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Hello Internet!
Welcome to Film Theory, the show that wants you to think really, really hard about clicking
that subscribe button.
Harder.
You know what?
I think it worked.
Today, we're returning to the terrifying world of the Mandela Catalogue, an analog horror
series created by Alex Kister right here on YouTube.com.
In case you’re just catching up, the story takes place in Mandela County, a fictional
part of Wisconsin, where an unknown man called the intruder keeps appearing on TV, causing
children to suddenly vanish.
Now, that alone would be terrifying.
But in addition to weird televised kidnappers, the world is also dealing with a race of creepy
doppelgangers called alternates, twisted beings that drive people insane and cause a lot of
death before going on to steal their identities.
In short, the world Alex is building here brings together tons of big ideas from religion,
horror and old school science fiction, and then mixes it with a visual style
that's one part Blair Witch, one part PlayStation 1 era cut scene and a little VeggieTale nightmare
fuel thrown in on the side for flavor.
Since our last theory, a lot has happened in this universe, there have been two brand
new volumes uploaded on to Alex's channel, an entire ARG website that's come and gone,
even a couple of videos covering the element most crucial to solving this thing: The plushies!
That's right friendos, mark the occasion for the first time ever in 12 years of theorizing,
we got ourselves some plushie lore because this is going to be the thing that cracks
the whole series wide open.
But in all seriousness, it is actually going to play an important role in the theory that
we have coming out today.
So today in a series where there's a lot of characters and a lot of stuff going on.I want
to focus on the big picture stuff.
Who is the intruder?
What are the alternates?
Why is there an early 2000s amateur ghost hunting crew mixed up with all of this?
And how is it possibly relevant to all the biblical inter-dimensional stuff that keeps
popping up?
Well, my friends, I suspect that all of it is a battle over a man who will become the
future of the human race.
We've got a lot to cover today, Loyal Theorists.
So pop in your contraband VHS tape.
It's time to watch.
So one of the biggest and most obvious unanswered questions about the series is what's going
on with all its religious imagery?
Since its very first upload, Overthrown,
The Mandela Catalogue’s incorporated animated biblical stories into its narrative.
But we're not talking about your typical Sunday school lessons here, friends.
These are a bit off.
Across the uploads we watch a being known as Gabriel infiltrate classic biblical stories
from Adam and Eve to Noah and the Ark.
Each time he comes bearing an important and seemingly dangerous message.
But Gabriel here isn't just sending messages down from on high.
He's determined to get his hands dirty.
In the most recent upload, volume 4,
We see that Gabriel is a literal being that can manifest in reality, communicate with
normal humans, and then kill the people he encounters.
Now, in earlier theories, I suspected that Gabriel might be some sort of alien taking
the shape of an angel.
That might seem strange, but in the first ever upload of the series, we actually get
this brief glimpse of a strange alien face that eventually gets censored.
And while I suspect that still may be true, what is undeniable now at this point in the
series is that Gabriel is also this story's stand-in for the devil.
He is this world's version of Satan.
At the beginning of volume 4, we see a retelling of the biblical story of Genesis, and we speed
run through all the highlights: the formation of the world in seven days, the division of
land and sea, the creation of man in the form of Adam and Eve, and their eventual downfall
when they're convinced to eat an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, which prompts God to
yeet them out of paradise.
Now, in most retellings of the story, a snake is the one who offers the apple a snake that
is symbolic of Satan himself, tempting man and causing their downfall.
But here in the Mandela Catalogue’s version of events, Gabriel is the one that's responsible
for this, thereby equating him with Satan.
This suddenly makes a lot of other details about the series click into place.
For example, in the upload Exhibition, Gabriel tells Noah to bring an unexpected passenger
on the ark, one that will carry a secret message.
The screen then goes dark and the audio goes silent, but the closed captions continue with
a hidden message.
They reference 2 Corinthians 11:14 quote, “And no wonder!
for Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
That is literally what's happening here.
Gabriel is disguising himself as a very traditional looking, Renaissance era statuesque angel.
Satan is disguised.
Additionally, we see the number 333 show up multiple times throughout the series as both
the title of the third upload volume 333 as well as the highway exit that leads to Mandela County.
Again, Gabriel being Satan disguised as an angel of light ties all of that together.
333 is often considered to be the number of angels and it references how 3 is a holy number
to a lot of Christians because it represents the Trinity; God split between three entities:
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
But 333 is also half of 666, the number of the beast, often associated with Satan.
So the number works symbolically in multiple ways.
Mandela is a town controlled by this evil angel 333, the number of angels, but it's
also a marker for an onramp to Satan's domain.
So what then is Gabriel's plan?
What is his evil message?
Well, basically, Gabriel's a symbol that weaponizes religion.
He's made it so that religion that the church itself is a cult.
And we know this based on the most recent upload in volume 4, there's an ongoing threat
of conversation between Dave Lee, owner of a failing video store, and his friend O'Brien,
a guy who plays in a band and offers to get Dave a job at the local church if his video
store gig falls through.
Dave begins the upload by rejecting his offer.
Flash forward two years later, though, and the store actually has to close, prompting
Dave to have a change of heart.
Dave covers up his TVs, symbolizing him turning his back on technology and his old way of
doing things before he heads off to the church to meet with his friend.
But there he's locked out when he calls O'Brien to let him in, Gabriel appears.
And Gabriel uses the same words that O'Brien just said to him over the phone.
Stay still.
O'Brien was an agent of Gabriel.
Dave is killed because he ultimately turned to religion.
He's now yet another victim of Gabriel's.
As for O'Brien, he was yet another example of this world's alternates, the creepy, elongated
beings with their ability to mimic humans.
And we now know that alternates are confirmed to be Gabriel's minions.
Recently, the creator Alex Kister launched a merch campaign, releasing an official makeshift
figurine of Gabriel.
Where the character is described as, quote, “The harbinger of evil” and “the first
alternate”.
But while he may have been the first, his alternate army has been spreading that message
to Noah as they prepare to board the ark.
The entity that's hopping on board is likely an early alternate.
In the merch drop Gabriel is also described as a hivemind leader, so all the other alternates
are parts of him.
Come to think of it, maybe Gabriel really is an alien after all, because all of this
sounds a lot like John Carpenter's classic horror flick The Thing.
In that film, an alien is uncovered in Antarctica that's able to shapeshift and steal the identities
of the people that it touches.
Adding them to its hivemind.
Sounds a lot like what Gabriel is doing throughout Mandella, and it's here where we find our
second big question about the series.
If alternates are such a big threat, why Is the government not doing anything about them?
The world is oddly complacent about these creatures that are stealing identities and
in the process killing thousands.
So, again, what is going on?
Well, based on the evidence, it seems likely that the government has been infiltrated by
Gabriel and his alternates.
Let me explain.
The earliest government record of alternates that we see in the series appears in the form
of a 1980s public service announcement from the U.S. Department of Temporal Phenomena.
Here, they warn people to keep every entrance to their home secured and to keep a firearm
on them at all times for self-defense.
In fact, all civilians are encouraged to fight back against the alternates.
By the 1990s, though, the tactics definitely seemed to have changed.
Police dispatchers in Mandela County are actively told not to help callers reporting alternate
attacks.
In fact, they're told to actively lie to tell the caller that everything's going to be okay.
Then wait until the caller stops responding, presumably after they die.
It's certainly a far cry from the earlier advice of Kill It with Fire.
Another decade later, during the portion of the story that takes place in the late 2000s,
the government now seems to be actively targeting people looking into or interfering with alternates.
We see in volume 2 that two characters named Adam and Jonah are wanted by the FBI because
they're possibly associated with the Bythorne Paranormal Society, a group of ghost hunters
who sometimes search for alternates.
Why would the FBI, of all people, be interested in a bunch of young kids looking into the
existence of ghosts unless they were trying to silence anyone who might learn the truth
about the alternate threat?
It's also, at this point in the timeline, after a decade plus of complete inaction when
people have just totally given up on government officials helping with pretty much anything
in this world.
These massive changes in messaging and how to deal with alternates would make sense if
the government were somehow in on Gabriel's plan, either infected by his message or with
key people in positions of power replaced by alternates.
So Gabriel is literally the devil, and he's using his army of alternates to infiltrate
the police and government.
That being said, one thing that's still unclear to me in the series is just how widespread
the alternate threat is for there to be an entire government agency like the U.S. Department
of Temporal Phenomena, issuing warnings about how to prevent the alternate threat.
That would seem to suggest that these things are nationwide.
But so far, everything we've seen from the series has been local to Mandela and its surrounding counties.
It seems so localized, in fact, that one character we meet even questions whether alternates
are real.
I suspect what we're witnessing here are the beginnings of the alternates' global takeover,
their start in Mandela, the epicenter of activity and subsequent spread to other nearby counties,
a spread that's being slowed or even outright halted by the other key figure in the series
and the other major mystery that's going on here, the intruder, the mysterious man in
the TV responsible for stealing kids out of their homes and doing. . .
Well, we were never quite sure about what he was doing.
At least we weren't until now.
You see, with the most recent upload, I think we now know the answer to this one too.
One of the strangest sections from volume 333 is an extended segment taken from a mysterious
short film called Might of the Subconscious, a film made by a production company that's
impossible to track down.
We know that fact, thanks to an ARG website that launched earlier this year.
In Might of the Subconscious, we meet Stanley, a face made out of simple white lines who
claims to want new friends.
Given Stanley's tone, this is clearly meant to be shown to children.
As he goes on, though, things become a bit strange as Stanley claims to be able to…
He asks the viewer to imagine every detail of their ideal friend.
Then, in a segment that glitches out, Stanley says:
As the subtitles continue and complete the sentence to say: “to manifest them instead.”
At the end of the segment, Stanley says that he thinks it worked and that the new friend
is somewhere in the house.
It's at that point we hard cut to a police call of someone panicked of an intruder in their home.
An alternate has been manifested, the caller disappears, and Ruth Weaver, one of the police
investigators, ultimately winds up killed.
But who is Stanley?
Who would have the power to summon twisted monsters like this?
It's the intruder.
In volume 4 the intruder basically confirms that he was Stanley all along.
This also plays into the intruders use of televisions.
He's using them to show his face to as many people as possible, cementing his creepy features
in their minds.
And then the old videotape is basically a tutorial for children to literally think him
and his alternates into reality, which now sets the stage for the big picture story that's
going on in the Mandela Catalogue a story of two competing false gods, a false god within
religion in the form of Gabriel, and another false god within the television, the intruder,
an alternate who's gone rogue from Gabriel's army.
And the two of them are constantly trading blows.
While Gabriel replaces people with alternate, twisted versions of themselves.
The intruder counters by manifesting into our reality and snatching children away before
they can be corrupted or worse.
See, though, this doesn't apply in every denomination, several sects of Christianity view dying in
the way that alternates end lives a sin.
A sin that dooms the soul to H-E double hockey sticks.
And if Gabriel is Satan, well, wouldn't that mean that he gets more powerful with every
life ended in this way?
That would also explain why some of the instructions given by the Department of Temporal Phenomena
in their T.H.I.N.K.
initiative tell civilians to… because there's not enough room for the two of us.
It's the government under Gabriel's control, giving directions that make Gabriel more powerful.
Gabriel also counters the intruder by having the USDTP order all TV screens and mirrors
be destroyed, rendering the screen hopping intruder useless.
And this campaign also winds up wildly successful.
Seeing old TVs turned on is a big deal in this world enough so that one character keeps
an old CRT television hidden under a blanket in his closet like contraband, claiming it's
the last one in the entire state of Wisconsin.
But why?
Sure, maybe these forces are just duking it out for some sort of control.
But aren't they both alternate?
Why aren't they working together?
What's the big inciting incident here?
Well, it all comes down to one character, Adam Murray.
In case you need a reminder, because there are a lot of characters in the series, Adam
is one of our point of view characters.
He's a ghost hunter and the person that we see messaging on a brand neutral AOL Instant
Messenger throughout volume 4.
Basically, we see almost all the parts of the story set in the late 2000's through Adam's eyes.
And there's a very good reason for that.
You see, Adam is important to everyone in the Mandela Catalogue.
He's important enough to the government that he's wanted by the FBI with a $100,000 reward
on his head.
He's important to Gabriel enough so that he sends several alternates after him as he hunts
a ghost cat in rural Wisconsin.
And he's important enough to the intruder that he basically engineers an entire face
generation software so he can manifest and speak in the real world.
Adam is an alternate, but completely unlike any other alternate that we've seen thus far.
No one can tell that he's an alternate.
Heck, he can't tell that he's an alternate.
In the world of the Mandela Catalogue, he's something completely new.
And if all of this is indeed the case, we can actually take things just a step further.
If there's one thing that Alex Kister hasn't been, it's subtle in his choice of symbolic
imagery throughout the series.
This young man here is named Adam, his girlfriend, another important character in the series
is named Evelyn.
EVElyn.
Just like in the biblical story, they're likely to start a new race of humans.
But now the question is who are they going to follow?
Will they follow the false God of religion Gabriel?
Will they follow the false God of the TV, the intruder?
Or maybe there's actually a third option, one that doesn't involve twisted human doppelgangers
in the first place.
You see, throughout volume 4, Evelyn starts to realize that there's something off about Adam.
She discovers records in the police department that Adam isn't exactly like all the other
kids, that he's an alternate made from an encounter that he had with the intruder when
he was a baby.
In other words, she has now bitten from the apple of enlightenment.
She now knows the truth.
In the original Bible story, after Eve bites the apple, Adam is given a choice.
He can either choose God and stay in the Garden of Eden or choose Eve, knowledge, and get
heated out of paradise.
It looks like the Mandela Catalogue might be setting up a similar situation.
Eve will confront Adam with the knowledge of what he truly is, and it will be up to
him to decide what he wants to become.
Will he follow Gabriel, the leader of the alternate hive mind?
The intruder, an alternate gone rogue who basically gave him life?
or will he choose humanity?
That, I suspect, is what we're gearing up for in the series.
There is so much else going on here in the Mandela Catalogue.
And again, I have to say, Alex has done an amazing job building such a fascinating world
and taking his time to tell a really awesome story.
Even now, three theories in we still have so much left to explore.
And believe me, we will be digging into all of that soon enough.
So in the meantime, why don't you subscribe so you don't miss the next time we take a
trip back to Mandela County?
And if you want to watch another theory that tackles deeply disturbing analog horror lore,
click the video you see onscreen right now for our episode on the mysterious OWO.
see, since that video, I've learned how to pronounce it appropriately.
And as always, remember my friends until the next one.
It's all just a theory.
A FILM THEORY!
aaaaand cut.