The Backrooms Movie - Who is the Wheelchair Guy??

One of the most memorable entities that we see in the Backrooms movie is the wheelchair guy or Archabald Leland Sutter. The only problem is before the Christmas tree scene in the movie, we know next to nothing about his character, who he might be, how Clark found him, and who he represents, or even what his motives might be inside the film. But since it's been a couple months since the movie has released, myself and other Backrooms fans online have been theorizing and kind of deducing who Archerald might truly be. And in today's video, the one you're watching right now, I'm going to analyze this character bit by bit, frame by frame, layer by layer, and I'm going to try to explain who the actual person is, maybe what his backstory is, what he represents, and how he fits into the greater narrative of the movie and backroom story. There's going to be a ton of theorizing and a ton of guessing in this video. Some of which might be wrong. I've been wrong before. But either way, it still should be a fun time without more talking. Let's get into the video and let's dissect the wheelchair guy, Archabald Leland Sutter, and let's get into his backstory and everything about him, shall we? Going into this movie, we knew none of these characters at all. We didn't know who they were, what they look like, their backstories, or anything at all. The only things in the movie that we have previously heard of is the company Async and the concept of the back rooms. That's it. We first encounter Archie, who I'm going to call him for the rest of the video, inside of the infamous Christmas tree scene where Clark is running around for his life trying to find Cat and also not trying to be eaten by Pirate Clark. I have an entire video breaking down that scene if you would like to go watch that after [music] this video, of course. But we can see inside of that specific moment that Archie appears to be a man sitting on a wheelchair dressed up in a late 1800 or 1900 style of clothing. And yes, I said sitting on his wheelchair, not sitting in his wheelchair. His nose is large and flat and misshapen. But the most notable thing about this person is that his eyes are warped and misaligned. His entire face is kind of construed and warped around. And he's not just sitting in a wheelchair like a normal individual would be because if you look closely, you can see that his waist has fused and melted to the chair itself. And his legs are actually clipped [music] through the bottom of the chair and are sticking out below. His hands are mangled and they're bent in very odd ways. and he's got more fingers than five on each hand. He's got like 10 fingers on each hand and they're warping around each other. Very strange. There's also a lamp that's attached to his wheelchair that he seems to really enjoy turning off and on over and over and over again. And from our initial seeing of this character, that's all we can deduce from that first glance. Now, in this movie, us as the viewers really are not supposed to know anything about any characters when we first see them. That's the entire point. They're supposed to be creepy, unnerving, and unknown. And especially in this Christmas tree scene, the main still life entity that we're supposed to pay attention to is Clark's ex-wife, the one that's chasing after him. With that being said, Archabald's presence himself, it's simultaneously perturbing, but also comical at the same time. It's obviously really scary to see this random guy that you've never seen before flicking a lamp on and off and rolling towards you. But it's also weird because we don't know how he relates to any of these characters. But to figure that out, we can break it down a little bit further and we can try to see what sort of details can be uncovered from the other scenes in the movie. We know that the backrooms works by taking things from real life and then copying them down over and over and over, remembering less and less of that thing each time it copies it. What we don't know for sure is exactly where it takes those memories from. Obviously, some parts of the complex are copies of Clark's store, his business, other businesses from nearby, his memories like his ex-wife, and other things from the community like misremembered houses and people and rooms. But as for the fat man, these other rooms that we've never seen before, the pitfalls, the throne room, and archerald, we don't know where these things come from. We don't see them in the film beforehand, contrary to popular belief, and we don't know what they represent specifically. So, all we can do is jump online to our little echo chambers here on the internet and theorize what it might mean. So, for the next few minutes, I want to dive into some basic theories and kind of spitfire them at you to get them out of the way before diving into some more advanced theories that might point to a strange origination for Archabald. We know obviously that Archabald Leland Sutter equals ALS. Those are his initials. And ALS is a disease that incapacitates people and it leaves them wheelchair bound. Now, I'm not really sure what the backrooms would need to remember ALS for. Maybe someone in Clark's life was afflicted with ALS. I don't know, but we do know that that is some kind of connection. Another theory states that Archabald is just an Ottoman Empire customer. This one is the simplest and kind of least interesting theory in my humble opinion, but it states that the backrooms just incorrectly rendered a guy who came into Clark's store, sat in a chair, and there was a lamp next to the chair, and the backroom saw that and created Archabald thinking that he was in a wheelchair with a lamp attached to it. It's not as fun, but it might be the most simplest answer. I don't know. Those are kind of the basic theories that people throw around on Reddit and on Discord, but I personally prefer some of these deeper theories that kind of look a little bit further back into who this person might be and who he might represent. And now I want to get into those deep theories. The first deeper and more strange theory that I want to discuss is that Archabald Leland Sutter represents furniture. Specifically, fans have pointed out that the names Archabald, Leland, and Sutter are also the names of existing lamp brands and styles from real life. Perhaps Clark sold these brands in his store. Maybe the Ottoman Empire had different types of lamps and the backrooms misremembered them as living human beings. Maybe the backrooms doesn't truly understand how lighting or lamps work, so it thinks that there has to be a person attached to the lamp for it to turn on. It's a pretty interesting theory, but I want to move it just a little bit further down. What if Archer Bald represents furniture in the sense that he actually represents the physical pieces of furniture that Clark sells? We see later on in the movie that still lives in general seem to be images and metaphors for actual pieces of furniture like couches and stuff. when he rips the people open, specifically the fat man, you see that there's this fluff that's inside of them and he eats them and he doesn't care about them and he obviously doesn't take their opinions into consideration cuz Clark kidnaps them and keeps them, you know, captive. He treats them like furniture, like pieces of inanimate objects that can be used however he sees fit. But that's not the case because they're actual they're still lives. They're copied. They're they have this small level of sentience even though they're not, you know, like we are. So maybe Archabald is the perfect thesis of that. Maybe he represents furniture to Clark. The only thing we see Archabald do is turn his lamp on, and he does so when Clark tells him to. So maybe that is exactly what he's meant for. Who knows? As we know, Clark tends to treat people around him like they're useless, like they're little play things that he can move wherever he wants to and use them however he wants to, like I said earlier. And if they're lifeless and they don't talk and they can't move around their own, that's pretty much exactly what Archabald is. He's the realized version of that. The second theory I want to discuss is that Archie equals real life art references. This is one of my personal favorite theories in this entire video I'm discussing. And it's also one of my favorite things to do in real life is to compare art to how we do things cuz the famous saying is life imitates art. In the history of art and in the history of the world, there are many depictions of what we would call liinal spaces inside of those art pieces. I've compared different versions of liinal spaces in different videos. Like I talked about the Minotaur's Labyrinth and the Complex sharing many similarities in this video if you go check that out. And there are another multitude of examples of this sort of thing existing in our history. There's astral plains where you're forced to wander different mazes for the rest of your life. And all of these things are very similar to what we call the back rooms. But for this specific theory, there is an artist from real history named Archabald Sutter Watt who created this painting titled interior back end. Now this painting is nearly the specific exact color palette that we see used in the complex with its yellows, its white and its different playing with lights. It also has furniture as a prominent focal point of the painting, which the movie does as well. Maybe Kane really likes this painter or this specific painting. And maybe that's why he created Archie, the character, as a way to reference it. I mean, the real life artist's name is literally Archerald Sutter Watt. That's pretty close to Archabald Land Sutter. I mean, Leland is a lamp brand. Lamps use wattage to power their lights. Archabald Sutter Watt is the real artist's name. You see what I'm saying here? Am I cooking? A sub theory from Archabald equals art is that there's a Canadian poet named Archabald Lampman who was responsible for creating a poem titled The City of the End of Things that apparently according to the internet has very similar themes and messages to the backrooms concept. Themes of getting lost, loneliness, labyrinth and structures and losing yourself in life. Now again, that poet's name is Archabald Lampman, which could you get any more on the nose? Of course. I mean, literally Archabald Lean Sutter has a lamp on his thing. Archald Lampman. I don't know if if that's a connection or a correlation, but it is really interesting. Theory number three, Archbald Leland Sutter owned the store originally. One of the more unnerving theories about Mr. Archie is that he was actually the original owner of Captain Clark's Ottoman Empire or whatever the building used to be before Clark owned it. And he used to own the actual building and maybe run a store there. This theory states that maybe he got stuck in the back rooms decades before Clark even found it. We know that null zones seep into our reality, like soft spots in random places, and we know that you can just walk through them at any moment's notice. We're not told in the backrooms movie how long ago the entrance to the backrooms actually opened up in Clark's basement store. Like we know that the slit through reality is there, but we don't know how long it took Clark to notice it. He just started living in his store because his ex-wife kicked him out of his house. He just started doing that a few weeks ago. For all we know, this opening could have been there since the beginning. Or maybe Archabald owned a store nearby. After all, the Ottoman Empire is in kind of a strip mall. Maybe there's another entrance inside of another store. Maybe it's in one of the stores we see at the end of the movie that had been copied down into the back rooms. We have no idea how old the back rooms is. We we just know that it doesn't listen to time. It doesn't obey what we know to be as time. And we know that Async didn't create the backrooms. They merely tapped into it. So perhaps a null zone has always existed, even way back in the early 1900s or late 1800s. If Archabal truly is that old, he's kind of dressed like it. So maybe he accidentally rolled his wheelchair into a null zone and he couldn't find his way out. And maybe he's been stuck there and copied down over and over and over ever since for over a hundred years. And now in this modern day, we get this still life version of a person that used to be a human. Like he used to be real, but he just got kind of disfigured and copied over and over after a hundred years of being stuck here. I personally like this theory because it makes the back rooms concept feel a lot more ancient, a lot more encompassing, and it's it's like it's been a problem for so long, and it's going to continue to be a problem for the future. It also adds this degree of otherworldliness because it kept this person alive perhaps for all this time. Who knows throughout history how long other things or other creatures or people have been stuck here. But those three theories I just got into were the main ones that are tossed around on the internet. There are a couple other theories that are going to get honorable mentions here that I did not include and I'll go ahead and talk about those now. The first theory in the honorable mentions is that Archie is Clark's wife's divorce lawyer. One of the most important story lines in the entire movie is Clark's separation from his wife. It drives his drinking habit, his anger, his hatred towards people, all that stuff, and his devolution into resentment. And in fact, the entire pirate Clark entity is literally a representation of that hatred, of that anger, of that drinking, of it awe encompassed into one entity. So, we know the backrooms does sometimes take feelings and put them into people. And we already know for a fact that the backrooms takes things from real life and puts them into the back rooms, too. So, maybe this still life archabald entity could represent someone from Clark's life who he thinks about a lot in a negative way. We see the still life of Clark's ex-wife. And we know that Clark thinks about her constantly. So using that same logic, maybe Archabald is the divorce lawyer of Clark's ex-wife, and he thinks about the lawyer all the time because he hates him. Maybe he's the actual lawyer that convinced the divorce court to give his ex-wife the house instead of giving it back to Clark. Clark always talks about how is it's it's his house. He pays the bills. Maybe this lawyer convinced the court to do otherwise and give it to the ex-wife instead. We could take this one step even further and say that maybe Archie was either the divorce lawyer or the judge in the lawsuit between Clark and his ex-wife and the lamp attached to his wheelchair. Maybe that symbolizes the light in his life, so to speak, being turned off. Just how the spark in his life was taken away from him when his marriage ended. I don't know. Could be a reach, but it's pretty interesting to think about. Another honorable mention theory is that Archabald literally means nothing and he was put in the movie for wow factor. This could honestly be the reason like we don't have actual hard evidence of anything I've talked about today, but the backs movie was kind of meant to be bombastic and crazy and otherworldly and strange and liinal of course and what better way to do that than put some random guy in a wheelchair that turns the lamp on and off. You know, maybe he doesn't symbolize anything, but I don't know. So, now that you've heard those main theories about Archabal's character and even some fringe theories and some honorable mentions, I want to know what you think he represents. Who do you think he is? Who do you think he represents or fits into? Why do you think he's in the movie? How do you think he's going to change the the concept as a whole? Because my personal theory after doing all this research is as follows. I like to think that Archerald maybe represents the person who used to own the Ottoman Empire or maybe used to own the building or something like that. Or maybe he was the first person that clipped into the back rooms in this specific null zone. And I think this is the case because he's deliberately dressed in an older kind of outfit to show the audience that the backrooms is not a new thing. He could be just a plot device to show that the backroom's concepts always been there and people have been no clipping there for a long time. And maybe that's all it is. Maybe I'm kind of over theorizing, but where's the fun in that? You know, where's the fun in thinking it's so simple? Maybe Archbald was some old scientist that discovered the bathrooms many years ago. in his quest to understand it, he got lost here. He kind of looks like Stephen Hawking. Maybe that's what Kane was going for. I don't know. But the complex existing for that long makes it more horrifying and more powerful to everybody watching and to me, too. But don't forget to tell me in the comments below what you think he's included for. We'll probably never know exactly why or how he fits into the greater picture of the narrative, but these theories are going to be as close as we can get to discovering that at all. The same way we don't know who the fat still life is or what Async's motivations are, I think it's a good thing. I don't think we should know everything, but I obviously like to theorize and you all like to watch theories. So, thanks. Thanks so much for watching to the end of the video. If you did enjoy this sort of character breakdown and analysis, uh, please leave a like. I would really appreciate it. Helps the channel out significantly. And I do want to thank you all so much for the support recently. It means the world to me. I really, really appreciate you all for that. If you want more content from me that's that's not back rooms or internet horror related, go check out Spooky. I make like creepy documentaries over there and real life true mystery stuff. It's cool. It's awesome. You probably love it. Or you can check out Instagram. I'm always posting what I'm doing on there. With all that said, I will see you all in the next video on any of my channels. And I hope you had a great day. Honestly, I do. And I hope you uh are ready for what's to come on this channel. Peace.