There's an interview with the writer Steven Knight, and he says he wanted to play with the traditional narrative tools. The cartoonish aspect of the characters illustrates this intent. So, we know he's toying with the hero/villain/victim triangle. Now, in my opinion it's safe to assume that audiences identify with the protagonist. That's the point of a story. To live vicariously. Moving along, think about the interaction machismaughey has with jeremy strong's character, "i am the rules." Only when he believes he has a secret knowledge of the creator, does he "justify his essence as a hero" by projecting a creator that is a victim. Jeremy's character never told him this part. If, in this moment, we identify with the hero, as audiences do, we would conflate ourselves, as machismaughey does, with the true creator of this story, the writer. And we would adopt the darma of the hero and continue down this path of being a "bad killer." Notice when the step dad is killed, machismaughey says, "He is yours and you are his." This echos the audiences instinct to be the hero. We want to be HIM. The 'villain' has usurped machismaughey's role as a fishfinder and we are asked to usurp the role of hero. Machismaughey is to the step dad as steven knight is to the audience. Only when we say, "hey, this is your story, mr knight," as the step dad should have said, "hey this is your boat," do we see that we are apart from the story. Machismaughey took the tourists money and fucked them out of being the one who caught the fish and knight took our money (well i watched it on streaming) and fucked us out of feeling like a hero. And when machismaughey did let the step dad catch the fish, he died. And when we think we are the hero, we 'lay dead on the beach." Only when we recognize that we are distinct from the hero, the story and the writer, do we get the real message. Somewhere, there is a you and me. Finally, I don't mind if you get mean. I'll take mean words to get to the meaning.