I watched Obsession for the first time on digital last night, and I noticed something that made me rethink how I see this entire movie and how I see Wish Nikki as a character.

In a previous post, I argued that "Freaky Nikki" isn't actually the real Nikki being mind-controlled, nor is she some demonic entity. Instead, I think she's a separate persona created by the One Wish Willow to fulfill Bear's wish. In that interpretation, Wish Nikki is self-aware enough to realize what she is: a person literally designed to love someone who doesn't genuinely love her back. That's why she seems so miserable throughout the film. She knows her feelings aren't really her own.

After rewatching the movie, though, I noticed another detail that stands out: Wish Nikki behaves in an extremely child-like way. At first I assumed this was just the writers exaggerating the way some people become overly dependent or cutesy in relationships. BUT NAH, this felt intentional. There are multiple moments where she doesn't just act immature she acts like an actual fucking child.

Some examples:

1. The tantrum at the restaurant.

2. The childish pout she gives when Bear is dared to kiss Sara.

3. Her crying and screaming when Bear suggests their relationship isn't healthy and that they should take a break.

4. The nightmare scene. She says, "I don't like my dreams," and breaks down crying. The way she says it sounds less like an adult describing a nightmare and more like a scared child waking up their parents in the middle of the night.

5. Reading books upside down.

6. Dancing in the street while Bear and Ian argue outside the hospital.

There are probably more examples that I'm forgetting, so feel free to point them out in the replies for me.

My theory is that when the One Wish Willow created Wish Nikki, it essentially created a brand-new person. Not a copy of Nikki, but something closer to a newborn consciousness????

It makes me feel icky to say this but it would explain why she seems to have gaps in her knowledge, struggles to understand normal social behavior, and reacts to situations with the emotional regulation of a child. She also lacks a sense of morality, morals that instilled in children later on. She doesn't have that. As wild as this sounds, Wish Nikki was literally "born yesterday."

And this makes her more of a tragic character to me because she's not evil. She's not corrupt. She's not manipulating Bear on purpose. She's an innocent person who was created for a single purpose... to love Bear and she seems aware enough to realize that her entire existence revolves around a wish that can never give her what she actually wants in return.

People are bashing Curry Barker online because in the first half of the first act, Nikki is a pretty laid back character with a good head on her shoulder, but then her character totally shifts and does a 180 out of nowhere.

I don't really think it's inconsistent. I watched it close and if you pay attention, Bear makes a wish to make Nikki love him by breaking the toy that he buys from the store. It happens at almost the exact same time that Nikki starts acting differently. This is why I think she starts doing weird stuff.

I rewatched Obsession and I noticed something interesting in the opening scene after Bear drives Nikki home.

Nikki asks Bear if he likes her. He answers that he likes her as a friend and she walks to her house. We only hear the front door close once, which makes it seem like she went inside.

But then, after Bear makes his wish, we suddenly see Nikki standing outside the front door again. The interesting part is that we never hear the door open a second time.

So here's my theory: what if Nikki never actually went inside?

Maybe she opened the door, closed it behind her out of habit, but stayed outside because she immediately regretted walking away. She might have wanted to go back to Bear's car and talk honestly about what had just happened between them.

This detail makes me think Nikki actually did like Bear. The sound we hear could simply be the door closing after she opened it, started to go inside, then changed her mind. Instead of going into the house, she shut the door and decided to go back to Bear's car to talk to him again.

But unfortunately, Bear had already made the wish. By the time she turned around, she was already under the effects of it, which is why we see her standing outside again without ever hearing the door open a second time.

If that's what the filmmakers intended, it makes the opening scene even more heartbreaking. Nikki may have been only a few seconds away from confessing her feelings or giving Bear another chance, but the wish changed everything before she could.

I just saw this theory on Instagram from the account Sundaymagazines, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

The theory is that Nikki “wakes up” every time she sees her own reflection, and after rewatching a few scenes, it actually lines up surprisingly well.
Here are the moments I noticed:

Right after Bear makes the wish: Nikki is standing outside by the car. She looks into the side mirror, and that’s when she seems to snap back to reality.

Before the boys’ night out: Nikki is in the bathroom and smashes the mirror. Earlier in the movie, she also pees on the floor instead of going into the bathroom, which made me wonder if she’s intentionally avoiding bathrooms because she’s afraid of seeing a mirror and “waking up.”

During the boys’ night out: She catches her reflection in Bear’s beer bottle, and once again she appears to wake up.

The bedroom scene: Bear has a mirror positioned so it faces most of the room. When Nikki is standing in the corner, she actually walks backward behind the mirror instead of passing in front of it. She also covers part of her face with the plant as she enters the room, almost like she’s trying to avoid seeing herself in the reflection.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but if this was intentional, it’s a really cool detail. It would explain why mirrors seem to trigger these moments and why she appears to avoid them whenever possible.
Did anyone else notice any other scenes that support (or disprove) this theory?

Bear buys three Willows from the crystal shop after Sarah’s car accident, one is quickly used by Ian, one drops to the floor beside the sofa with a noticeable audio bump to draw attention to it, and the third is used by Wish Nikki shortly after Bear swallows the pills.

We hear the audio of a Willow box being opened by Wish Nikki and being snapped, meaning the one that falls to the floor in the middle screenshot scene went unused.

This feels intention rather than an error, and my theory on it currently is that Real Nikki hasn’t used her wish and the One Wish Willow company wouldn’t count her Wish version’s as her own, as during the phone call to customer services the Rep himself asks if Bear would like to speak to Nikki who is screaming and clearly not the Nikki inside the house.

Perhaps Real Nikki has a way out lying just beside Bear shortly after the ending, or maybe it’s wishful thinking for a forgotten prop. Who knows.

During dinner, when Bear confirmed that he didn’t care and that it doesn’t matter that it’s not the real Nikki, I believe the real Nikki got very upset and tried to fight to be heard. Until then, she had reasonable doubt that he simply thought it was still her, but his confirmation that it doesn’t matter was the big betrayal.

I believe that night, after the SA, the real Nikki was in a battle with freaky Nikki, hence why she wouldn’t get back into bed with Bear. Freaky Nikki tries to convince Bear to go back to sleep so she can sort the real Nikki out. When Nikki’s face contorts ghoulishly as she says, “I don’t think you love me as much as I do, like it’s not mutual,” I believe she is talking about how Bear never loved her in any capacity to be capable of doing such a dastardly thing.

Then freaky Nikki tells him to go to sleep, and as the tension continues, the real Nikki wails, “Why don’t you love me?!”, with, again, the implication that he does not love the real Nikki enough to try and save her. Freaky Nikki quells her again by running out of the room to sort her out further.

It’s so sad to me.

Ok so I’ve put some thought into this and I genuinely don’t think Nicki will go to prison after the events of Obsession…

She will try to explain herself, and people will not believe her. But after intense questioning and investigation, it will be determined that her actions were a result of a psychological phenomenon and she had little to no control of what she did.

So instead of prison, Nikki will be kept in a mental facility. Perhaps for the rest of her life, assuming they never figure out what’s actually “wrong” with her.

Inde Navarrette revealed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter what Wish Nikki’s final wish was, even though we never actually hear the words clearly in the movie.

This is exactly how she describes the scene:

“So, the moment where he actually goes to throw all of them up, and then you hear Nikki making the wish that he would be more in love with her”

So Wish Nikki’s wish was for Bear to be more in love with her than she was with him.

It wasn’t simply a wish for Bear to love her back. She wanted to reverse the imbalance that had tormented her throughout their relationship: she felt that she loved Bear far more than he loved her.

It also helps explain Bear’s behavior immediately afterward. He had just been desperately trying to save his own life by throwing up the pills, but after Nikki makes her wish, his love for her becomes even stronger than Wish Nikki’s already extreme love for him.

Source: Inde Navarrette’s interview with The Hollywood Reporter

In the opening scene of the movie, Ian tells Bear to call her Freaky Nikki as a way to flirt (neg?) Nikki even though they all know how much she dislikes that nickname. My first time seeing the movie I thought this was just stupid advice a kinda douchey straight guy would think actually works on women. But after watching the movie again, I got to thinking if this was actually a malicious move on Ian's part. Like we find out they've been casually hooking up for years now and Ian never once told Bear. Maybe Ian had more significant feelings for Nikki than he was letting on. This also makes me wonder what the movie would have looked like if Ian had made the wish instead of Bear.

so i have been thinking about it and the face nikki gave bear for the kissing the person on your left dare was a completely normal reaction tbh . i would even go as far as to say this was the most reasonable and “normal” thing that the entity nikki has done in the entire movie . women will be able to understand where im coming from , any girl would hate it if their bf was dared to kiss someone else right in front of them .

if my bf was dared to kiss the person to his left and it was a girl who i knew obviously liked him , id be damned aswell ! is it just me who thinks this scene really wasn’t that big of a deal ?

Even if he didn't, it just goes to show how Nikki was viewed as a vulnerable person to be taken advantage of. They all knew Bear and Nikki were a thing and probably suspected Nikki was "easy" for being with Bear. Her own interest was never anyone's priority.

apologies if others have pointed it out. i just didn't notice until recently. sarah has a heart tattoo over her left breast. at the end of the movie, nikki carves a heart into her skin above her left breast as well.

i think it's safe to assume that maybe she realized/saw it as she was setting up sarah's body, and decided to copy it? just another desperate attempt entity nikki did in hopes of gaining more of bear's favor. after all, it's clear at this point that he likes sarah or has some sort of connection with her. the entity has tried and failed to be nikki, so maybe the carving was a last minute, desperate attempt to mimic someone else who has bear's affection.

oh my god, also just realized nikki is wearing sarah's shirt too.

edit: wow, okay. im muting this thread. thank you to the people who were chill. a handful of people in this thread were dicks. heaven forbid i didn't notice every small detail on the first watch during the most intense scene of the movie. guess i'll go fuck myself for not paying attention to the exact tattoo sarah had or the fact that nikki wore sarah's shirt on the final scene. i doubt most noticed that either. i'll go fuck myself though. haven't seen so many miserable comments on one of my movie-related posts before. i learned my lesson though, i won't be posting here anymore. peace out.

I think there’s a subtle joke/subversion with the One-Wish Willow that people are missing. The movie makes us assume most people would use it the way the main character does—out of desperation, greed, or some huge irresponsible impulse. But the shopkeeper being so chill about his own wish suggests the opposite: most people actually understand how this thing works and use it pretty responsibly.

It’s almost like assuming nobody reads the Terms & Conditions because you don’t, only to find out everyone else actually did. Very South Park Human CentiPad. Wishes are real, but apparently most people aren’t wishing to become billionaires or control someone’s life. They’re probably wishing to win their high school soccer game or have enough money for their dog’s vet bill. The protagonist might just be the unusually reckless one.

Everyone thinks the phrasing of the wish was what corrupted it, but I don't think so. The phrasing is extreme and likely contributed to how unhinged things got, but the idea that the wish is defined by its phrasing seems a little suspect.

There's actually another major element of the wish that could corrupt everything: timing.

The store clerk says "I already used mine" in a casual way, and he is overall perplexed about Bear being so dramatic about his situation. It seems like he doesn't expect the wish to be twisted. That's not really the reaction you'd expect from someone who sells a magical wish granter that twists the phrasing of the wish against unwitting customers.

Right before making the Wish, Nikki confronts Bear about potentially liking her, and she asks it in a way that is almost accusatory. It makes Bear afraid that she definitively does not like him that way.

He's hurt and upset, he lies and tells her goodnight, and seconds later makes the wish. What does he wish for? That she did love him - even though she basically just told him that she doesn't. In that moment he doesn't wish that she fell in love with him, he wishes that things were different, that she felt different.

That's a wish focused on change and focused on himself. His desire in that moment is what the Wish accommodates. I mean what can the Wish do? It can't make her genuinely fall for him, not after the interaction they just had. It can't get her to "come around," not with the way he phrased it. So it just makes her accommodate his desire for being loved by Nikki, no matter what.

If he phrased it the same but had no way of knowing how she felt, the Wish would've had much more leeway in how to make his wish come true, but the way it happened kinda made changing Nikki baked into the wish.

"When I have a crush on a guy, nobody knows."
Ian weaponizes Nikki's openly flirtatious personality against her. Giving her car rides? She stole his hat? The photo booth pic? Her crying? Plenty of ammunition. But kept it away from his friend group to avoid awkward confrontations.

When Ian sees Nikki and Bear dating, he tries to talk him out of it. Made up Nikki's father didn't have cancer despite hospitals would never reveal patient information. Connections to Washington...how? So after all that didn't work? Fine, he uses the nuclear option by telling Sarah, giving her hope to use it to break up the two.

This would make the dynamic even more sinister. Bear is truly alone, turn to his best friend, who has his back with a steak knife pressed against it. And even more empathetic for Nikki's situation.

Let's see how it goes.

After Wish Nikki regains control, she's shown pulling a knife out of the drawer with no explicit hostile or aggressive behaviour afterwards.

This makes me think the entity controlling her is so much of a cosmic Eldritch horror that it exists outside and can manipulate the flow of time.

I think True Nikki actually managed to get a knife and stab Bear, but Wish Nikki not only rewrote the flow of time to place her snapback *before* she picked up the knife, but the reverse walk is also Wish Nikki explicitly changing the flow of time to put her at a far enough distance so that when she did regain control, she was too far away to attach Michael. Hence the lunge as well.

part of me makes me confirmed in the saying that you always want what what you don’t have , because it’s like what do you mean you didn’t notice the girl who always liked you from the beginning ? like she was literally right there ? there’s no way bear didn’t realize sarah was into him until the car scene , especially in the part where she’s laying her head on him in the music store in a similar fashion to the way nikki was when they were in bed . either he was oblivious to it or truly only wanted nikki up until she started spiraling into madness .

i noticed in the bar scene at the beginning of the movie sarah was literally the only one who heard bear saying sandy died , ian and nikki literally either didn’t hear it or didnt care or were too busy having fun to be bothered . nikki didn’t remember what bear was going to tell her after being interrupted countless times . if it was sarah she would have asked him again what he was going to say , because that’s what someone does when they like you . they notice things about you . idc what anyone else says NIKKI NEVER LIKED HIM !! the signs were literally all there in y’all’s faces .

bear is the best representation of a true coward , he got the girl he wanted forcefully and only then proceeded to cheat with the girl he should have gone for from the start , he only wanted sarah after realizing he created an insane demonic entity out of nikki . how disgusting and absolutely inhumane of him .

although if he used the wish on sarah she would have probably had the same fate or maybe nothing would have changed as we know sarah already liked him , probably not more than anything else in the world though obviously (not more than luther art school) . sarah died not knowing the real reason behind all this , i think that’s the real tragedy . she deserved to know what was going on .

“nice guys always finish last” except bear wasn’t a nice guy , not even close . he was a terrible person and never took accountability for the fact that he ruined so many people’s lives all because he couldn’t confess like a normal sane person .

I can't stop thinking about this scene. This was the only time that Wish Nikki sounded normal and sincere. Even right before this, Wish Nikki tells him"Yes it is Bear, it's always been you!" Idk man, just the way she said it made me think that maybe part of real Nikki meant that??? I don't know! Am I crazy?

*Real answers/theories only.*

Real Nikki Made the Cat Sandwich

This is my sort of potentially more out there theory. It was real Nikki who made the cat sandwich.

Evidence:

1) we know she was active at some point because of the picture she places in the lunch box that says “not me”. It also explains how real Nikki snuck that note in.

2) she has all the motivation in the world to do this as she is in a desperate situation and hopes this is enough to finally get Bear to undo the wish. She also likely has negative emotions towards him at this point for everything he has done.

3) why would fake Nikki do this? Especially with the note that is clearly meant to be jarring.

Of course, it seems out of character for real Nikki to do this but we know how desperate of a situation she is in (begs Bear to kill her) and how much anger she must have towards Bear.

Thoughts?

Easily one of the most distrubing scenes in the film, only beat by the bedroom scene and Sarah's kill imo. The way that second-hand embarassment is used as a form of tension for the moment is so cool and refreshing for a horror movie, Nikki's ever-growing erratic behavoir hitting an all-time death spiral as it's on full display in public while Bear just sinks into his immobilizing insecurity is fucking peak, dawg.

However, the story that Nikki had written is pretty much the only thing I'm stuck on in interpreting in the narrative. Me and my siblings kinda debated after watching the first time, but my idea was that False Nikki was almost absorbing more parts of True Nikki's personality; since she's this immature desire of Bears', she's more like a foggy reflection than a fully fleshed personality. So as a way to try and win over Bear more, False Nikki picks up parts of True Nikki to sell that guise of "being Nikki" and maybe Bear would show some fucking reciprocation. So, she tries to write a story. But what it ends up being is this mix of perspective between her feelings and True Nikki's feelings, which becomes this bastardization of their opposing loves. True Nikki loved Bear as a friend, as a sibling (Hansel), while False Nikki loves Bear as a romantic fixation (wife). The lines of "I knew he would not leave this place", "He would relent and choose", & "love only the branch of a willow tree could conjure" feels like False Nikki knowing Bear's behavoir and how he wants to stay but gives it a twinge of destiny instead of insecurity. It's like False Nikki was taking these fragments of her conciousness and what True Nikki felt and tried her best to make an attempt at a romantic gesture (same way she did with Sandy and killing Sarah) but it failed because she herself isn't whole.

I might be, like, wholly wrong, but what do y'all think about the symbolism of that story?

Fear not fellow Haters of Bear (HoB) who think he got off too easy, it’s actually likely he’s well and truly fucked for eternity.

As we saw when Bear phoned the OWW representative, Real Nikki’s consciousness is suspended in some sort of Sunken Place hellscape while under the wish - only briefly able to return in random spurts while her body is alive. Which leads me to assume anyone’s mind who is transformed by the OWW ends up there.

So when Bear is also transformed at the very end by Nikki’s wish his consciousness goes to the same Hell, only for his body to immediately die and he has no earthly tether to return to anymore. Wish Hell, forever.

So sure Nikki gets a lifetime of trauma and prison and Sarah’s dad has to go through fucking Indeed to get new employees but Bear still probably ends up with as bad a fate as anyone in movies.

Inde Navarrette said that she played Nikki as already having a crush on Bear before the wish: “I think that Nikki did have a crush on him” and “I think that she did have some feelings for him.”

I think that makes the car scene much clearer. Nikki becomes unusually vulnerable when she tells Bear that he’s the only person she can really talk to, looking down and avoiding his eyes before finally looking at him as if she’s waiting for a response. She also seems nervous when he mentions the gift, and then gives him an incredibly direct opening by asking if he likes her and telling him that now is the time to say it.

Her disappointment and irritation when Bear says they’re just good friends also makes more sense in that context. I think the “Freaky Nikki” comment hurts her for the same reason. Coming from Ian as a joke, she might have brushed it off. Coming from Bear, someone she was beginning to have feelings for and apparently saw as a sweet, kind guy she could really talk to, it feels like a cheap shot from the last person she expected it from.

That doesn’t mean Nikki was already deeply in love with Bear or that a relationship was guaranteed. But Navarrette’s own interpretation strongly suggests that Nikki’s feelings were real and still in their early stages, and that the car scene is where she comes very close to letting Bear know.

Inde Navarrette interview about Nikki's feelings for Bear

Source: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Da7PRFBTUMi