Diksha Sundriyal
When the supposed accident of her father turns out to have been a murder, Parker decides to look thoroughly into the case, which leads her down a rabbit hole that unearths a lot of hidden truths about her town. In Netflix’s ‘Trigger Warning,’ the events begin with the news of Parker’s father’s death, which brings her back into the orbit of all the things she’d left behind. Because she hasn’t been home in such a long time, a lot of things have changed, and there are some new additions to the surroundings. Her father’s lizard is one of them. The pet remains in the background for most of the film, but there is a scene that raises pertinent questions about the fate of the creature. SPOILERS AHEAD
The Lizard Has a Better Fate Than the Villains
The existence of a lizard is first mentioned by Mike, the man who used to work at the bar with Parker’s father. Since the old man’s death, Mike comes around the house to look after the lizard, but the creature is elusive and doesn’t always show itself. In fact, throughout the film, we don’t see it interact with the human characters, not even Mike, who is supposed to be its guardian. In one scene, the lizard appears on the dashboard of the car that Parker is fixing, which confirms that there really is a lizard and Mike wasn’t simply lying about it.
The other scene is when Elvis and his friends attack Parker, and one of them ends up setting her house on fire. The first place to burn is the bar, and knowing that the fire cannot be stopped now, Parker runs upstairs to get the important stuff from her room. She is already too occupied to notice the lizard crawl out of the room just as she enters. In the following scene, Parker fights one of the villains, who falls into the fire, and she escapes the house just in time. The lizard, however, is nowhere to be seen. Does this mean the poor thing didn’t survive? Most likely not.
When the house burns down, the lizard finds its way out of the place. We see it hastily crawl out of Parker’s room, but that doesn’t mean it’s going downstairs, which is already on fire. The lizard has lived in the house long enough to have its own escape routes and surely used one of them to leave the house in time and prevent itself from meeting a horrible death. The creature, most likely, crawled away into the desert, where, despite the inhospitability of the place, it would have enough survival. For the rest of the film, we don’t see the lizard again because the scene of conflict completely shifts from the house, and there is no time for Parker to look for the lizard.
At the end of the film, the house and the bar are rebuilt, and Parker leaves it all in Mike’s hands. Once the place is ready, there is a good chance that the lizard, familiar with the place as it is, will surely find its way back into the building and will be found by Mike, who will take care of it because he owes it to his previous boss. Considering everything, the lizard has enough resources at its disposal to survive.
Read More: Trigger Warning: Is Maria’s a Real Bar in New Mexico?
