The True Death of Thomas Thorne - Ghosts UK
Thomas Thorne, beloved dead poet in the show Ghosts, is shown to have died in the episode The Thomas Thorn Affair after being manipulated by his cousin into getting shot in the back during a duel. Unless he wasn’t shot in the back, and wasn’t shot by his opponent. How can that be, you may ask, didn’t we see him die in the episode? Well, the episode itself was a Rashomon story, with the story being told from the memories of those there to witness it. When Mary tells her story, we see all the characters floating about, not because that’s what really happened, but because that is either how she remembered it, or how she was telling it to the present day characters. Throughout the episode, we see what happened through unreliable narrators, so who is to say that the final version we saw was the most accurate version of events? So, what do I mean when I suggest that Thomas Thorne was not shot in the back by his opponent? In this essay I will theorize that the poet Thomas Thorne from the show Ghosts was in fact killed by none other… than himself, proven with a dead bird.
A bird fell from the sky after Thomas was shot. My simple question is why? Not as in how was the bird shot, we are led to believe that it was Thomas Thorne who shot the bird, but why was it included in the story at all? Every other detail in the story is explored and explained and given various other perspectives on, but no one talks about the bird. It's an odd moment. His opponent shoots him in the back and Thomas, in shock, drops his pistol which fires into the sky, hits a bird, and it falls to the ground, to which Thomas says "sorry" and then realises that he himself has been shot.
It happens so quickly, but it is barely even played off as a joke that he shot a bird. It's not out of character that he'd apologize to the bird after killing it, but the inclusion is strange. It sort of distracts from what happened a little, except there's nothing to distract from, we are well aware that Thomas has been shot. It seems like an unnecessary moment. What does it add to the story?
Why not just have him get shot and react to that. Or have him drop the gun in shock; showing he never even fired the gun, which still has a lot of symbolic value. Or have him just drop the gun and it fires elsewhere. Why specifically have it hit a bird? Unless it is a distraction.
Now, most duels don't actually end with someone getting shot, they come to a gentlemen's agreement, and the honorable thing to do in a duel, especially one over some petty insult, is to fire above your opponent. You show that you could have killed them but didn't, and if they don't flinch or jump or run away, then they are also honorable and their side in the argument is one they hold conviction with, so much so that they were willing to die over it. Sure, the guy who insulted Mary Shelley seemed like a dick, but we don't know him well enough to know that he'd kill some random guy over a petty insult to an author he cares so little about. What if he did do the honorable thing and fired above Thomas?
How did Thomas die, then? Well, he shot himself. His opponent fired upwards, which then hit the bird, perhaps intentionally (he may be well trained, the kind who would show off his bird shooting skills) or perhaps not. The gunshot frightened Thomas who then dropped his gun, and when it landed, it fired upwards into him, and that is the moment when Thomas reacted directly to the gunshot wound. He thinks he shot the bird and his opponent shot him. The bird is seen falling from the sky a moment later, which he connects to his gun firing at that same moment, but may have been from the opponent shooting it a moment earlier. We get no blood splatter when Thomas is shot, we don't really see the wound besides the stains on his shirt, so it may have gone in his front and out his back, rather than in his back and out his front.
Thomas's cousin said that his opponent cheated, implying he shot him, but the cheating was already a lie so the cousin might have just been saying whatever he had to for his cousin to be at ease. No one else mentions that Thomas was murdered in a duel, Isabelle later just says that he died, so everyone other than Thomas may have known he shot himself in an accident. Kitty had her eyes closed, Robin wasn't there, Annie was sucked off before she could tell the tale, and Mary clearly doesn't remember anything given she explained it entirely wrong in her segment. They all remember the bird falling, it was one of Thomas’s last words, so they mention it in the story, but they were not paying attention to the rest, they just assumed Thomas’s opponent shot him because Thomas died and that’s the story they’ve been telling for centuries, becoming more certain in their memories, when in truth the opponent may have fired upwards.
That's why the bird's death was included, it was a key part of the puzzle, misdirection, one so good that none of the characters even spotted it, and so they all think he was killed by his opponent, when in truth he killed himself.
Thomas shooting himself would have added to his tragedy. Not only did he duel over a petty issue, and not only was he tricked by his cousin into losing the duel, but he also literally died due to a mistake of his own. He accidentally killed himself over love, jealously, and betrayal, and human error, and he shot himself in his own heart. Thomas Thorne died in the most tragic and most human of ways. His death was… poetic.
