Before season 1 episode 6: How Eli knew Benjamin
The further that we get into Before season 1 over on Apple TV+, the more one central thing is clear: Memory is a tricky thing. For Billy Crystal’s character of Eli, that especially continues to manifest itself in a wide array of forms.
After all, for much of the season we dealt with a guy wondering about a mysterious “BW,” and then also the image of a farmhouse. Yet, it turns out that these are things he already knew about. He was there when Benjamin was brought in to the hospital back when he was a resident, and we saw the whole scene played out with a de-aged version of Crystal front and center. We even heard Benjamin speak Dutch!
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So what is the big takeaway from all of this? The easiest theory to make here is that Eli is projecting a lot of what happened insofar as past trauma onto Noah, mostly because he had bottled it up until the trigger point arrived via Lynn’s death. He may have felt complicated feelings meeting her in the way that he did, and there also may have been something about his behavior that stuck with him. There could be an inherent connection with Noah that reminds him of Benjamin; or, there is something that his subconscious may be trying to tell him!
If there is one thing that we would 100% be assured of at the moment here, it is simply this: You can’t trust what Eli is seeing with Noah. Just like that worm was not there, the same could be said for the mark on Noah’s chest — or, some of the words he even said back at the start of the series.
Related – Be sure to get some more thoughts on Before, including more of what could be coming
What did you think about the overall events of Before season 1 episode 6?
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This article was written by Jessica BunBun.