Seemed appropriate to give the title wrapping up its own post. In the meantime, I'm off to try and help my dad with some errands, so expect reviews of old movies to start showing up in the near future.
Caleb, Nettie's son, is the "Carrion Kid," and while he can, explains how he became this creature. Gooden does an excellent job of shifting Caleb between terrifying and pitiful without really changing his overall form. All the more because it depends on whether Caleb remembers who he is at any given moment.
The land calls to people, what they're obsessed by, and twists them accordingly. But the Mountie, LaPointe, he understands a new set of rules. Possession, ownership, deeds, property. And that keeps the magic of the valley out of the town. Unless someone breaks the seal. Again, it's a nice touch. The idea that no one "owned" the land until LaPointe and these others folks showed and said they did. They can try to impose their rules on the land, and it may even work for a time, but it's weak magic in a sense.
Maybe the people in Brokehoof even know it. For LaPointe's confidence, for the fact the beings (colored a sort of faded neon green and pink, which is kind of unsettling against the otherwise mundane colors Duke uses) sent to the town stand impotent at its boundaries even after he lights them on fire, the townsfolk don't go about their business. They stand there and watch. Like they know how easily this could shift. All it takes is one person deciding they're done with that shit to upend it.
Seeing Nettie had to grant her son release from this prison with a rock to his skull, it is fair to say she's done with that shit. More than willing to offer her life to the Pale, to give it the strength to end this. But that's not how it goes. This whole series, Nettie has been safe from the threats, been immune to the traps of the valley, because she's not operating on the same wavelength as everyone else. So it fits that she can't offer her life. There's also probably something about not allowing grief and loss to consume you, but I'm less steady on that as a theme, seeing as M.P. seems to have succumbed to that at the end.
It might actually be more in line with the theme of the sacrifices a parent makes. Nettie wants to put everything down, but she can't. She has to be there to the end to see it through. M.P. could probably upend the boundary marker, but only if he could avoid being killed by the Pale or the zombie things. Since he's infected with the obsession much like the rest of the townsfolk, I'm not sure he could.
Brokehoof is razed to the ground. LaPointe is dragged down to the site of his initial crime to pay the toll he owes and things return to some sort of normal. When I say that, I don't know if "normal" means the land will still pull people towards it by their obsessions, or if that was broken at the end as well. I'm thinking not.
I need to think a bit on the difference between M.P. and Nettie. M.P. has known his love's been dead six years, yet keeps up the lie. Is it because he was using it as an excuse to keep hunting gold, or is the difference Nettie truly believed Caleb was still alive until the moment she had to end his life herself? Nettie truly did just want to find Caleb and take him home, while M.P. may have truly wanted to gold at first to build a life with his beloved Hennie, but that ceased to be the real reason when she did. At heart, he was just as obsessed with the gold as everyone else, and that love had gone away somewhere along the line?
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