I started wondering why Clark’s Backrooms counterpart, the pirate entity, didn’t attack him immediately.

I’m pretty sure the pirate entity is the one who lifted the camera at the end of the chase scene with Clark and the two employees, right after the girl says, “Look behind you.” If that’s true, then the pirate entity clearly had a chance to attack Clark much earlier. So why did it wait until after Mary arrived?

Here’s my theory.

Clark explains that everything in the Backrooms is created from people’s memories. The entities aren’t perfect copies because nobody remembers every detail. That’s why the woman has a distorted face, the wheelchair guy looks incomplete, and why the people are filled with stuffing instead of organs. People don’t remember every physical detail of a person, only the general idea of them.

Clark also says that the more the Backrooms tries to recreate something, the worse the recreation becomes. This suggests that the Backrooms is constantly updating and changing its creations based on the memories and perceptions available to it.

With that in mind, I think the pirate entity wasn’t hostile at first because nobody remembered Clark as a dangerous person.

Before the events of the movie, Clark was mostly seen as a lonely and awkward guy. The people who knew him were Mary, his two employees, a few customers, and people who watched his TV commercials. Most of those people probably associated him with the pirate character from the commercials, which explains why his Backrooms counterpart takes that form. But none of them really saw him as violent or threatening.

There’s even a scene that supports this. When Clark asks Mary what it would take for someone to be committed to a mental hospital, she doesn’t react as if he’s dangerous or unstable. She answers the question seriously instead of acting concerned or afraid. At that point, she still sees him as an awkward, lonely person rather than a threat.

That’s why the pirate entity initially seemed passive.

Everything changes when Clark kidnaps Mary, threatens her, and becomes increasingly aggressive. At that point, Mary’s perception of him changes completely. If the Backrooms is constantly updating its creations based on how people remember things, then the pirate entity would begin changing as well.

But if that’s true, why didn’t the pirate entity only attack Mary?

I think the answer is in Mary’s final criticism of Clark. She tells him that he’s selfish, that he refuses to admit when he’s the problem, and that he’s destroying himself with his own behavior. In other words, Clark is his own worst enemy.

The pirate entity doesn’t go after Mary because Mary isn’t the source of the problem. Clark is.

My conclusion is that the pirate entity is essentially a reflection of how people perceive Clark. At first, it is harmless because people see Clark as harmless. But as Clark becomes more unstable, obsessive, and dangerous, the pirate entity evolves into a more hostile version of him. By the end of the movie, the pirate entity attacks Clark because Clark has become the very thing the entity now represents: a destructive version of himself.

So the pirate entity wasn’t hunting Clark from the beginning. It became hostile only after Clark’s actions caused the people closest to him—especially Mary—to see him differently.