Jacob Portman and Golan

Jacob Portman and Golan’s relationship begins under the appearance of psychiatric care and ends in armed mortal conflict. The reversal is not simply that Golan is revealed as an enemy: Jacob must also reckon with how his own disclosures helped the enemy find the peculiar children, while refusing Golan’s implication that Jacob’s fragile mental state makes him incapable of resisting.

A Patient’s Fear and a Psychiatrist’s Dismissal

After Abraham Portman’s death, Jacob is consumed by fear that the creature he encountered will return. He avoids leaving the house, sleeps in the locked laundry room, and experiences nightmares severe enough that he wears a mouth guard. When a police officer asks him to describe what happened, Jacob recounts the creature’s attack and is treated as someone who should be sent for mental-health care. His anger at being disbelieved echoes his regret that he had not believed his grandfather.

The family’s old photographs deepen Jacob’s sense that Abraham’s stories had been fabricated. Looking at the images, Jacob judges several as obvious tricks and concludes that Abraham’s final words were another deception, leaving him with nightmares and what he calls paranoid delusions. In this period of fear and uncertainty, Golan is Jacob’s psychiatrist: the professional who appears to occupy the role of explaining or treating what Jacob cannot make sense of.

The Doctor’s Betrayal and Jacob’s Responsibility

The relationship is exposed after Golan’s betrayal becomes clear to the children. When they ask how the wight knew so much about Jacob and them, Jacob identifies Golan as his psychiatrist. The revelation gives the apparent medical relationship a second meaning: Golan had access to Jacob’s confidence, while Jacob had understood him as a doctor rather than an enemy.

Jacob does not deny that his own words helped bring danger to the group. He tells the others that Golan knew everything except how to find them, and that Jacob led him directly to their refuge. He also admits that he told his grandfather’s stories to a stranger. This self-accusation is sharpened by the earlier memory of not believing Abraham: Jacob now understands the pain of being disbelieved, but has also become a conduit through which the stories reached someone who could use them against their subjects.

Enoch turns that admission into an accusation, arguing that Abraham had shown Jacob pictures and told him everything. Emma counters that Jacob could not have known the children were real. Jacob accepts responsibility without accepting that he was knowingly complicit: he says he is sorry, and Emma hugs him and reminds him that the group is alive. The exchange distinguishes his regret over the consequences from deliberate betrayal; Golan, not Jacob, had deceived him.

From Knowledge of Jacob to Open Conflict

At the lighthouse, the former psychiatrist is no longer a distant source of authority but an immediate physical threat. Jacob finds Golan crouched beside the birdcage containing the captured ymbrynes. A small red light blinks on the cage, marking the object at the center of the standoff. Golan threatens to throw the birds over the railing if Jacob shoots him, making the captives’ safety the leverage with which he tries to control Jacob.

Golan’s most personal weapon is his knowledge of Jacob’s history. He taunts Jacob that he could not fire a gun and invokes his familiarity with Jacob’s supposedly fragile psyche, predicting that shooting would give him nightmares. Jacob’s hesitation is real: he imagines the recoil and sound, compares himself unfavorably with his grandfather, and recognizes that an earlier opportunity has passed. Their old doctor-patient relation has become a contest over who gets to define Jacob’s capacity to act. Golan treats Jacob’s vulnerability as proof of helplessness; Jacob must act despite the fear rather than wait for it to disappear.

The Final Reversal

When Golan throws the cage over the railing, the immediate danger shifts from negotiation to a struggle over the gun. Jacob is dizzy and struggling to breathe, but prevents Golan from taking it. Emma intervenes, and Golan turns on her; Jacob then gets to his feet, steadies his aim, and fires. The shot halts Golan’s attack. He falls back over the railing and is gone from the scene.

The killing reverses the power relation on which Golan’s taunt depended. The psychiatrist who had used Jacob’s history to predict incapacity is defeated by the patient he had deceived. Yet the victory does not resolve the consequences of Jacob’s earlier trust: Emma immediately points out the red light of the cage moving on the waves, and she and Jacob rush to try to reach it. Golan is dead, but the endangered ymbrynes and the lost cage remain the urgent concern.

Guilt, Care, and the Meaning of the Relationship

Jacob’s connection to Golan is defined by a painful asymmetry. As a patient, Jacob had disclosed stories that he himself had struggled to believe; as an enemy, Golan possessed enough knowledge to exploit those disclosures and guide himself toward the peculiar children. The relationship therefore links the disbelief surrounding Abraham’s warnings to the later betrayal of Jacob’s trust: what Jacob once dismissed as fantasy becomes information in the hands of someone hostile.

Jacob’s guilt is not the same as Golan’s responsibility. He acknowledges that he led Golan to the children and seeks their forgiveness, but the scene also establishes that he had been tricked and could not have known the children were real. His final action does not erase that earlier mistake; it changes what he does with the knowledge and agency he has now. By opposing Golan when the captives’ lives are at stake, Jacob breaks the doctor’s attempt to turn his psychological vulnerability into a permanent verdict on his ability to act.