Duplicates and erasure SPOILERS
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Nowhere Man
saint_pat — 15 years ago(March 07, 2011 11:46 PM)
As the series progresses, we learn the Organization is in the business of creating imposters that look and act just like the real person, sometimes even murdering people and replacing them.
Is this how they are able to "erase" people with such ease? By killing and replacing their loved ones? It would explain how they are able to get friends and family to deny ever having known the "erased". -
UltimaGabe — 14 years ago(April 28, 2011 10:45 PM)
There's going to be some last-episode-Spoilers here, so be careful if you haven't seen the end.
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The impression I got was that the people who got erased (i.e., Tom and the woman in the second episode) never actually had the families they thought they did. We learn in the last episode that Tom was actually an agent, conditioned to believe he was a man named "Tom Vale", and the series began right about the time when his conditioning kicked in (that is, when he went into the restroom at the restaurant). So while it seemed to him that his wife and mother and everyone suddenly didn't know him, in reality they weren't his wife or mother to begin with, he had just been conditioned to think they were. Of course that lends some confusion to the second episode, where (if I recall) he watches video of the woman's children being gassed, but that could have easily been a fake video to fool Tom. -
saint_pat — 14 years ago(May 05, 2011 12:57 AM)
Yes, I've seen the last episode.
I considered that possibility. It seems inconsistent because we know from episode#10 that Tom has a father. Also, Tom's friend Larry seems to confirm Tom's memory of events prior to his erasure. If Tom Veil never existed, how to we explain Jonathan Crane and Larry Levy? -
jclinard-344-344673 — 13 years ago(April 15, 2012 01:15 AM)
They aren't able to "erase" people. What they are able to do is implant false memories over real ones so that people believe their life has been erased.
Take Veil. From what we can tell, he was an FBI agent tracking down the organization and got caught. He was brainwashed with a new set of memories (his life as a photojournalist, wife, friends, etc.). He was also something of an experiment as they provided him with a set of negatives that he goes to great lengths to protect. It was sort of his directive; how far would he go to cling to his new memories and the negatives that link him with his false past.
From there, they dropped him in a men's room at a restaurant. He comes out thinking his wife is at a table and he knows the owner. His ATM card is swallowed. His keys don't fit "his" house.
Alyson Veil is a deeper mystery, though I wouldn't be surprised if there were several copies running around with different missions.