I know everyone is mad at Stan. I am a little bit too.
But please don’t jump into saying “STAN YOU DICK SAVE YOUR BROTHER”
Because like
he has no obligation to. He has no logical reason to, honestly.
He, and the other people in the shack are safe. He has his family back, safe and doing fine. Let’s face it, Stan is selfish. As long as he has Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Wendy, he doesn’t care what happens to the rest.
And before you shout “But FORD is family!” lemme go ahead and remind you of the scene
yeah, the one where he tells Ford “because as far as I’m concerned, they’re the only family I have left.”
Literally, right then and there, he stops caring for Ford. Stops considering him to be family, his brother. He even says, an episode later, “Let him get a few bites into his brain first.” That is proof enough, Stan doesn’t care about Ford anymore.
And seriously, Stan is a bit of a coward. The only time Stan has willingly fought the supernatural, is to save his family and only his family. Ford isn’t family anymore, why would he want to go on what he probably considers a suicide mission to save him?
In Stan’s eyes, Ford has been nothing but a dick to him. Letting him get kicked out before he could explain himself, calling him after ten years only to get him to do favors for him, then after working for 30 years to get him back, he punches him, indirectly insults him, and tells him to quit the life he’s built for himself by the time summer is over.
Of course Stan is unwilling to save Ford, of course he’s unwilling to risk his life for someone who thinks it’s so worthless.
I just- PLEASE DON’T THINK STAN HAS ANY OBLIGATION AT THIS POINT TO SAVE A MAN WHO HAS DONE NOTHING BUT HURT HIM HIS WHOLE LIFE.
Not sure if anyone else did this, but I wanted a big complete version of Bill’s portrait. So I took some screenshots and reassembled them without Bill in the way.
Okay but you know what I find interesting about the finale?
Stanley’s mindscape was blank.
Completely empty.
Before, we’ve seen that Stan’s mindscape was black and white and drained of color in most places, but it was still full of objects, memories, facsimiles of himself and his family and friends as manifestations of said memories and fears.
But this time? Nothing. Just a single room, with a single door in and out, in a vast, vacant expanse. I don’t think it’s possible for someone to just compress all of their own mind and being into a single mindscape room – that would probably drive someone insane.
I think Ford erased most of his memory beforehand, so Bill wouldn’t recognize the mindscape the second he entered and be able to jump ship. They needed to trap him, to keep him from suspecting until it was too late. The only memories he left intact were those of his own person, and the kids, which Stanford erased once Bill was inside his mind and vulnerable.
…I can’t even imagine how devastating that must have been for Ford. No wonder he was so upset when it came down to the wire, and he had to wipe out that last little piece of his brother. He had already been forced to remove his own brother’s life from his mind, multiple times, piece by piece – given how the memory gun works, it can’t just cover all memories at once; it’s selective.
And before people get up in arms, no. I don’t blame Ford. It was Stan’s plan. The only one who could come up with a scheme so harebrained it would work had to be Stanley. Stanley wanted this.
Ford watched his own twin fade away right in front of him.
Interesting theory, but I doubt it.
Bill didn’t really think it was strange, he seemed to think it was just a sign of a well organized mind.
I think it might just have been that Ford warned Stan that he needed to keep his mind blank and focused, so Bill didn’t immediately recognize it, until Bill was trapped.
Which implies that mindscapes are a lot easier to manipulate than we had reason to suspect…
May's Gravity Falls Blog 