Ugh It Makes Everything Approximately 10000000% More Tragic - Tumblr Posts

YES see this is such a GOOD detail, because it's another one of those details that utterly ruins Oliver's whole, "Yes I totally planned all of this just for the house!" retcon he tries to sell to Elspeth's comatose body.

Imo, Oliver definitely poisoned the bottle (and I'm like 99.9999% certain he got that coke from Farleigh, possibly even while Farleigh was doing his own little victory monologue at Oliver), but then he also drank from it before he even got to Felix. He was poisoned and expecting to die of a deliberate overdose THE WHOLE TIME during his desperate confession to Felix in the maze!

And then Felix rejects him, pretty brutally, by saying that Oliver frightens him, and Oliver shoves the bottle into Felix's hands while he darts off to make himself throw up.

And we're supposed to believe that Oliver, in the midst of extreme emotional distress + making himself throw up, had kept enough situational awareness to hear Felix drinking from the bottle and know Felix had drunk enough to die from it???

Because... Oliver also takes the bottle back from Felix pretty much immediately, before he leaves the maze himself.

Plus, there's the part towards the middle of the film, when Felix tells Oliver that he can leave Saltburn whenever he wants, if he gets sick of the Cattons, and we get one of the few rare interjections from older!Oliver implying that older!Oliver felt lied to there.

So even worse than Oliver just originally intending to die in front of Felix, or maybe even for them to die together, consider: what if Oliver making himself puke was actually Oliver deciding that he WAS sick of Felix, that he'd realized that Felix would never and maybe could never give him what he'd wanted, and his sad little wanderings around the dregs of his party the rest of the night was actually him saying goodbye to Saltburn because he'd decided that he actually did need to leave for his own sake.

Except Felix drank from his poisoned bottle, and Felix died that night while Oliver lived, and how could Oliver ever truly leave Saltburn when Felix was buried there after dying on Oliver's birthday???

Didn't matter anymore if he'd decided that he WAS sick of Felix, that he WAS going to leave, because Felix's body was never leaving Saltburn again and it was all Oliver's fault and so Oliver couldn't leave anymore either.

SALTBURN NATION WE HAVE A NATIONAL EMERGENCY i just. im rewatching again and got to the maze scene and it hit me. oliver goes to make himself sick BEFORE he even sees if felix had drunk from the bottle himself. which he did not actually witness. WHICH MEANS one of two things

either A) he didnt poison the bottle at all hes fully lying abt that in his monologue to cope with felix dying by random chance or B) he fully poisoned himself first, intending to die in front of felix, only to change his mind once he was rejected

the first one obvs isnt a novel interpretation BUT. the second one. oh god the second one. the implications, man. was he hoping felix would revive him???? was he hoping felix would drink it and theyd both go down together???? did he just want felixs fingers down his throat by any means possible

im actually losing my mind