Looper: The Kid Blue and Abe Theory (Are they the same person?)

  

Looper is a good, if flawed, movie.  It has some really neat concepts that don’t mix well together unless it was portrayed on a 10-episode series or something.  However, one of the things that always bothered me about the movie was the none-payoff of the Abe/Kid Blue subplot.   

In the movie, Abe is a gangster sent from the future to run the looper program and enforce the laws.  Played by Jeff Daniels.  There is a guy working under Abe that is a goofball and pretends to be a cowboy.  His name is Kid Blue.  Throughout the entire movie, Kid Blue tries his best to outshine Joe and Old Joe in order to impress Abe.  Abe looks down on Kid Blue like a disappointed father and really lays into him.  When Kid Blue really screws up, Abe only wounds in superficially on his hand and doesn’t dismember him like he usually does.   

Throughout the story, I’ve always gotten the impression that Kid Blue is Abe’s younger self.  Abe, from the future, keeps Blue around to protect him and try to steer him away from his foolish mistakes from before.  When Abe is killed, there is a focus on Kid Blue when he sees his body.   Everything in the movie leads to this conclusion.  

I am glad I am not the only one that has this theory.  My only problem is it is not fully clear that KB is Abe and it is a waste of character and plot development unless it's true.  Then again, this IS Rian Johnson we’re talking about and he doesn’t always pay things off like in SW.   He leaves things dangling and walks away from them.  I like his movies, but he does that a lot.  

For all the Rian hate I sometimes have for him on social media, he did have a coy response to the relationship between KB and Abe via Coming Soon.net.  From Coming Soong.net,  ((I know what my answer is to it, but, I don’t know, I mean, but I’m actually putting this question to you. When there is something like that out there, do you think the filmmaker should respond with his take on it? Or is that the magician telling you the answer? You think you want to know it, but it’s actually more fun to chew on it yourself. What do you think?)) 

The only problem with that is Rian did film a deleted scene where the goons take KB out to kill him after the hand smash.  That contradicts everything about the Kid Blue/Abe plotline and was a wise choice to delete it.  This is further supported by Rian’s interview on Screen Crush.  ((Are they the same person, which is interesting to me. I never thought that they were. I don't think that would work, but I think it's really cool that people's heads go there. That's definitely the dynamic  I was reaching for with it, to see that kind of older/younger, a different variant on that -- a sort of variant on the same theme between them. )) 

Hmm...