#I think her name was V Vitti?

[lunacornfan2k25]

Zor: “I expect you to die”

Juniper: “I don’t expect you to understand. I expect you t— well, frankly I expect you to find a way out. But you’ll be too late!”

Phantom, in code: I expect you to live

[kl-writes]

IEYTD Phantom/Zor/V. Vitti Theory

Spoilers abound for IEYTD 3.

Who is the Phantom and why do they use Zor's code?

We know the following about the Phantom:

They used to be associated with the agency, but quit before the agency could "get them killed" (implying that they dislike the agency or its methods)

They have either the skills or access to go to every mission location, and the Handler seems to think it's the former

They use the same cipher as Zor

They want Phoenix to live (final cipher is "I expect you to live")

We know the following about Zor:

They keep trying to take over the world, and don't care about casualties

They seem to want Phoenix to die, but often leave things open for Phoenix to escape (commented on by Juniper who wanted to just shoot Phoenix)

They use the same cipher as Phantom

They imply that they know something about the agency that Phoenix doesn't. This implies either a history with the agency predating their attempts to take over the world, or some sort of double-agent in the agency feeding them information

Although left uncertain, Zor is most likely a woman

They want to make Spanish class mandatory

Every single Zor operative has an American background. This could just be because Schell Games is an american company, but even the Fabricator and Solaris explicitly have dual-citizenship (this is according to https://iexpectyoutodie.schellgames.com/page-locked/login?ref=https%3A//iexpectyoutodie.schellgames.com/shawnsdesk -

password: that`sTHEpASscOdEx

Handler notes at one point that Zor is behind just about every nasty plot the agency has foiled (he says "we", so this could just refer to Phoenix's missions)

Their handedness is uncertain. The portrait of the hand holding the globe in "Winter Break" (first game) is left handed. The hand holding the snow globe is also a left hand in "Cold Shoulder" (third game). However, the data sphere override hand is a right hand, and in "Seat of Power," there are buttons on both armrests, but the emergency evac buttons are on the right.

We know the following about V. Vitti:

She used to be a field agent at the agency

Her photo is in Dr. Prism's office. She seems to not quite be part of the group, though she doesn't seem unhappy. This photo also shows that she knows the Handler, Director Morales, and Dr. Prism

She is most likely right-handed (she holds a wine glass in her right hand in the photo)

Her portrait is in Zor's office. This is just of her face, and she's smiling.

I don't think the Phantom could have picked up Zor's cipher just from looking at the items in the fourth mission. Although you can decode the Phantom's message partially using the cipher and brute-force it from there, the Phantom uses symbols not seen in the fourth mission. Because of this, I think the Phantom already knows the full cipher. Therefore, the Phantom either is Zor, is part of Zoraxis, or is otherwise affiliated with Zor.

I don't think Zor is the Phantom because Zor pretty clearly wants you dead. It's true that they leave different ways out for you to escape, so maybe they're only 99% on board with you dying (prefers you to suffer), but they do not "expect you to live" like the Phantom does. Additionally, even if they had some sort of change of heart post-game, the safe and letter were set up before Phoenix arrived at Babadag (and before anyone discovered that Phoenix had cheated death again).

I don't think any of the Zoraxis folks we know could be the Phantom either, including Juniper. All of them want you dead. Maybe Ollie could be the Phantom, but if that's the case, then Ollie is almost certainly a made up name. He could even be masking his voice since we never actually see him.

I know Juniper=Phantom is a popular theory, but without the mimic mask I do not think Juniper has the skills (and no longer has the access) to get to every mission location. First of all, it would be very difficult for him to get to Babadag before Phoenix and set up the safe with custom keys (not to mention, he'd have to both anticipate which hideout Phoenix was going to and discover the location of that secret hideout). Additionally, although I could see Juniper teaming up with the agency to get revenge on Zor or the Fabricator, I don't see why he would "Expect you to live." Granted, he did expect us to escape the death trap, but the message from the Phantom is more of a plea for us to leave the agency to save ourselves. If Juniper wants allies to take down Zor, this is counterintuitive to his goals. Finally, Juniper did not have any history whatsoever with the agency: if this were the case, the Handler would know about it.

Additionally, the Handler specifically refers to the Phantom's skills being why they could show up at every location, rather than any access they might have due to Zoraxis affiliation. However, the Handler's been wrong about whether or not people are part of Zoraxis in the past (such as with Juniper).

So, my thoughts are that the Phantom is someone who is acquainted with both Zoraxis and the Agency.

This is a bit of a gut feeling, but I don't think Zor is V. Vitti. This is based on the portrait in Zor's office: for one, I don't think Zor would keep a portrait of themself laying around for agents to find. Second, it doesn't really seem like an ego-driven portrait. If you look at self-portraits of generals, dictators, and so on, they all try to exude power or status. That's not the feel I get from that portrait. This portrait seems warmer, more like a family member of romantic interest. Additionally, people don't put up pictures of people they don't respect. Also, I get the feeling that the Handler would have commented on the picture if they didn't expect to see V. Vitti's picture in Zor's office.

A bit of a silly one, I don't see why V. Vitti would want Spanish class to be mandatory, since Vitti is an italian name. Based on what we know about Zor, he's either from the United States or from Spain. Given the US's horrible track record with latino immigrants, I could see a world where an american Zor wants to turn the tables and make Spanish mandatory. I could also see a world where a spanish Zor wants to reassert Spain's dominance over the world, because ego. I don't see a world where an italian or italian-american Zor wants to make Spanish mandatory. (Granted, the whole spanish class/spain thing could be an elaborate ruse by Zor to obscure their identity.)

So, via process of elimination, I think V. Vitti is the Phantom. I believe that she worked for the agency for some time, possibly even fighting against Zor. For some reason, V. Vitti and Zor became friendly with one another. Either Zor divulged the dark secrets they knew about the agency to V. Vitti, or V. Vitti discovered some dark secrets and shared them with Zor. They became friendly or romantic with one another (or perhaps discovered that they were related- brother's cousin's mother's ex-roommate, etc.). It's possible that Zor's code is what they used to communicate.

They do not have the same goals, since the Phantom is not currently working with Zoraxis. In fact, I'd bet that V. Vitti is presumed dead by both Zor and the Agency (with this possibly occurring after the agency discovered said relationship- hence why the portrait of V. Vitti in the briefing room is thrown in the plant and not on the wall).

Of course, this is still just a theory hanging on a gut feeling about a portrait in the first game. It's entirely possible that we do not yet have enough information to determine who the Phantom, Zor, and V. Vitti really are. And maybe Juniper did have some dark history with the agency that has yet to be discovered (Was he a triple agent, perhaps?) Or maybe Zor and the Phantom are the same person, and Zor's simply changed their mind on whether or not he wants Phoenix to die (and he's decided that it might be easier to manipulate them into quitting).

[eclisseacontextforfilm]

you only care about who lose. Typical of intellectuals, selfish but so full of pity! eclisse inspirations, vol. V Michelangelo Antonioni’s Trilogy of incommunicability part. 2 - La notte, 1961 “one question I am often asked is why the women in my films are more lucid than the men. I was raised among women: my mother, my aunt, and lots of cousins. Then I got married, and my wife had five sisters. I have always lived among women; I know them very well... Speaking for myself, I find that the feminine sensibility is a far more precise filter than any other to express what I have to say. In the realm of emotions, man is nearly always unable to feel reality as it exists. Having a tendency to dominate woman, he is tempted to hide some of her aspects from himself and see her as he wants her to be. There is nothing absolute in this area, but it seems to me that is at the heart of it  Michelangelo Antonioni In reviewing the critical reception of La notte (1961), it strikes me that many observers seem to almost completely miss the fact that the film is, in part, a feminist critique of capitalist society, which centres around women, consumption, and the failure of our ecosystem, and not just the director’s trademark alienation and ennui.Conventional plot summaries of the film routinely insist that La notte centres around a male author, Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni), his uncertain career, and his failing relationship with his wife, Lidia (Jeanne Moreau), as well as his flirtations with beautiful socialite Valentina Gherardini (Monica Vitti) I would argue, rather, that women are both the centre of the film and the mirrors upon which Antonioni reflects his dark perceptions and stark conclusions about the human condition. At a launch party for his latest novel, those who celebrate Giovanni’s newest book spend precious little time actually reading, opting instead to party all night, while simultaneously remaining oblivious to their own mortality. As in most of his films, Antonioni’s wealthy protagonists in La notte live in a hell of their own making. So thoroughly alienated are they from one another (and from the environment) that they experience the rain from the sky (in the pool sequence) as a sublime rapture from above, giggling like schoolchildren, briefly lifted out of their stupor for a moment’s play with the actual elements. The tragedy of Antonioni’s characters is not simply a matter of bored bourgeois ennui; these people are disconnected from the feminine, from the earth, and from life itself. Perhaps no critic got it more wrong than Pauline Kael in her infamous essay The Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties: La Notte, Last Year at Marienbad, La Dolce Vita, in which Kael attacked the film, demanding less ambiguity: La notte is supposed to be a study in the failure of communication, but what new perceptions of this problem do we get by watching people on the screen who can’t communicate if we are never given any insight into what they could have to say if they could talk to each other? On the contrary, Antonioni gives us nothing but insight into the various relationships, and thus I find her dismissal baffling. More recently, critic Christopher Sharrett takes a far more perceptive feminist eco-critical approach to key Antonioni films such as Il deserto rosso (Red Desert, 1964) and L’eclisse (1961), noting of L’eclisse that “the failure of people to connect is rooted less in vague existential dread than in concrete social realities”. For me, it is those specific social realities that are most vividly explored and exposed in La notte. Antonioni’s key, early films are best understood from the point of view of a feminist director – keeping in mind Antonioni’s own philosophy, as noted above, “the feminine sensibility is a far more precise filter than any other to express what I have to say.” Sharrett’s perceptive comments on Red Desert also apply to La notte. He notes that Red Desert is: “explicit in its insistence that the sensitive individual (who must be, in the director’s view, axiomatically female, with little possibility for the male partaking of authentically human sensibility) cannot enjoy happiness in this end-product of patriarchal capitalist rule. A pervasive theme in Antonioni’s work is the concept ‘Eros is sick,’ meaning that the erotic, the drive for life, is sickened and doomed by the death drive in a society operating under the assumptions of capitalism and repression” Filmed on location in Milan, the opening credits shot is a stunner. The camera glides in a long track down the exterior of a glass-facade building, suggesting a descent into hell. Images of nature are fleeting in La notte – a few scrub trees in a desolate urban environment; the sky violated by amateur rocketry competitions; unfinished buildings everywhere – depicting Milan as an unnatural colonization of the feminine earth. Humans in La Notte shuffle along resembling zombie-like “sleepwalkers.” Specific allusions to sleepwalking abound, the most direct being a reference to Hermann Broch’s classic 1932 novel, which Giovanni picks up at the party with an air of surprise, wondering aloud, “Who is reading The sleepwalkers?” Broch’s own obsession with the death of values and the decay of humanity mirrors La notte’s central preoccupation with mortality as it relates to the value of love and art (as Eros). Mortality is omnipresent in the opening sequence in a hospital room, where Giovanni and Lidia visit their dying friend, an author named Tommaso (Bernhard Wicki). Tommaso wonders aloud if any of his life’s work is of value, and ironically Giovanni himself is battling the same sorts of questions, the central post-war preoccupations of modernism; self-doubt, alienation, and existentialism. Giovanni’s self absorption precludes him from a loving relationship with his wife, Lidia, who patiently waits for him to grow up during the entire length of the film. Antonioni crafts our perspective so that we see Giovanni primarily through Lidia’s point of view. Though he is unfaithful, selfish, and childish, Lidia still loves Giovanni, but she is keenly aware that their marriage is barely alive. Lidia observes Giovanni trying to woo the stunning young Vitti, but instead of protesting, she seems to almost push her husband into Valentina’s arms through her powerful gaze. Though Moreau is said to have disliked the role of Lidia, it is one of her finest performances and most of her power is established through her active gaze. In a strong and memorable sequence, Lidia wanders the streets looking at life going on around her, watching the activities of workmen and women of all types. Lidia seems keenly aware that life is going on around her, but in many ways without her, as she feels the pain of her own mortality and her unraveling marriage. Antonioni clearly empathizes with Lidia strongly. A particularly acute feminist moment comes when Lidia witnesses some young men fighting near a construction site seemingly for no reason at all. The fight summarizes patriarchy in a nutshell; macho, pointless, violent and dangerous. There is a brief moment when we think that perhaps Lidia will be hurt or even raped by the men, but she shoos them away and calls Giovanni to pick her up. The couple wanders through the nearby railway tracks where they first met and fell in love, even as the environment has taken over, and numerous wild plants have sprung up since they last visited, many years ago. Eros is still possible, even between these two. Thanatos has not won yet. La notte makes it clear that women’s artistic talents are wasted in a society that values them only for their beauty. As if to demonstrate this, in one telling sequence, Valentina uses a tape recorder to tell a story to Giovanni. She is a far better storyteller than the author, but after she finishes her narrative, Valentina erases the tape rather than playing it back. We hear a whiny, high-pitched squeak as the recorder rewinds the tape, thus destroying her story – and making us acutely aware of the myriad untold stories of all women. Whether or not Lidia and Giovanni’s marriage is saved at the end of La notte seems insignificant in light of the larger issues raised by the film. Antonioni offers us far bigger issues to contemplate. What have humans made of the earth? How do we love one another? What is the value of women, art and love in a world defined by men of commerce? Can we wake from our sleepwalking? These are but a few of the questions raised by La notte, a masterwork that only gets better with time, provoking a wakeful regenerative  response to 21st century consumption, devaluation of Eros, and our reckless destruction of the natural world. [by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, February 2015]