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Act 5, Scene 7
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in If We Were Villains, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fate vs. Free Will
Identity and Disguise
Love and Sexuality
Theatre and Corruption
Summary
Analysis
Back in 2007, Oliver ends his story. In the library, he and Colborne find Filippa reading The Winter’s Tale. Colborne asks Oliver what he’s going to do next. He tells him that he’s supposed to stay with Leah in Chicago, where she’s working on a doctorate, but that he wants to talk to James more than anything. To his surprise, Colborne and Filippa share an alarmed look. Filippa stands and slowly tells Oliver that James drowned four years ago in 2003. She says that the guilt overwhelmed him. Oliver looks at Richard’s chair and sees his image there, looking at Oliver with a triumphant expression before he disappears.
In The Winter’s Tale, a queen who had been presumed dead magically regains life. The choice of play calls to mind endings and beginnings, and just after Oliver notes it, he learns of James’s own death. Oliver seems to consider this Richard’s goal in haunting him all of these years. Down the line, the memory of Richard’s death drove the group so powerfully apart that it killed James—the greatest bruise of all.
Themes
Colborne expresses sympathy for Oliver, and as they shake hands, Oliver can tell that he’s forgiven. After he leaves, Oliver and Filippa stand outside and look up at the Dellecher coat of arms. Oliver asks her why she never told anyone what she knew about James’s guilt, and she tells him that their friends were the only family she’d ever had—and that she knew he’d sacrifice himself for James if she told him. Oliver feels ashamed and can’t look at her for a moment. He asks her about Frederick and Gwendolyn, and then about Camilo. He wonders aloud when Filippa and Camilo will get married. Filippa drives him to the bus station.
As Oliver and Filippa look at the Dellecher coat of arms now, the school motto takes on new significance–James is figuratively “in the stars” after getting lost in the thorns below. Finally, Oliver understands why Filippa never talked about her home life and why she tried so hard to keep the group together. Even now, she’s settled in the place where they used to find happiness together. It now becomes clear, as well, that Filippa has found love with Camilo, the “Milo” that she and Oliver mentioned before.
Themes
Oliver goes to Chicago to visit Meredith. He remembers when she visited him seven years ago and told him that she knew the bloody scrap of fabric wasn’t his since she knew exactly what he’d been wearing on the night they first had sex. When she sees him there now, she slaps him and invites him inside. They sit and talk for hours. Oliver asks her if she and James ever got together outside of the kiss in Gwendolyn’s class, and she tells him that they kissed again right afterward. She needed to understand James’s influence over Oliver, and afterward, she and James realized they were both thinking of “the same thing.”
Meredith is angry at Oliver for abandoning her to her loneliness—and in fairness to her, it seems like Oliver is only going to her now because going to James isn’t an option. The ”same thing” that she alludes to is likely Oliver himself. She’s telling Oliver that the kiss that she and James shared was about Oliver, not about her and James. James and Meredith were each jealous of the other.
Themes
Meredith goes on to tell Oliver that James grabbed her and told her “What’s done is done” at the King Lear cast party, saying that she was the only one who would understand his guilt. After hearing this, she understood that James had killed Richard and ran to tell Colborne what she knew. Oliver apologizes to her, realizing that it was selfish of him to leave her behind in his sacrifice for James. Meredith asks him if what they had was real, and Oliver tells her that it was. She asks if Oliver was in love with James, and he tells her “Yes”—but he doesn’t add that he still is, even now.
In his frenzy, James confessed to Meredith. It’s unclear whether or not he did it on purpose, but his lack of surprise when he sees Colborne suggests that it might have been. Even now, Oliver considers his love for James so private that he can’t bring himself to tell Meredith the whole of it even after James has died.
Themes
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Meredith tells Oliver that she’s sorry about James’s death, and he begins to sob as she holds his head. They spend the night together, and Oliver stays with her as they cautiously rekindle the relationship they had during the 1997 Christmas break. Alexander calls him, and Meredith tells him that Wren is working as a dramaturg in London. They don’t discuss James ever again. Filippa calls Oliver to tell him that he has mail, and an envelope arrives a few days later. Inside is another envelope with James’s handwriting on it, which Oliver hides until Meredith is away in Los Angeles.
Just as Oliver once comforted Meredith after Richard’s death, Meredith comforts him after James’s. Finally, they’re living out a little piece of the future they envisioned together during Christmas break. Still, he doesn’t share James with her in any way, and the fact that he hides the envelope from her suggests that he knows it would hurt her to see him have it.
Themes
With Meredith out of the house, Oliver opens the envelope. It’s labeled with his name. Inside, there’s a letter with ten lines awkwardly gathered from Pericles. They include the lines, “my veins are chill, / And have no more of life than may suffice / To give you my tongue that heat to ask your help […]” Oliver is confused until he remembers the day when they lay naked on the beach in Del Norte. Oliver remembers James speaking the lines to him then, which makes him wonder if there’s a deeper meaning to the passage. He starts to research James’s death and learns that James’s body was never recovered.
James left Oliver a clue. Del Norte was a special place for the two of them, as they reminisced over the Thanksgiving break. James did also list Del Norte as one of the possible places he’d go when he last spoke to Oliver, although “Hell” was also among them. The lines that James has cobbled together hint that he’s alive: he does have enough life to ask for help—Oliver’s. Oliver seems to interpret the message as meaning that James is asking him to come find him and that he’s alive after all. Like many of Shakespeare’s best plays, however, the ending is left ambiguous.
Themes
