FallThe best moments have revealed the backstories of its characters in a few lines of dialogue. Walton Goggins has said that nothing describes the tragic story arc of The Ghoul better than the brief final sequence of episode 4.
Walton Goggins reflected on The Ghoul's best moments in an interview with Collider. The character broke Fall tradition of portraying ghouls as sympathetic creatures. The show immediately revealed the origin of The Ghoul as actor Cooper Howard, a decent man who abides by his moral code; the end of episode 1 revealed him as a subhuman nihilist who will do anything for self-preservation. Goggins praised the show's writers for letting his scenes breathe, allowing his character to reveal his motivations without exposition. “I love the way our writers, Geneva [Robertson-Dworet] and Graham [Wagner] and El Jefe, our fearless leader, Jonathan Nolan, has decided to tell this story,” he said. “They give space to the behavior. Not every scene is filled with words or explanations of what’s happening.”
Many of The Ghoul's scenes are scavenger hunts for the next drug fix to keep him from going feral. Goggins said the writers used these otherwise dull moments to gradually expose The Ghoul's tragic story. “They allow the audience and trust that the audience is patient enough to watch two people walk through the desert without talking, and what it means to withhold water from someone who is really thirsty, and what it means to shoot a billboard without explaining why he's shooting at that billboard at that moment,” he said, referring to Fallexplanation of one of the franchise's icons. Goggins said his character's defining moment was the closing sequence of episode 4, which revealed he's still Cooper Howard at heart.
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“There is a moment when it resonated so deeply with me“, he continued. “…[It’s] a scene that, at least when you read it, is an eighth of a page, and it concerns episode four, where The Ghoul enters this place where Lucy just shot and gave him a new chance at life. He goes on this binge of things that keep him from becoming a wild Ghoul. And at the end of that bacchanal, he finds this tape of a movie and obviously he knows the title because it's a movie he acted in 210 or 215 years agoand puts it in Fall version of a VCR and he plays it. I guess it was that moment as The Ghoul, looking at himself as Cooper Howard, and absorbing everything he's lost, not just with sadness but with fascination, that was one of my favorites.”
Her co-star Ella Purnell confirmed that an earlier sequence in episode 4 was also her favorite. Earlier in the episode, The Ghoul swaps Lucy's (Purnell) organs for a new supply of inhaler vials. Lucy managed to survive the ordeal, reluctantly saving The Ghoul later. That was a defining moment for Purnell's character, foreshadowing her breaking point in the season finale. “…In that moment, when he shoots his mother, it means so many things,” she said in an interview with GQ, referring to her Catch-22 moment. “It means, 'I'm coming with you. [The Ghoul]'. It means, 'I'm going to meet my makers.' It means, 'I fucking hate you, but I've turned into you, you were right.' It means he's letting go of his golden center.”
Fall is streaming on Prime Video.
Source: Collider