What some view as a look of suspicion on Jason’s face, others read more as a look of recognition. The theory? Jason and his tethered double, Pluto, also swapped identities.
On Friday,
Reddit user hoopsterben posted in /r/FanTheories: “I believe the summer before the movie takes place, the boy and his ‘tethered’ also switched places … At the end, he has realized that his mother, at one point, has also switched bodies. She gives him a look almost like ‘I also know what you know’ and then he puts on his mask, as a symbol of the masks they will now wear for the rest of their lives.”
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DEE@eldiaesnuevo
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The Evidence
The werewolf mask: If we read Adelaide’s final conspiratorial grin through the lens of
Thriller, then the following shot, of Jason redonning the werewolf mask, can be seen in the same light: a tell that he’s also a “monster.”
The tunnels: As a couple of people on Reddit have pointed out, when the family is at the beach, Jason isn’t building sand castles. He’s making sand
tunnels, which — in addition to being a feat of sand-engineering — could link the character to the tethered’s subterranean home.
The closet: Jason likes to play by himself in the confined darkness of the closet. The Tyler twins think that’s weird, to which Zora responds: He has trouble focusing. This could all just mean he’s a troubled kid … But that’s what Adelaide’s parents thought about her, too.
The drawing: At home, Adelaide discovers a drawing made by Jason depicting his encounter with the tethered form of the Jeremiah 11:11 man — the man that Adelaide spotted on the beach before descending into the maze in ‘86, and whose original was being carted away in an ambulance when the family first arrived in Santa Cruz. The style of the drawing, featuring the backs of Jason’s and the Jeremiah 11:11 man’s heads, alarms Adelaide, because it takes on the same creepy perspective of Adelaide’s memory of encountering her mirror image.
However, it also hints that the somewhat reserved Jason, like his mother in the flashback at the child psychologist’s office, has been encouraged to draw to express himself. We later learn that this was the case for Adelaide because, after leaving the tethered underworld, she was still preverbal. The connection might hint at a similar situation for Jason and Pluto.
Mirroring: As has been pointed out on Reddit, Pluto is the only member of the tethered family who does not try to murder his double. In fact, when they’re sent to “play” together in the closet, they engage in a mirroring game, almost communicating through matching each other’s movements. (Kitty — who went to Stella Adler, after all — would be shook by the dramatic technique.) They appear to have a much closer bond than Zora or Gabe and their respective doubles, bringing them closer in our understanding to Red and Adelaide.
The rabbit: Redditor Verdyz has suggested that if the rabbits are meant to symbolize the tethered in any way — a connection we understand from the opening credits onward — then the rabbit in Jason’s lap at the end of the movie suggests that he, too, is an escaped tethered.
redditor CuriousPetie: “Everyone has been mentioning how Jason wears a tuxedo pajama top. In the friend’s house, he grabs a statue (reminding you of an Oscar). First, I thought this was Peele doing a self-insert, showing how he won an Oscar. Now, I interpret it as Peele showing us that Jason has been the best actor in this all along.”
“Kiss my anus!”: Kids say the darndest things … or the tethered mangle the darndest phrases?
The snapping: In an early scene, Jason has trouble snapping on the beat, and Adelaide “helps” him, although many have pointed out, in a
Get Out–ishdetail, she herself is snapping closer to the first and third beats — an early sign that something isn’t quite right, and another hint at the characters’ special connection.
My Evidence
In addition to what’s been found on Reddit, I had to get in on the conspiracy. Here are some additional potential clues:
The Lost Boys: In the opening scene, young Adelaide’s mother notices that they’re filming something on the Santa Cruz boardwalk, which
Jason Bailey pointed out to be the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys. “Lost
Boys,” you say? There are coincidences and then
there are coincidences.
Jason Voorhees: Bailey noted
Us’s many similarities to
A Nightmare on Elm Street too
, but there’s something to be said for the movie’s connections to Freddy Kruger’s one-time rival, the other patron slasher of the ‘80s and the youngest Wilson’s namesake, Jason. In the first
Friday the 13th movie, the slasher is revealed to be Jason’s mother, Mrs. Voorhees, avenging her son’s death. In the many (many) sequels, Jason himself emerges from the murky depths to go on a killing spree, wearing a mask. The connection to this film’s Jason — who wears a mask and has close ties to his potentially nefarious mother — suggests something darker lurking beneath the surface.
Jaws: Jason wears a shirt emblazoned with the famous
Jaws poster, which shows a monster hidden underneath an unsuspecting human.
The Verdict
Toward the end of the first act of
Us, Adelaide confesses to Gabe that she’s scared, that since coming to Santa Cruz she’s noticed coincidences everywhere, enough to seem like they’re part of some larger scheme. Jordan Peele wants his viewers to be alert for clues and Easter eggs, to notice his deliberate planning. Whether this means these clues add up to Jason being a tethered, or Peele just wanting to sew paranoia, is up to you. As a friend who is firmly in the Pluto-is-Jason camp told me after seeing
Us this weekend: “It’s Schrödinger’s rabbit.”