Alan Wake may have his name on the games and books, but is it really his story being brought to life, or is it perhaps someone else’s? Just who is the person behind the typewriter?

Before anyone dives in, needless to say, this will be rife with spoilers for Alan Wake 2! So, if you haven’t played the game yet (you should since it’s excellent!), proceed at your own discretion.

It’s Remedy’s and Sam Lake’s story. There, the mystery is solved.

But seriously, ignoring the fourth-wall-breaking stuff and forces beyond that have always been hinted at by Remedy’s games, if there was a definite “villain” in Alan Wake that is causing all of this, who exactly would it be? Well, let’s take a look at our top candidates who may be behind the typewriter. Oh, and spoiler warning to those who haven’t beaten Alan Wake 2 yet.

Alan Wake

We’ll get him out of the way since he’s the most obvious of choices. His name is on everything, so it would make sense that he is writing the story. Everything we’ve seen unfolded from both games has been written in ink by Wake. His stories are coming alive, though there has always been one confusing matter. If he’s writing all this, what’s the purpose, and how does that work? Why would he put himself through so much?

To answer that, we have to look to Wake’s revelation at the very end of Alan Wake 2: It’s not a loop; it’s a spiral.

When you think of time, you think of it being linear. Loops, the same thing happening over and over and over. But a spiral? That’s different, depending on whose interpretation you look at. Junji Ito’s Uzumaki comes to the minds of many when they think of time working in a spiral. It doesn’t have a beginning or an end; it just spins forever. Everything caught up in it is all connected, with some things having no real concept of time, frozen or aging in an instant.

Alan Wake 2 showed many instances of events overlapping one another. As things happened to one character, something else happened to them in another instance. One moment, they are dead; another, they’re alive, and sometimes both. Loops weren’t loops; they were the characters passing through different moments of the spiral.

So what this means for Wake is that ultimately, he’s the writer, but he unknowingly did all this to himself. It’s all written, and we are just experiencing it now. Moreover, something causes him to keep writing even after all this.

Alan Wake 2 shows Wake seemingly forgetting about things he’s done, like writing another book (alright, that’s explained) and telling other characters what to do and when. But he has no memory of this. Rose tells Wake that she has been following every piece of instruction that he has sent, only for Wake to say he hasn’t done any of that. In a spiral, those things could be possible; it’s just that the current Wake we’re playing hasn’t done it yet and may never. That’s assuming Wake is behind those messages left for Rose.

It isn’t very clear, but ultimately, it would mean that Alan has been behind everything, as the game has always suggested. But could it be that simple? I don’t buy it; there has to be more.

Mr. Door

The next obvious candidate is the mysterious Mr. Door. Despite playing a big role in Alan Wake 2, we don’t know a lot about him. From Control, we learned about the multiverse from him and how there are worlds on top of one another, side by side, and even inside each other. He, however, exists simultaneously in all worlds and can shift in and out whenever.

Mr. Door is a being beyond human. We don’t understand the full extent of his powers, which is scary but also makes him the perfect candidate to pull the strings. But we still don’t know his goal or whether he’s a good guy despite refusing to spread the Hiss during Control. He seems to be trying to help Alan, but as soon as Alan realizes that Mr. Door has been putting him through these fake talk shows, his demeanor changes to something more threatening. He also lets on that he knows something, telling Alan to play his part and that it would be best to stay out of his way.

However, he also revealed that the only reason why they’ve crossed paths is because Wake brought someone into the story he cares about. It’s never revealed (though some suggest it’s Saga) who, potentially alluding to those questions being answered in the Night Springs expansion.

So, as all-powerful as Mr. Door is, it seems whatever force is at play here is even greater than him, and the only person who can stop it is Wake himself or the person in charge of the story.

Sam Lake 

I know, I said I got that out of the way earlier, but he is an actual character in Alan Wake 2, as fourth-wall-breaking and meta as that is. Sam Lake is shown to have many different personalities: a movie director, a cop, and even an actor staring in his Finnish film. Sam Lake is as involved in Alan Wake’s story as any other character in the game. It’s weird, but I love it.

But I don’t want him to be the force behind it all because that’s already true in real life. He and Remedy are making these games, which would fly too close to being too much if the big reveal was some massive fourth wall-breaking twist. Alan Wake 2 features plenty of those moments that feel more like they are just in there for laughs. I don’t think we need it to be the driving force behind the narrative.

Plus, from his Alex Casey persona, he seems as stuck in the story as anyone else, just playing the role written for him. He’s living in a nightmare as much as everyone else.

Mr. Scratch

All things point to Mr. Scratch being the all-powerful force behind it all. He has a ton of influence over everything, to the point that he managed to fool characters into thinking they were doing stuff of their own accord.

But Mr. Scratch is also the “main” villain, and from how both games have been presented, he seems just as trapped in the story as much as anyone else. He wants the clicker as much as Wake and Saga want it to control the story and write it however they want.

There’s also confusion about who Mr. Scratch even is. In American Nightmare, he was an actual person, a counterpart of Wake, but in Alan Wake 2, it’s implied that it’s just Wake driven to insanity. So it seems to be retconned, and if that’s the case, how does it take over Casey? Mr. Scratch has manifested into something more, but I suppose the bigger question is, what does Mr. Scratch want?

Who knows, but I’m ruling him out as the person behind the curtain.

Thomas Zane

Thomas Zane has become the center of theories these last months, as the fanbase has debated who exactly he is. In Alan Wake 1, he’s a poet and diver who, like Alan Wake, got stuck in Dark Place during 1970, over 40 years before the first game’s events. In Alan Wake 2, he’s a filmmaker under the guise of Thomas Zane, who claims Tom the poet was a fictional character he created. So, which is he? A poet or a filmmaker? Well, he’s both and more.

The whole Alex Casey storyline in the game explores this, as in the real world, he’s a real cop who just so happens to also be a fictional cop in the books that Alan Wake wrote, and at the same time, a Finnish actor, by the name of Sam Lake, that plays him in a movie, who also ends up being a cop that gets trapped in those movies. It isn’t very clear, but the point is, they’re all Alex Casey.

This becomes evident during Casey’s chase of the Grandmaster in the Dark Place, where the Grandmaster reveals that Casey is a fictional character, telling Wake that if he now assumes the role of detective, is he fictional too? And if so, who’s story is he in? Ah ha, now you understand why I’m questioning who’s really behind the typewriter.

If Casey was fictional, and yet now Alan is, does that make him real since Alan believes he is real? It’s a question we hope gets answered, along with whoever the Grandmaster is, but the ending twist also reveals that Alan has been trapped in a spiral, not a loop.

This means that all of these characters can exist and are real in each of their own universes.

But how does this make Thomas Zane the man behind it all?

Well, in the first game, it’s revealed that Alan Wake wrote Zane into existence. Yet it’s later contradicted that Zane’s poem brought Alan into existence, creating a chicken or egg situation.

But when Alan meets Zane, the filmmaker, for the first time in The Dark Place in Alan Wake 2, he asks Zane why he looks just like him. We, as the player, can see the difference, at least enough, though he does look exactly like wake in Control. To further add to the confusion, Zane, the filmmaker, and Zane, the poet, are referenced throughout the game by different characters. Even more confusing is that everyone in the Old Gods foster home refers to Alan Wake as Tom.

Ahti, The Janitor, is an interdimensional being seen in both the Alanb Wake and Control games. He’s the same character and is able to traverse the multiverse, and yet he, too, refers to Alan as Tom.

This leads us to believe that Thomas Zane and Alan Wake may be the same person, just from alternative universes. That, or Thomas Zane, is Alan’s lost father. But it’s still confusing, as Zane wouldn’t exist without Wake, and Wake without Zane, so what’s going on here?

Alice Wake

Here’s my last take; the Alan Wake games have a major focus on Alice Wake, and yet, despite that, she is featured very little in both games.

In the first game, she’s kidnapped by the Dark Presence and taken to the Dark Place. She is trapped there until the end, with Alan swapping places with her, trapped in it for the next thirteen years.

We learn from the Control AWE DLC that even though she’s free of the Dark Place, she is haunted every night by what she assumes is an evil version of her ex, Alan. Alan Wake 2 follows up on this story, with her documenting everything and assuming that Alan isn’t dead but stuck in the Dark Place. She created a documentary for Alan to find in the Dark Place, tricking him into thinking she’s dead. All this was a rouse, though, to guide him through the story, and by the end, it’s implied that she is back in the Dark Place.

Yet this seems odd, given that she guides Alan through the story. This would assume that she ascended to a being, much like Mr. Door and Ahti the Janitor, though if we stay on the course of it’s not a loop, but a spiral, then it’s possible Alice is well aware of this like Wake is at the end, thus being able to guide him and other characters.

It’s also revealed in the game that after she visits the FBC (AWE DLC from Control), she gets all her memories back from when she spent time in the Dark Place. We have to remember that, like Alan, she too is an artist and most likely was forced by Mr. Scratch to do things in her time in the Dark Place. It’s possible she even created it.

What I do want to draw, though, is a parallel between both Alan’s and Alice’s stories. Let’s look at Alan’s story in the sequel. He’s trapped in the Dark Place, and he can only escape it by writing Saga into the story. We learn that what Alan has done has altered the history of things. Saga’s daughter is now dead, while she has memories of her still being alive. She has no memories of ever living in the town of Watery nor being related to the Old Gods.

This is important because it reveals that whoever is writing the story can change not only the present but also the past. In this case, Alan changed Saga’s history and the fate of certain characters.

Now, let’s look back at the first Alan Wake game:

The story is very straightforward, with Alice being taken to the Dark Place and Alan trying to save her. In this case, he knows it (unlike Saga, who followed clues), but the story setup is very similar to that of Alan’s in the sequel. Someone is trapped in the Dark Place and needs rescue. What I am suggesting here is that, while Alan believed everything that was happening was because of him, and he was just following the story he wrote, what if it was Alice behind it, writing, or in her case, drawing and painting the story that Alan would follow?

I don’t think it’s a far-fetched idea, especially when she regains all her memories of the Dark Place post-Control. She’d know more about the place than Alan, as time works differently there. Thirteen years for Alan may have been in real-time for him, but for Alice, the length of the original Alan Wake could have been far more for her. She could have lived through an entire lifetime, and her FBC visit made her remember everything.

She certainly seems to know what’s going to happen already in the story of Alan Wake 2, as she wouldn’t have the exact items that Alan and Saga would need to get the desired ending. Strangely, she contacts Saga, a character with whom she had no prior interaction, just at the right moment in the Dark Place.

I’m leaning heavily toward the idea that Alice is the writer behind the story. A lot points to her, a character with a more significant role than the game lays out at first.

Barry Wheeler

I know; I said Alice Wake was my last guess, but I lied. Barry might be Alan’s best friend, but the opportunity for money was too much to pass on, and we’re just living in his twisted money-scheming world now. He could be the twist no one saw, the tree force behind Alan Wake. Barry’s greed fuels Alan’s nightmares and won’t end until Barry has everything he wants. Just look at that smug face; there is something more than what Remedy wants us to believe. Barry only mentioned in passing in Alan Wake 2 as a tease to remind you that he’s out there still, probably enjoying his billion-dollar yacht. What’s the saying? Follow the money? That money leads right to Barry, Alan’s agent.

One more guess, and I promise this is a short one. They’re all the writers. Too many cooks got involved with the story that it’s become a mess, a spiral of what it originally was supposed to be. Alan passes the helm to Saga, allowing her to help write the story by the end of the game. It’s the only reason I didn’t include her as part of the list, as she is clearly innocent in all this.

So, who do you think is behind the typewriter? Is it as simple as being Alan Wake himself, or is there more to this story that Remedy has yet to tell us?