@bustinbustinbustins Recent Mirror Meta Reminded Me Of A Post Ive Wanted To Do For A While: Vegass Anti-mirror

@bustinbustinbustin’s recent mirror meta reminded me of a post I’ve wanted to do for a while: Vegas’s anti-mirror meta!

Because Vegas has a few significant moments in mirrors--the three big ones being naked candle devil time, “I’ll be the leader and my dad will accept me us,” and obviously that final post-credits scene with Pete and Macau--but he also has several where he’s specifically staged to stay out of reflections. Most of these take place during the safehouse arc.

Following the water-reflected drone shot that sets up Vegas’s arrival at the safehouse, the camera begins to avoid showing his reflection.

@bustinbustinbustins Recent Mirror Meta Reminded Me Of A Post Ive Wanted To Do For A While: Vegass Anti-mirror

As he walks up onto the deck and into the house, Vegas gets only an incidental half-reflection and neatly avoids appearing in either the window on the left or the door on the right, where his two henchmen’s reflections ultimately settle to frame and surround him.

The effect is one of being hemmed in--an effect compounded when Vegas enters the house; he passes behind several open windows and (less subtly) the bars made by the stairs. All of Vegas’s machinations have come to naught; he continues trying to present an image of casual authority, but he’s trapped here. And if Vegas looks in mirrors for an idealized version of himself (the leader, the monster)--the safehouse is where those fantasies begin to fall apart.

Reflections are used similarly with Gun in episode 13. Vegas spends his morning trying to build up a domestic dream, cooking a delicious meal for Pete and resolutely pretending it’s no big deal that he left him handcuffed in his bedroom prison. the fucker (affectionate)

The only reflection Vegas gets inside this house is actually the one made by the counter he’s stir-frying his househusband dream on.

The illusion and the meal are both overturned by the arrival of Gun. Vegas attempts to distance himself from his father (“You think I wanted to be your son?”)--but he fails, miserably, with the minor family ring making its mark on his cheek. And we’re left with this tableau: Vegas is framed between two reflective doors. Gun exits from the left; his reflection departs on the right.

Vegas has nowhere to escape. There is no direction he could turn to be free of the man whose ambitions he has turned into his own shackles. There is nowhere he could go that would not leave him literally following in his father’s footsteps.

He was stupid, to briefly imagine he could.

So: Vegas returns to the reflective counter, covered in the remnants of the illusion. He sweeps those remnants away.