Annotated 39-5
I already told you that we once planned Miyamoto to be in this role and setting up a simpler plot: he would’ve just told E-Merl to invite the others back to the bar and planted a bunch of police outside it with instructions to bring the Peacemakers in dead.
Once we brought Iwatani in, we first envisioned a different angle for him to take. From the script: Iwatani, calmly and without too wide of a smile, baits his trap for E-Merl. Necromancy is a crime and a loudly shunned one at that, but he can’t simply accuse E-Merl of it with no proof. Far better to pose as an ally in this quest until he can implicate not only E-Merl, but all of the Peacemakers.
It would’ve been interesting to get some payoff from our early planting about how universally despised necromancers are. And I like the irony of running the Peacemakers in for a crime that E-Merl was completely willing to commit. But a big, showy trial was more of a side plot than we had time for and not as exciting as what we did instead. And after the last chapter, the Altruists no longer really need to do things by the book.
Spiders and rats… a little foreshadowing, neh?
Which kind of forces me to link to this bit:
https://youtu.be/Mn9AYyjS_Es
That said: I think the spider web makes complete sense. It’s also fairly obvious, but it’s also adding something. This is the point in time at which the plan clicks. Iwatani has done his thing and E-Mo hasn’t said so but is pretty much set to walk into the trap.
(Actually my theory about the rat in The Departed is that Scorsese was forced by the studio to add the last scene where the guy gets shot in the end, because “that’s what people want to see”, and decided to add the rat just to troll them. The whole thing could have ended before the last scene, and it would have been a better movie.)
I do love the framing in the last panel.