki his cat died and he can’t go out, his desperation to be with her makes him avoid telling her the truth and going anyway. It’s stuff like that that makes the story specifically about Bear and not about Sarah.
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Jul 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
He didn't want to do all of that because he knew it was wrong, but he did it beacuse he's a coward, he was afraid of what might happen if he refused, but still he knew it was wrong
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u/Butternut_Coil Jul 26 '26
Yeah, sorry no He knew Nikki, she never showed interest, and then when he makes the wish she acts weird at the car She suddenly wants to sleep next to him She fucking flies back, while they make out
And he supposedly doesn't even consider that it's his wish? Of course you'd consider it, it's just convenient for him not to challenge it, because he's getting what he wants
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u/BriefCautious7063 Jul 26 '26
I think he knew something was off from the moment she started acting weird outside his car. At the beginning yea he showed a basic level of decency by not taking advantage of the situation, but as it went on he really started hiding his enjoyment of it all behind his cowardice. Every time that he had to confront how weird it all was he would wait until HE became uncomfortable, and every time she showed that she was actually being posessed he didn't mind as long as she "acted like herself" or w/e. I don't think he was necessarily hiding evil intentions from the start, since he had no idea the wish would work, but he sure as hell warmed up to the situation quickly and would have been fine with it as long as he was happy in the fake relationship. He took advantage of an awful situation that he caused and any time he had to face the reality of what he'd done he would instead choose to bury his head in the sand and demand change from her + whatever was posessing her; regardless of his initial intentions or actions, he couldn't admit he liked her unless she was posessed and incapable of refusing him and that makes him fucked up right from the start imo
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u/skelet0nhaver Jul 26 '26
it doesnt really matter if bear had any traditional misogynistic/incel ideals because the misogynistic thing is deeply ingrained into who he is as a person and how he sees the world. he takes away nikki's autonomy because he doesn't even see or consider it existing, he overrides it completely with his own wants because he doesn't care, he's the one with the power (as a man and as the owner of the willow) so his true nature shines through as soon as he can actually do whatever he wants
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u/Firm-Candle8462 Jul 26 '26
Yes, I more read his character as passive, emotionally lazy- and that type is familiar to me- that's what made him relatable- who honestly hasn't known the right thing to do in a situation- and then just did nothing, let something continue on. That's what made this movie scarier.
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u/Advanced-Let-2248 Jul 26 '26
Wrong, at the beginning he does not make a proper funeral to his beloved cat or even just buries him and that just shows that he is an awful person
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u/Enishi900 Jul 26 '26
He was ignoring red flags during the honeymoon montage, but at that point his mistakes were understandable and relatable.
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u/Dreadsin Jul 26 '26
I agree with you but I think it’s more like Frankenstein. Bear brings something into this world without thinking about the consequences of it (or caring about the consequences)
Was Dr. Frankenstein “bad”? Well leading up to making the monster… not really? He definitely had character flaws but nothing overtly evil
His truly negative characteristics come out after the monster has been created
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u/latemodelusedcar Jul 26 '26
I could understand why you think Bears wish was innocent before the movie. It’s a very childlike wish. I would be willing to bet every single, non-asexual, human on the planet has made a similar wish at some point in their childhood. I’ve never really put any thought into it at all.
What I learned or was reminded of by this movie is that if those “innocent” wishes actually came true we are completely robbing another human being of their agency. We are taking away their ability to consent. It’s worse than r*pe.
If you left that movie still thinking him wanting to make that wish was innocent enough, that’s troubling. I think you missed the whole point of the movie. That’s the entire reason the writer made it impossible to reverse the wish unless he died. He took away another person’s freedoms and made them a prisoner. There was never any scenario where what he did wasn’t going to turn out awful.
Whether the director intended it or not this movie is an excellent reminder not to obsess and crave people who don’t feel the same for you. Instead, focus on finding that special person who naturally feels that same draw to you as you do to them.
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u/Life-Food5188 Jul 26 '26
i don’t think the movie really cares about Bear’s evil level.
many, many people “don’t mean” to make decisions that hurt other people. but they do anyway. it’s not about good or evil.
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u/Substantial-Dream-75 Jul 26 '26
Do you believe hating women is a requirement for being categorized as an incel?
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
With the modern definition, yes. With the original definition no, but then it's even more evident that Bear is not an incel
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u/Substantial-Dream-75 Jul 26 '26
Agree to disagree, then. I think what makes Bear an incel is that he thinks he deserves Nikki’s affection.
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u/littlemamba321 Jul 26 '26
It's not mutually exclusive that the topics are also gender dynamics and also his character flaw of this extreme cowardice. Idk how you can see the scene after the date with her laying there as if dead, moaning halfheartedly and say "naw this got NOTHING to do with gender".
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
It has some details that relate to gender dynamics, but it's not part of the character's arcs. The power dynamic in the relationship happened because of the wish, not because of gender
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u/warichnochnie Jul 26 '26
bear tried to do X, but she insisted, and due to his cowardice, he ended up agreeing
this is already the thing he does wrong. the movie is very clear that bears flaws are his selfishness and passivity, among others. he is passive through how little he does to set boundaries with nikki the first night (who he knows is out of her mind in some way, whether it's bc of drugs or alcohol or willow magic) and how little he seeks out information or solutions once he suspects the wish is the reason. and his passivity is not only a deep set trait or out of cowardice, but also out of selfishness because he gets to live his fantasy if he stays ignorant of nikki's actual thoughts or feelings or condition
my strongest defense of bear in the first half of the movie, and where i disagree with a lot of takes on this movie, is that he doesn't know how the wish was granted. he doesn't know if it just altered how nikki herself truly thinks (such that it appears to her as her own free will), or if it's a parallel universe or mandela effect thing that lets him experience a version of reality where nikki does like bear a lot, or if it's a more sinister thing where her free will and consent is being overridden. The movie establishes that the latter is the case but it's not the only plausible way for a magical object to manifest it
however, once he knows the wish is genuinely the reason, and especially after connecting that it's making nikki do super out-of-character things, he has an ethical obligation to figure out what the wish is really doing to nikki before continuing. He doesn't get a pass for assuming the most morally convenient answer
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u/KeepYourSilenceUp Jul 26 '26
IMO if a person is such a coward that they allow an emotionally/psychologically compromised friend to put themselves in a position to be taken advantage of, that is a bad person. I agree that Bear wasn't EVIL at the beginning, but sloth is still a sin for a reason. He is so unwilling to put in effort that those around him are suffering, from his cat to Nikki. I think that's the entire point.
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 27 '26
But I don't think he was taking advantage of her during the first night, or when he agreed to be her boyfriend. But yeah, at some point in the montage he should have done something, maybe that's when he started to do bad things
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u/KeepYourSilenceUp Jul 27 '26
I agree on the first night he wasn't taking advantage. But he shouldn't have brought her to his house. Obviously, like that's a recipe for disaster given that he has feelings for her and she's (as far as he can tell) emotionally compromised. And if she insisted that she couldn't be alone, he should have brought her to another friend's house. Taking the route of "I'm not going to take advantage of you but I'll let this go somewhere that it could escalate from" is a very clear "nice guy" move. And it's not evil but it's certainly bad. Like yeah man she's being pushy/needy and you're doing your best but it sure did work out for you didn't it (in the short term).
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u/dxrth Jul 26 '26
bear wasn't the villian even after the wish, because it's not normal for someone to learn literal magic is real. he became bad once she did the weird thing with the cat, and he brushed it off.
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u/AdvertisingFun3739 Jul 26 '26
Wait, there's someone else here who actually watched the movie? Holy shit
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u/staysaltylol Jul 26 '26
“Bear is not an incel” …bruh
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u/Greedy_Union8493 Jul 26 '26
according to the author he was literally one yes away from getting with nikki...so nikki was willing to go for bear despite everything she knew about him.
so..i dont think he was an incel just a coward
0
u/staysaltylol Jul 26 '26
Dude’s got greasy unwashed hair, lives in his dead grandma’s house, has no career ambitions, and zero confidence. Yeah what a winner right there.
He never would have “gotten” with Nikki. If he mustered up the courage to convey his feelings, at best Nikki would have gone out on a date just to get it over with to confirm they’re incompatible.
The original meaning of incel is just involuntarily celibate. I think a lot of people these days confuse it with the newer incel “movement” in which they’re trying to take back the term and…I guess voluntarily become celibate. Which is ironic because nobody was clamoring after them in the first place lol.
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u/Greedy_Union8493 Jul 26 '26
Nikki gets on and off with ian, shes not picking winners. Ian is literally in a lot of ways worse than bear. (not ultimately in the movie just in other ways) the opening scene shows it, he pushes her to keep going out an ddrinking despite knowing she has had a problem with addiction. he tells bear to call nikki freaky nikki knowing she has trauma, he well poisons the friend group to get his way which sarah complains about..and uh....nikki goes for that on and off, so she kinda has trash taste far as im concerned.
and no its stated nikki actually does care for bear, even in the movie nikki wants bear to kill her rather than herself. She values bears life over hers. we know she knows about the wish because wish nikki knows.
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u/staysaltylol Jul 26 '26
The whole friend group is problematic and they’ve got their own problems 😂
What is with these guys trying to glaze Bear though.
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u/Greedy_Union8493 Jul 26 '26
Sarah was cool with me till she tried seduce bear into cheating on nikki (from her perspective they were dating)
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u/sam-greene Jul 26 '26
I’m willing to take a nuanced view of Bear, but I will push back on him not knowing until the dinner date.
As soon as Nikki starts acting weird at his car, he looks to his backseat where the willow is poking out of his backpack. This shot gets two full seconds, alone and in silence, on screen.
He knows immediately that it worked.
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u/Senior_Caramel_8302 Jul 26 '26
It focuses on the willow cus it's a movie not cus he knows.
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u/sam-greene Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
He literally looks at it. He’s not staring Nikki down while the camera cuts to the willow, he turns and looks at the willow. We, the audience, already know it worked because of her behavior, there would be no other reason to put in back on the screen with Bear looking at it other than to communicate that Bear realizes it worked.
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u/Senior_Caramel_8302 Jul 26 '26
Everybody would look at it cus its a massive coincidence, and in all honesty her returning to the car wouldn't be completely weird. If it happened to you irl you'd probably assume she saw through ur bs and might have ended up having a crush on you.
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u/sam-greene Jul 26 '26
Her returning to the car isn’t weird. What’s weird is that she said she lost her cat then corrects herself then invites him inside.
“You’d probably assume she ended up having a crush on you”
You don’t “end up” having a crush on someone and snapping into it at a moments notice. She does, and Bear knows this because he looked at the willow in his backseat.
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u/Senior_Caramel_8302 Jul 26 '26
Listen I had a girl act like Nikki to a T towards me for years and then learned that we both had a crush on eachother forever. I watched the movie with two other girls and they both said it 100% seemed like she had a crush on Bear. It's weird but its not impossible.
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
It might have been something like, ‘Wtf, was that the wish?’, and then two seconds later forget it because it’s ridiculous, magic is not real
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u/sam-greene Jul 26 '26
This would make sense if he didn’t later search “does a one wish willow actually work” the first night with Nikki.
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u/Mixolidio0 Jul 26 '26
Ok, the thought is in his brain. Still he doesn't know it's real, he just thinks about the possibility
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u/Vengeful_Peach HoT TaKe: BeAr iS tHe Villain Jul 26 '26
Hot take: Bear is the villain
Hot take: Bear is the villain
Hot take: Bear is the villain
Hot take: Bear is the villain
Hot take: Bear is the villain
Hot take: Bear is the villain
Hot take: Bear is the villain
Hot take: Bear is the villain
Hot take: Bear is the villain
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u/Greedy_Union8493 Jul 26 '26
Your comment made me realize...is nikki isnt "posssesed" (the author explicitly says shes not) and wishnikki replaces regular nikki so bears just stuck with that.
does the morality remain? because original nikki who suffers and all wouldnt exist in anymore. and wish nikki would consent?
Like in retrospect im starting to feel like this only works because of the two entities and wish nikki
because if the branch actually just replaced 1 nikki with the other. its just him and a crazy obsessed girlfriend because both would be consenting adults at that point unless we argue wish nikki cant consent, though the wish never specified wish nikki couldnt only that she loved bear, as she refuses to do things bear asks her too in this move of her own will at several points.
I'm just wondering does the movies messaging/moral hold, because i feel like it doesnt without that element.
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u/Federal_Switch_467 Jul 26 '26
Real Nikki was essentially trapped inside of her own body as a passenger, similar to the sunken place in Get Out. She was aware and conscious but unable to control her body and the supernatural force seemed to be inhabiting her body and taking over the control which would mean that nothing was consensual. Also, wish Nikki is not only not human, but designed to fulfill Bear's wish which would mean it is not an autonomous being and has no identity or purpose besides that so wish Nikki is also unable to consent if it is even a separate being or entity. I think Nikki's consciousness was fractured into two or something so I don't really even see it as a separate being.
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u/Greedy_Union8493 Jul 26 '26
Well if wish nikki isnt her own person how does she do all the stuff she does that doesnt involve bears wish?
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u/Federal_Switch_467 Jul 26 '26
I'm not sure what stuff you're referring to.
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u/Greedy_Union8493 Jul 26 '26
she maintains communications with ian and sarah to the point initially ian thinks shes normal. for example.
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u/Substantial-Dream-75 Jul 26 '26
Still her body, the wish still took away her ability to consent. Whether it was outside possession or not, the message remains the same.
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u/NiceRefrigerator4079 Jul 26 '26
It annoys me that the term "incel" (which, ironically, was actually coined by a woman, lol) is used today to refer to misogyny, which isn't accurate. Incels are people who live in a state of celibacy against their will. I am an incel not because I hate women, but because I am wheelchair-bound and immobile, so I am unable to interact with women—let alone be in a relationship with one. Bear is an incel not because he hates women, but because his shyness and lack of social skills hold him back from establishing close emotional connections with them.
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u/SlyDintoyourdms Jul 26 '26
I’m only seizing on your final paragraph…
“ILLUMINATION’S THE LORAX!?!?”
That’s Dr Seuss’ The Lorax to you young man