Old MH Site Bio
Tim Wright
[Actor]
After originally meeting Alex through their mutual friend Brian, Tim was brought on board to the Marble Hornets cast after a promising audition. He is attending the university. He will also soon be scoring the film, bringing in a unique style rarely heard in films these days.
Personal Notes
Tim really is a character that makes me feel Some Kinda Way, for a variety of reasons, but honestly I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Tim was almost always on the outskirts. He spent his whole adolescence in an inpatient hospital, and then went to college and made his first friends (who then seemingly all left without really saying goodbye), and then... Tim is just alone. He goes to work, he wastes some time in an old antique store, and he goes to his doctors appointments, and that's seemingly it. He doesn't mention any friends or family who are concerned by his disappearances -- only bosses or managers who are frustrated by him missing work. When he packs up his life and decides to follow Jay, he doesn't mention any personal goodbyes -- just his job. And it isn't necessarily because Tim is overly closed off as a person -- over and over again, we see Tim throw himself wholeheartedly into relationships, how quickly he becomes defensive and protective of Jay, how openly willing he is to offer help to anyone who needs it. Tim cared deeply about everyone he had, but he had so fucking little, and he never got to keep them.
Frankly, it would have been very easy for the narrative to sacrifice Tim. He has no big goals or plans, no real Thing he wants to achieve in this mess, and there was no one at home waiting for him to return, but it doesn't. It refuses. Tim's the only one who made it out, because Tim took care of himself for himself, and that was enough. The last thing we see him do is make sure that someone else had the support and resources that they'd need to take care of themself, and then Tim went off on his own again. And like, as someone who has Been Alone for a very long time, that really does mean something to me.
That said, I do think it's interesting how many people seem to believe that Tim made it out because he was seeking psychiatric help; that doesn't really ring true to me. I suppose there are arguments to be made about the validity of prescription, but Brian was taking the exact same medications Tim was and wasn't getting any better. Furthermore, Tim isn't uniquely resistant to the Operator's influence -- not only do we see him succumb to it like everyone else does in Entries like #65 and #86, but even the way he withstands the Operator's presence in Entry #72 is something we have seen Alex do before in Entries #43 and #70. The characters theorized that Tim's medication was making a difference, but I don't know if I believe that theory is any more accurate than Alex's theory that killing everyone was the only way to stop the Operator from spreading.
Instead, I think the fact that Tim was willing to look away is the thing that wound up saving him. Alex, Brian, and Jay all fell to the Operator's influence because they couldn't bring themselves to leave it alone -- Alex did successfully leave the Operator behind after college for a while because he believed that he had taken care of it sufficiently (We can tell that he hadn't had any recent interactions with it because he doesn't panic over Amy interacting with his old camera -- implying there wasn't any incriminating footage on it that could have led to spread -- and because of how off-guard he seems when it reappears in that 04-04-10 tape), but after Jay starts the YouTube channel and begins posting tapes, Alex can't bring himself to look away a second time. Brian was never willing to look away -- his hatred towards Alex fueled his desire for revenge to the point where Brian never had any intention of letting anything go or moving on; he explicitly wanted to kill Alex and to die doing so. Jay went in with good intentions, but his desire to know led to a complete inability to stop looking, no matter what the consequences were for himself or the other people around him.
But Tim's goal going into Season Three was always about eventually returning to normal life. Tim teamed up with Jay because he wanted to make sure that things were taken care of, so that he could go back to his life without having to worry about being stalked, attacked, or anything else. Tim didn't really care about knowing, he didn't really care about revenge, this was always just a temporary road block for him -- something to get over and leave behind.
The Operator works as an allegory for mental illness if you'd like it to, but tangibly in the series it's more easily understood almost as a kind of Radiation. Exposure to it makes you a further contaminant -- if you become irradiated, you can go on to cause radiation poisoning in other people; and the closer you are to the source of the radiation, the worse the exposure gets. Alex, Brian, and Jay couldn't look away, they couldn't bring themselves to leave Ground Zero for a variety of reasons, but Tim could. And I think that is what saved him more tangibly than any medication did.
There's a scene in the 2018 film Annihilation where the Biologist speculates that she was the only survivor of her exploratory group because she had to come back. Lena went into the Shimmer because she needed information to help her husband, where the other members of her group were people who had suffered recent personal losses, or never had a longterm relationship, or had suicidal depression, or terminal cancer. Lena had a reason to anchor herself to that no one else in her group had, because these missions are generally understood as one-way, suicidal -- for the most part, the people who went were those who went in willing or even expecting to die, and Lena was an exception to this.
I think a similar understanding works best for Marble Hornets, and I think that makes Tim's solitude even more important to me. It is very typical for a character's "reason" for surviving to be another person -- a partner, a child, a friend, whatever; but Tim didn't have another person he was anchoring himself to. Tim's "Reason" was himself; his life, with his empty house where he plays instruments by himself and goes to work in the morning and goes to his doctor's appointments on time, for no reason other than the fact that it's his, and that's enough for him. I feel like you don't get to see that in media a lot, and it really is incredibly meaningful that Tim is an exception to this. I love that he alone was enough.
Archived Material
look it’s been years and im still goddamn emotional over how tim was allowed to cry. he was allowed to cry and he did it often and it was never a shameful or disgusting thing. he cries so many times!!! he cries often and he cries messily and he cries loudly and the narrative never fucking shames him for that and he cries in so many different ways. tim wright sheds tears of anger, tears of frustration, tears of exhaustion, tears of traumatized dismay, tears of self-pity, tears of sorrow, tears of panic. tim wright gets to cry and no one ever treats him wrong for it. (X)
tim wright is a good fucking character he’s the hero of a tragedy despite his awful childhood and his “”scary”” mental illness. he was so desperate to have a normal life, yet he dropped everything to help someone who was basically a STRANGER to him because he knew others were in danger and he cared about people so deeply and... (X)
Call-Forward: The trailer, a bonus on the season 2 DVD, has Tim saying "Whenever I'm around other people, I feel like I'm wearing a mask to hide who I really am." Tim is later revealed to be The Masked Man. (X)
Tim's personality in Entry #9, where he snarks at Alex without flinching, is slightly at odds with what we see in Entry #84 where he appears much shyer. This may be fridge brilliance because making friends may have boosted his confidence enough to defend them from the verbal abuse Alex dishes out. (X)
It's All My Fault: In Entry #66, Tim admits to Jay that he feels everything that happened to the cast of Marble Hornets is his fault because his exposure to the Operator as a child may have been what lured it to them in the first place. (X)
Tim has suffered through a lot, and when he's in a right state of mind he's one of the most logical and sensible characters. However, he's prone to lying or concealing important information. (X)
speaking of ambiguity in marble hornets i think that’s part of what makes tim such a strong character. almost every single person i’ve talked to interprets tim’s mental health issues as they’re presented within the story slightly differently. usually they interpret him having a disorder/disorders they personally have. a lot of ppl see themselves reflected back in tim because having mental health issues that makes you “scary” or “suspicious” to others when the person it’s actually scariest to is just yourself is an extremely relatable experience. being shown those symptoms and having a story tell you that you can survive and be kind is really comforting. (X)