My Take On The Manager And Kayne

My take on The Manager and Kayne

The moment John and Arthur enter The Managers office were told something very clearly. He looks and sounds EXACTLY like Kayne aside from the color of his suit. To the point that the boys think they were sent to Kayne in death. This tells me one thing very clearly: This is still a specific mask of Nyarlathotep. Not his core being himself. Or a different mask.

I've seen a lot of theories that this is Nyarlathotep himself and Kayne is a rambunctious kid who is off making trouble but that doesn't seem to be the case. Nyarlathotep has at least 1000 avatars or 'masks'. Hell there is an entire CoC game that takes a year of regular play minimum to get through and it only has you dealing with 3. These masks all look very different from each other. Some human, a lot not.

The body that Kayne is in, is one of those masks. It's the one Nyarlathotep is wearing right now. It's still him in there. Because The Manager looks exactly like Kayne we know that he's still that mask. He just made different choices, just like Kayne asked a different question.

I've also seen a lot of theories that add a layer of self loathing to him that pretty much every character in the show has. But I really doubt that's the case. Most of Nyarls masks aren't that manic or crazy. They're charming and put together, able to sway LARGE groups of people, in some cases entire empires. That shit takes boiling the frog, not dancing around in gore. The Manager comes across more like how his masks normally behave. And I've always felt that Kaynes insanity is the result of collapsing so many iterations of himself into one body.

I don't think The Manager is innocent and pure. Or wracked with guilt. I think he just knows this isn't going to go the way Kayne wants, and just like Arthur and John, wants to keep living. Nyarl keeps Azathoth asleep because he likes doing what he does. He's more than capable of being helpful when it suits him, and I'd bet that's what we're seeing here. Not guilt and self hatred, just trying to keep the status quo he enjoys quite a lot. Trying to differentiate from Kayne is just a way of distinguishing himself, they're identical otherwise. Even in behavior when he's not actively trying to stop it. I don't think he's pure and good and feels guilty. I think he just doesn't want to die either.