Long Way Down

Uncle Mark was Will and Shawn’s uncle and Pop’s brother, who died sometime when Will was a toddler. As Pop’s older brother, Uncle Mark was the one to pass on “the Rules” of the neighborhood to Pop. Mark was an extraordinarily tall man who was always impeccably dressed in suits, dress shoes, and jewelry, with a cigarette tucked behind his ear. There are lots of photos of Uncle Mark around Will’s house, and Will has heard several stories about his uncle—so in some ways, it feels like he knows Uncle Mark when Mark’s ghost shows up in the elevator on Will’s way down to his apartment building’s lobby. In life, Uncle Mark was an aspiring filmmaker. He filmed everything on a camera he received for his birthday, but his dream was to make a movie based on Pop and Will’s mother’s dramatic and romantic early relationship. Though Mark started to film, he lost his camera before he could finish. To make the money for a new camera, he began selling drugs. This led to Mark being shot to death a few months later. Will shares that Uncle Mark wasn’t one to get a job or steal (stealing would require running, which might make him sweat or muss his clothes), so dealing drugs seemed like his best option. As a ghost, Uncle Mark plays the role of both a roughhousing peer and a somewhat scary authority figure. He menacingly makes Will tell the truth about his plan to avenge Shawn’s own shooting death, and then forces Will to walk through the “scene” of killing Carlson Riggs (who Will believes killed Shawn). Doing so exposes the cracks in Will’s resolve. Later, the ghost of Uncle Mark helps the ghost of Pop explain what went wrong when Pop tried to follow the Rules and avenge Uncle Mark’s death.