The Tragic Story of Six

We all know that a Little Nightmares protagonist never makes it past one game, that is except for Six, who has suffered alongside the other protagonist kids throughout the whole journey. And we’re going to be exploring the tragedy of her tale.

Some points I need to caveat before we dive in:

1- None of what I will say justifies Six’s bad deeds, but does explain why she did the bad things she’s done.

2- Six is only nine years old. So Six isn’t even in the double digits yet when she goes through everything in this post. And since we don’t know how much time has passed between LN2 and LN1, she could have been only eight years old in VLN or LN2 for all we know.

And 3- Even though most of the instalments are played by one of the other kids, the overall LN narrative is telling us Six’s story, since she is present throughout the whole series.

Here is some music that I believe is fitting for this subject so that you can play it as you read:

The story of Six is a tragic one.

It begins with her entrapment at the Nest. We don’t know what happened to Six before this, how Six got there or how long she’s been there, but it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t pleasant for her because she hides in places where the monsters can’t get her and that she wanted to escape at the end. This is also Six at her most innocent.

During her escape, she encounters RCG and decides to team up with her but unfortunately gets betrayed by her. She finds another way to escape the Nest and is saved by RCG this time and tries to save her in return. But sadly her attempt to save RCG failed and all she could do was watch as RCG and the Pretender fall into the sea to their deaths. This moment left Six with survivor’s guilt.

Having developed survivor’s guilt, you can better understand why Six was hesitant to help Mono at the beginning of LN2 - she doesn’t want to help someone only to lose them again (that and him chopping down the door with an axe wasn’t exactly the best first impression). Over the course of LN2, Six learns to trust Mono and even actively puts her own life at risk to help him several times, as does he for her. And the ending of VLN makes the part where Six finds the raincoat hit differently.

Later, through Mono’s actions, she gets kidnapped by the Thin Man and taken to the tower where she tortured and later distorted (as evident by the part where Mono tries to pull her out of a TV, she doesn’t want to be there and is clearly in distress).

But, even when she’s been tortured and distorted in the Signal Tower, she still offers her music box which is her escapism and the fantasy that the tower has hypnotised her with, meaning that she wanted Mono to join her in the fantasy. The LN Twitter hinted twice that breaking the music box was why Six dropped Mono ‘Extracting someone from a fantasy can be deeply upsetting for everyone involved’. So now you may understand Six’s perspective of the situation, which Dave Mervik hinted at in an interview when asked why she did what she did. LN2 is shown through Mono’s perspective and doesn’t easily offer us Six’s perspective, so we can only interpret it.

Here’s how I interpret it:

‘I tried to save someone even after they betray me, but I failed to save them. I then met a boy with a bag on his head who offered me his hand, I didn’t want to take it at first because I didn’t want to lose someone else all over again, but circumstances forced me to accept his help. We gradually bonded and I tried even harder to ensure that my friend would make it out alive by putting myself at risk to help him. He did nothing when I was taken and practically torn in half (Shadow Six’s creation) but when he finally arrived, I offered him to join me in the fantasy I was in, I either didn’t know that my body was distorted or I didn’t mind it (after all, Six doesn’t really seem bothered by her monstrous form). However not only does he refuse my offer, but he forces me out of it. No matter how much I screamed from the pain and tried to stop him, he kept doing it (since Six screams and hunches over in pain whenever Mono hits the music box). I’m not given a minute to process what just happened when he destroys it because walls of flesh start chasing us immediately afterwards and I barely managed to get to the exit. I catch him but then I think:

Why? Why did he do that? I tried to save someone else but failed but this time I changed myself by putting my own life at risk to help him several times and offered him to join me in the fantasy that helped me heal from the pain caused by the man in the hat that he released even when I tried to stop it from happening. But not only does he refuse my offer but he forces me out of it against my will. No matter how much I screamed and tried to stop him, he wouldn’t stop hurting me. After everything I did for him, this is the thanks I get? I changed myself by putting my life at risk to help someone else, so why?’

And like the LN Twitter said: the more of us understand the pain that Mono caused Six than we realise.

With how the tower was collapsing as she held onto Mono, Six had to think fast. And well, we saw what happened (before people try to put words in my mouth, no, none of this justifies what happened to Mono, but makes it understandable). Afterwards when she comes out of the TV, we see her hugging herself, showing guilt or remorse before Shadow Six appears.

And finally in LN1 we see that Six doesn’t help any other kids anymore, either because she’s afraid that she’ll just lose them all over again or because what happened with Mono made her lose trust people, essentially shutting everyone out. It’s probably a bit of both. The only ones she’s shown to still trust are the Nomes, evident by how she hugs them and gives them a source of warmth/light by lighting a lantern when one is available and freeing some Nomes that got themselves trapped (such as the Nomes in the fridge and cage in the prison chapter and later in a jar in the kitchen chapter). Why does she trust the Nomes over the other kids? It could be that they remind her of the two friends she’s lost (RCG and Mono) or because she sees herself in them with how skittish they are like she is (and for good reason), or she doesn’t trust people anymore to show kindness to them but still has to the desire to be kind to something that is considered inferior to her or maybe a bit of each of these.

But unfortunately along the way she saw that the children on the Maw are turned into sausages, so when the hunger hits her, she is forced to choose between knowingly committing cannibalism or eating something that we know is also a kid but she doesn’t know, and she chose the latter option. And finally, after defeating the Lady, Six is forced to knowingly commit cannibalism to satisfy her hunger and she obtains the Lady’s powers in the process. The way she slowly turns towards the camera marks the end of what little innocence she had left, and now she exits the Maw and awaits rescue, killing any guests that try to eat her along the way.

What happens to her afterwards is yet to be seen, but with Six trying to save RCG even after being betrayed by her, to at first not trusting Mono but eventually trusting him and changing herself to risk her own life to help him several times but betraying him when a big misunderstanding occurs, to not even trying to save any of the other kids anymore, you can now notice Six’s mental deterioration.

Something to remember is that all of the monsters (except the flesh walls) are human, mostly adults. But they weren’t always adults; they were once children themselves. Whether the world went insane long ago - when they were children, or not that long ago - when they are now adults, either way they were once children too and now live to prey on the next generation of children. And as we saw and confirmed by David Mervik himself, the world has shaped Six to become one of them, now existing to prey on others to survive and all child-like innocence she had is gone.

Although the ending she got may not be as bad as Mono’s, RCG’s and RK’s, and until LN3 comes out (provided it’s actually a sequel this time) to prove otherwise, Six’s story and fate nonetheless remain a tragic one. And Six’s fate is one shared no doubt by many other children.

Thank you for reading if you’ve read all of this, I’ll see you in the next one.