Here’s another question. Is there truly no hope for Kevin’s Pre-Strex revolution, or might Cecil’s false hope give him an optimism to win Desert Bluffs back, because after all, Cecil only saw the next moment in time after he talked to kevin, he was still in his studio booth
I’ve largely left it to others to tackle the issue with timelines in this episode. Time travel is not for me. I have enough trouble managing time in its current linear state. I do not have the cleverness to effectively analyze it in its many lopping variations. Triptych just piles more temporal trickery on top of an already twisted timeline – the revelations in Cassette, The Deft Bowman, and [Best Of?] stand out at the most devilish examples in my mind.
Could Cecil be the Traveler? He is perhaps a candidate, since the Traveler admits to altering the past course of events (which Cecil kind of does in Triptych). However, the Traveler was also wearing a uniform similar to those of the Desert Bluffs Cacti…a uniform, which, funnily enough, was mentioned in Triptych. A more likely candidate would be someone from the pre-StrexCorp Desert Bluffs.
As for Kevin’s revolution: When Cecil reveals the Night Vale rebellion to StrexCorp-Kevin, he leaves an impact on the timeline by inadvertently influencing events (the deployment of Daniel). But it’s important to note that Cecil’s error here doesn’t actually change the results as far as we can tell. Daniel does show up to NVCR to keep a closer eye on Cecil. Everything remains the same.
It stands to reason (although reason is of little consequence in such matters) that even though Cecil told Kevin a lie about the future of Desert Bluffs, and even though his lie was meant to be a small mercy…it probably won’t affect the overall outcome. Indeed, it did not. We know how the story ends.
Kevin is a tragic figure. What’s important about Cecil’s interaction with him is not how it helps Kevin, but how it helps Cecil. Cecil has a moment where he could have devastated his old nemesis…and instead he chose mercy. I think that this, above nearly anything else Cecil has done, is what elevates him from narrator to hero. Instead of taking the easy way out (destroying his foe), he chooses to give him hope. Why? Because Kevin is a character that mirrors Cecil’s circumstances. Like Fey and Maliq before him, Kevin is a warning to Cecil: change…stop trying to make the past better, and try to make the future better instead. And Cecil decides to heed that warning.
There’s a kind of parallel, isn’t there, between this and A Christmas Carol? Scrooge is haunted by Jacob Marley, a mirror image of his miserly ways. Marley uses his brief moments in the mortal world to warn Scrooge. And then, Scrooge is visited by phantoms of the Past, Present, and Future, and learns an important lesson about himself in the process.
