If We Were Villains: Act 2, Prologue Summary & Analysis

In 2007, Oliver leaves the prison facility for the first time since he arrived. He sees Filippa waiting for him and hugs her. He notices that she looks unchanged and thinks of how she’s visited him every two weeks since he entered prison—the only one of his old friends to do so. He climbs into her car and changes his clothes. Filippa mentions that Meredith is fine, but that she’s not in close contact with anyone from their old class. Alexander, she says, is with an immersive theater company in New York. She mentions that Alexander refuses to act in productions of Julius Caesar since he thinks that the play corrupted their group. Prompted by Oliver, Filippa says that she disagrees: she thinks they were “fucked up from the start.”

Filippa puts on an audiobook, and Oliver sticks his head out the window and wonders if Dellecher has changed. In two hours, they arrive at Dellecher and get out of the car. Oliver feels nervous and excited, emotions that remind him of his first time at the conservatory. Filippa leads Oliver to the refectory, where Colborne is waiting. They exchange small talk, and Filippa mentions that she lives in Broadwater with Milo. She tells them that she, Gwendolyn, and Frederick are still deciding the plays for this year. She exits, leaving Oliver and Colborne alone. Colborne tells Oliver that he wants to understand his story, and Oliver warns him that that might be impossible, since he doesn’t understand it himself. They get coffee, and Oliver starts to tell Colborne the events of the fall of 1997.