Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s supernatural TV series, ‘Lockwood and Co’ follows the story of Lucy Carlyle, who joins a ghost-hunting agency run by two boys. The show builds an alternate reality where ghosts have become a common occurrence and a menace. They are so dangerous that their mere touch can kill a person, which is why there are so many ghost hunters in the world now. While Lucy, Lockwood, and George solve cases, they also find out some very dark things about very mysterious figures. One thing that becomes crucial in solving this case is the Skull in Jar that was stolen by George from Fittes and Rotwell. A lot of things about it remain in the dark. If you are wondering who this skull belongs to and what role it will play in the story, then here’s what you should know. SPOILERS AHEAD
The Skull’s Journey Through Time
The Skull in the jar is a Type III ghost, whose identity is revealed to Lockwood and Co after the skull starts communicating with Lucy, who is a listener. At first, she finds it hard to believe that she has come across the rarest of rare things in the world, making her the rarest of rare listeners in the world. The skull is relieved to have found Lucy because no one else could hear it. He jumps upon this opportunity to try and manipulate Lucy into doing his bidding. It is trapped inside a silver jar. He wants Lucy to set him free, but she has other plans in mind.
It isn’t until the case of Edmund Bickerstaff’s grave and the Bone Glass falls into Lockwood and Co’s lap that the Skull starts talking about his past. Over the course of the investigation, he tells Lucy about the occultist and his experiments. He reveals that Bickerstaff had been experimenting on people to try and create a doorway to another world. He was obsessed with understanding the other side, which turned him into a murderer. The Skull knows all this because he helped Bickerstaff.
When he was alive, the Skull, who remains unnamed in the series as of yet, was Bickerstaff’s ardent disciple. He was aware of the powers of the Bone Glass and interested as he was to know what lay behind it, he knew that looking into it would turn him mad or kill him. He and Bickerstaff forced other people to look into the mirror, but they couldn’t get what they wanted because the people who lose themselves in the mirror often die of it. Had they known that children were better attuned to that world, they wouldn’t have shied away from experimenting on children as well.
Having run out of people, the Skull and Bickerstaff forced Mary Dulac, another occultist in the gang, to look at it. As expected, it turned her mad and she disappeared for a while. When she came back, she wrote a book about her experience, recounting everything that she knew about Bickerstaff and the Bone Glass to warn the rest of the world of its true power. Before Mary disappeared, she shot and killed Bickerstaff as well as the Skull.
Because of his intense desire to find out what’s on the other side, the Skull’s soul refused to let go of the mortal world. As described by Marissa Fittes, the Skull, being a Type III, is incredibly intelligent and powerful. He feels and thinks like a living person and, according to the ‘Lockwood and Co’ books on which the Netflix series is based, is so powerful that it can cause all sorts of things to happen using its powers. Having turned into a Type III, the Skull became a lone soul with no one to talk to, until Lucy arrived.
It is unclear how the Skull ended up in possession of Fittes and Rotwell, but one can assume that it might have been around the time of Marissa Fittes. Considering that the whole fiasco with Bickerstaff and the Bone Glass originated in the eighteenth century, way before the Problem, it is clear that the Skull has been through it all. It is possible that the Type III that Marissa Fittes came across was the Skull itself. She communicated with it until she died. He was forced into solitude until George stole him and Lucy came around.
Read More: What Happens to The Bone Glass in Lockwood and Co? What does The Bone Glass Do?
