Hell on Wheels Episode 110: God of Chaos

Brother! Choose hate.

The Season 1 finale of Hell on Wheels packed a wallop. Maybe it wasn’t as shocking as the “mid-season finale” of The Walking Dead but, of the nine major players listed on AMC’s cast page, four are in a very different place than I expected them to be at the beginning of the season. It’s risky, and I hope they follow through.

The risk, of course, is that we’ll too-easily return to the status quo at the beginning of Season 2. The changes of God of Chaos should have consequences, and I hope the writers don’t wipe their hands of the consequences with a bit of script trickery. If they explore these changes, we’re in for a rollicking Season 2! (Spoilers below the fold.)

There is more than one kind of immoral mathematics, and there is more than one dark path.

I didn’t expect much of anything we saw in Cullen this episode. Not that he’d come to question his “dark path,” not that he’d visit the preacher (ha!), not that he’d go the full-blown outlaw route (complete with Wanted posters—if I had one of those, I’d frame it). As you’ll recall, after the pilot I suggested that the search for the Sgt. Harper would be his ongoing quest and would define the trajectory of the series; each episode would have events that occurred, in and around which, Cullen would seek his revenge. Here we have something very different indeed.

Questioning the path he’s on is one thing, and a powerful thing, but then to kill an innocent man, well, it certainly seems like that would turn him away from his quest. I imagine that, if he meets the sergeant who actually did the deed, he’d kill the son-of-a-bitch, but I’m sure that Cullen Bohannon is no longer hunting him down.

After Cullen has strangled Harper, he looks up and sees the train light looking down on him; it’s like the light that will hunt him down, like the sun, like an all-seeing eye. In that moment, he’s exposed himself to guilt and judgment, to light, and I think he chooses his path.

Leaving the body for anyone to find and allowing himself to become a wanted man is an unexpected move, perhaps, but I think it was influenced by the light. Sure, it’s stupid, but in reality it’s guilt-ridden, fatalistic, and life-altering. Not to mention show-altering.

The moral trajectory I find most fascinating is Elam Ferguson’s, because it’s many, many shades of gray. First, let me again praise Common’s acting. Again, as his position changes, his body language changes. He shoots straighter and more confidently as his skill improves, and he walks like someone who dares you to tell him otherwise.

Psalms: Thinking you looking out for us, turn out you just looking out for your own damn self.
Elam: Ain’t nobody else gonna do it. I aint your massa, you need to look out for your own self, huh?

I mean, there’s the preacher. Whoa, finally got me interested. “Choose hate” is not even a little bit what I expected. But that’s the darkest of dark paths, and that’s not Elam. Murderous quest for revenge is also a dark path, and that’s also not Elam. At the moment, Elam isn’t so much immoral as kind of a douche. He’s learned to stand up for himself, he’s learned to let go of the past, but he’s now thinking only of himself, and he expects others to do the same. The other freed slaves can go suck it, and he’ll do Durant’s bidding (presumably including hunting down Cullen when Season 2 opens—we can see he’s a good enough shot). Eva is a little more complicated in that he doesn’t exactly want to tell her to go suck it; he just associates caring about other people’s needs with slavery. Fortunately, Eva has a pair of brass ones and she’s not going to go suck it. Team Eva!

The thing is, he has a point: He has to learn to stand up and wear his freedom with pride. Yet to reject anything resembling looking out for others as well is going to turn dark, and soon.

Finally, there’s the Swede. I. Am. Floored. They tarred and feathered him, holy shit!

He’s a slippery bastard that one, says Mickey of the Swede, and then they make him sticky. The Swede has called Cullen a God of Chaos, and clearly thinks of himself as a God of Order. There’s no Satan or Satanic equivalent in Norse mythology—where “immoral mathematics” comes in is that Gundersen believes he can be as evil as he wants as long as he’s orderly. He’s been running security at Hell on Wheels like he’s Don Corleone, and if you do that, you have to maintain the power to back it up at all times. He had his own goon squad, but he dissipated those forces by sending them after Cullen, and then after Elam, and then after Pawnee Killer—he’s more or less on his own, and yet he continued to act the role of kingpin. His howl of rage and pain was something to see; Chris Heyerdahl is as interesting brought low as he is on top of the world.

Just as I thought, killing me does not equate in your moral mathematics.

I’ve left out Durant, who didn’t have much of a character arc this episode (although he was fun to watch) and Lily, who did, but not an unexpected one.

Cullen and Lily have bickered like Sam and Diane since they met in Episode 3, and so we expected a spark to develop. I think there was feeling in Cullen for Lily in the saloon last episode but it wasn’t initially reciprocated—I kind of feel like you don’t say “What do you think of me now?” if the answer really matters to you. She was just being playful, and then there was that look, that connection that hung in the air.

So here it is, some days later, and she finds her connection to him in two things that are absolutely stereotypically attractive to women, and yet also frequently quite true: Sorrow in one’s past, and handiness with a hammer. These thing turn the ladies on. Sure enough, after their hammer-and-sorrow encounter, Lily never stops looking for Cullen at the dance.

Could you possibly help me, that is if you’re not busy killing anyone, she asks, and shortly afterwards he’s off to do just that.

But not only did she influence him to see the preacher (boy, that , went well), he came back to smolder-stare at her before running off into Outlaw Territory. These are sure signs thatt he’s developed real caring for her.

Lily: What happened to your wife and son…please don’t let it kill the man they loved.
Cullen: Sorry Mrs. Bell, it’s too late for that.