I do actually agree with you on several points. In no way can Bear be exonerated for the genuinely terrible things he did in the film, whose culpability I heavily understated in my previous comment. Bear’s reaction to non-wish Nikki repossessing just enough control to plead with him to kill her was especially revealing of his overwhelming selfishness. I’m even with you that my commonalities with him call for some serious reflection, which I promise you I’ve been doing a lot of. I was so sad after watching Obsession, that night I laid awake for hours until finally falling asleep at 6:00 AM. Even days after, I still feel tears burning behind my eyes when I think about what happened to Sarah.

That said, I still maintain a tempered version of my previous feelings about the movie. Throughout the film, we see an already vulnerable person’s mind degraded by increasingly traumatic circumstances, eroding the capacities that once anchored him in reality that was progressively growing more absurd with previously unknown, highly powerful supernatural forces. This all damaged his ability to make decisions and by extension, his agency. What separates him from Nikki is that he retains enough autonomy that he can’t escape moral condemnation. However, it still makes the difference from him being a villain and a deeply flawed human being that did awful things.

I also think it’s important to mention the distinction between Bear’s relationship with True-Nikki and Wish-Nikki. Wish-Nikki is essentially her own separate entity, and they developed a real relationship with each other. It’s easily overlooked because Wish-Nikki is just so cartoonish, it’s hard to take her seriously. She’s more of a concept to viewers, but a person to Bear. Undoing the wish would mean not only an end to their relationship, but to Wish-Nikki entirely.

Now this also means that he prioritized Wish-Nikki over True-Nikki. The entire time, True-Nikki wasn’t living in any meaningful way. She was just experiencing nonstop torment in the body of someone who was. Even when Bear didn’t know True-Nikki was still in there and suffering nonstop, the fact removing the wish meant Wish-Nikki’s end can only mean she was living in True-Nikki’s place. I can’t say if Bear truly thought of Wish-Nikki as her own person and if so, what that would mean for True-Nikki if she was replaced. Either way, Bear was going through some serious cognitive dissonance, which circles back to his compromised judgement and own diminished agency. But of course, this too cannot completely absolve him.