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Scott: Why should I help? What's in it for me?

Adam: It'll get you two steps closer to Heaven. And if I had to guess, I'd say you're a few steps closer to somewhere else.

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The same Stack that repeatedly fucked Mary? After telling her they couldn't be together? After asking her to leave? Yes, the relationship would be unsafe (for Mary too mind you, there's a reason Stack tells her he got her a nice white husband and to stay hidden), but y'all are weird as hell for not acknowledging Stack was a willing participant.

I agree; I don't understand how people say that Mary was chasing Stack either. She recognized that he was putting up a front to push her away, likely because she was one of the few—if not the only woman—who could see his vulnerability. She knew he loved her and could see through his façade. In fact, he even confirms that he was being deceptive.

When Stack confesses his love for her, he removes his hat and places it over his heart as a sign of respect and true affection. He is tired of pretending and finally decides to be honest with her, which is what she has wanted him to do all along.

He said, "You think that I love you? That I think about you every day? I just wanted to keep you somewhere safe, and that was never going to be here, nor was it ever going to be with me. Never." Essentially, he never stopped loving her and he never will. In that very moment, he is still very much in love with her.

Stack wasn't talking to Mary; it was Elias, the man she had always known and loved, and who had loved her in return. This is a lifetime of love for someone, it just doesn't go away that easily.

He didn't know at the time, but he is her safe place—the place where she feels she can be 100% herself and loved for it.

You're 100% on the money with this. I've never understood how people can watch the movie, listen to his speech to her, and still view Mary as chasing him when he didn't want her.

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Can someone please explain to me the reasons for the different eye colors? I'm confused.

At first, when Mary was turned and she bit Stack she had yellow eyes then she had emerald green,What does that mean?

Remmick had Red Eyes, Cornbread, Bo Chow, and others had white eyes, What does that symbolize?

These are the reasons I think they had. (Keep in mind, these are just my theories. I don't think it's explicitly explained in the movie. Though, please correct me if I'm mistaken!)

The red eyes are likely age/strength related. Remmick is ridiculously old and a very powerful vampire, so it would make sense he has different colored eyes. It also just looks more menacing from a standpoint of film making. Red is a character heavily associated with power and evil in media.

New vampires have white eyes as far as I can tell. White is a very void color. I can see it being representative of submission or just being "vacant" since we know Remmick's mind-controlling them to some extent. (Bert and Joan are a perfect example.)

Yellow eyes might have just been the light messing with the color of the contacts. Or it could've represented her still being kind of on the fringes of mind-control. We also see Mary be the only one who pauses to scream for Annie when she dies which kind of adds to that theory.

We see Mary's eyes green once Stack is turned I think to symbolize her connection to him and humanity through him. I also want to add that as far as symbolism goes, it could also be a nod to the garden of Eden and Lucifer (in snake form) leading Eve to "corrupt" Adam.

Interestingly enough, Stack's eyes are the only ones that are blue which is absolutely a nod to the connection he has with Smoke and thus humanity in my opinion. We also see Mary's eyes become blue by the end of the movie once they're out from Remmick's control which I think adds to this.

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I agree. Stack doesn’t seem like the type to stay with someone out of infatuation, lust, or simply because of familiarity, which can be boring. He stayed because he truly loved her. There probably was some resentment, but he let it go. If he truly had hated or resented her, we would have seen that in the final scene with him, Mary, and little Sammie.

When Stack says, "For one night, WE were free," He didn't say you & I to Sammie, he said WE, which means it includes Mary; they want him to hate her so badly.

It's also just very clear he loves her. Like so much of their scenes together are him caring about her in one way or another. Stack did something that directly hurt him (giving Mary up) so she could have a better, safer life. I don't understand how people think he didn't love her.

And I completely agree about initial resentment, but to be honest, he would have resented anyone who had separated him and Smoke. We see it a bit with Annie too. But the fact is he stayed with her, he kept her by his side, he brought her to see SAMMIE.

And absolutely. Every character in that movie loved and included Mary so much. Like Annie said, she's here because she's family. The insistence that Mary was an outsider or an interloper or forcing herself into spaces lacks so much critical thinking. I genuinely don't know how much more clearly the movie needed to "she is family" for people to get she was one of them. They loved her.

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I agree; I don't understand how people say that Mary was chasing Stack either. She recognized that he was putting up a front to push her away, likely because she was one of the few—if not the only woman—who could see his vulnerability. She knew he loved her and could see through his façade. In fact, he even confirms that he was being deceptive.

When Stack confesses his love for her, he removes his hat and places it over his heart as a sign of respect and true affection. He is tired of pretending and finally decides to be honest with her, which is what she has wanted him to do all along.

He said, "You think that I love you? That I think about you every day? I just wanted to keep you somewhere safe, and that was never going to be here, nor was it ever going to be with me. Never." Essentially, he never stopped loving her and he never will. In that very moment, he is still very much in love with her.

Stack wasn't talking to Mary; it was Elias, the man she had always known and loved, and who had loved her in return. This is a lifetime of love for someone, it just doesn't go away that easily.

He didn't know at the time, but he is her safe place—the place where she feels she can be 100% herself and loved for it.

You're 100% on the money with this. I've never understood how people can watch the movie, listen to his speech to her, and still view Mary as chasing him when he didn't want her.

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What do you think would've happened if Cornbread had been bitten first?

Hi there! Sorry for taking so long to answer this, I needed to sit and think on it a little bit.

Ultimately, I think Cornbread being bitten first could have absolutely saved the rest of the group (for the most part.) Part of the reason they did so well was because it was Mary.

Mary is bitten and Cornbread in turn lets her in. She's got one of the best chances of getting past Cornbread and Cornbread is the one with the best chance of letting someone back in, especially Mary. She's seen as less of a threat than Cornbread, particularly because she's less physically imposing. (Like Annie asks, "when has your big ass ever needed to be let in somewhere?")

Mary biting Stack is also a huge gamechanger. We see Smoke getting close to accepting being turned because it's Stack. I don't see him reacting the same way to anybody else being turned with the exception of maybe Annie and even then, I can see Stack taking the place of Annie if she was turned instead of him. (With the whole "you've got someone waiting on you" and their baby. I can definitely see him staying alive to be with Stack and his child one day. Though, this relies on them having the information beforehand.)

I don't see Cornbread as having as good of a chance getting back in and being able to bite someone as stealthily as Mary did. To me, it was a bit of sheer luck that they'd realized Mary was a vampire as quickly as they did. Whereas Cornbread would have to kind of bite someone out in the open. Or be a very stealthy vampire that was biting people outside and then letting them back in without anybody ever finding out.

Honestly, to give the vampires the best chance of winning, they would've needed to bite Annie first in my opinion. Annie gets bitten first and it's game over to me.

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I don't think people understand that they were doomed from the start, and blaming Mary and Grace doesn't negate the fact that the juke joint would always end in tragedy; people were going to die regardless. Even if they weren't there Remmick would've been biting people as they left out the juke joint, and he most definitely would've gotten Cornbread.

Both women were selfish to some extent, but if you remove them from the situation, the outcome would likely still have occurred. I believe they overlook the fact that Remmick took advantage of Mary and manipulated Grace by threatening to harm her child.

The Vampires were coming for Sammie's music, and the KKK were coming regardless. "This is a slaughterhouse." "It's a got damn killing floor". If the Irish mob and Italian gangs had figured out that Stack and Smoke had robbed them, they were going to come looking to collect. This is why Stack and Smoke returned home in the first place: they needed a place to hide.

You're absolutely right. I feel like I've mentioned this before, but one of the big points of Sinners was the fact there was never going to be a happy ending to that night. That's the entire point. They were doomed from the minute they bought that space because on top of the supernatural aspect, they still were black people seeking freedom in Jim Crow south. The tragedy of their situation is rooted firmly in reality too.

As you said, they would either left eventually and been killed by vampires or they would have stayed and been gunned down or set on fire by the KKK. Most of their weapons were outside. A lot was working against them, they were never supposed to win. I also don't think the fact that so many of them died just so Sammie could live (the "happy ending" so to speak) gets spoken about enough.

It's a reflection of the civil rights movement as a whole to me. So many marginalized people died in the fight to ensure the younger marginalized people would have a better chance at being safe.

And about the women, I think the tagline of the movie gets ignored by so many fans. "We are all sinners." None of them are supposed to be perfect, but you're also not supposed to look at their very human flaws and view them as the villain because of it. I think fandom in general has an issue with black and white thinking. Characters are either heroes (they've never done anything wrong in their entire life) or they're villains (they've done Something Wrong, which makes them Bad and Evil.) And that's just not the way people work.

I think a lot of people struggle with, "but I like this character, so they can't have done something stupid/bad/naive."

I also do really like the last point you brought up because I haven't seen it mentioned and I hadn't even really thought about it. I'd say Stack and Smoke were inherently a little selfish too when it came to returning at all. They were likely to bring trouble with them and they took it back home.

I also feel like people have a tendency to say Mary was selfish about love when Stack and Smoke were also selfish about love. And I don't see that mentioned nearly as much or with as much vitriol. Smoke left Annie while they were grieving the loss of their child. Stack continued sleeping with Mary, despite knowing he would distance himself from her. It's hard to argue Mary was selfish for continuing to "chase" Stack when Stack was also continuing to be with Mary.

It's always a bit odd to me when people look at a manipulator and the manipulated, and pin the blame on the manipulated. Grace had her husband and her child weaponized against her with the specific purpose of manipulating her into coming outside/letting them in. It's extremely weird to pin the blame on the person being manipulated instead of the one doing the manipulation. It's especially weird to me when we factor in the race themes of the movie and we see people treating the victims of color with more vitriol than the white perpetrators. It always rubs me the wrong way to see people vilify Grace more than they do Remmick and I'd encourage them to examine why they're holding that view.

Whether it comes from a place of victim-blaming, racism, both, or something else.

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Yeah, I disliked how Mary approached Stack at the train station, but after rewatching it, I realize she was not in her right mind when she saw him. I'm not excusing her behavior, but she had just buried her mother and was grieving. Seeing the man she has loved since childhood must have been overwhelming, especially since neither he nor his brother attended her mother's funeral (of course, they didn't know), then Stack wanted to act like the last time they saw each other, as if nothing ever happened between them.

I love how, when Stack learns that his mother has passed away, he genuinely looks hurt. It’s as if he wants to grab her, hug her, hold her, kiss her, and tell her how sorry he is for her loss. However, he restrains himself because of the circumstances they are in. Fantastic job by Michael B. Jordan!

Sinners is a lot like Interview With The Vampire to me where some fans are insistent on finding a character who didn't make any bad choices. The point of Sinners is that they're all people, they make choices that aren't the smartest/the best because that's what people do. Nobody in Sinners is perfect all the time and that doesn't make them any less deserving of love and respect.

I really liked that Sinners pushed home the fact that they were all family. That's why it's always so weird to me when people treat Mary like a villain because she is explicitly and consistently considered family by the people in the movie.

She undoubtedly made some choices that weren't the smartest, but they all came from a very understandable place. I'm not at all surprised that the woman who was abandoned by the man she loved, forced into a marriage she didn't want, was forced to distance herself from her family, had her mother just die, and then the man who she loved seemed to completely disregard her/her mother made some poor choices.

Anybody would in that circumstance.

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Local vampire crashes juke joint to mansplain racism

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And would I be so wrong if I said Mark in the reverse bear trap was a devastatingly sexy scene?

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Bert: facial expressions and body language appreciation

(Joan post here)

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Vampire Stack and Human Stack weren't very different, but I believe Stack loved his new reality. I do think he accepted it for Mary, but probably wouldn't have chosen it for himself. What do you think?

I think you're absolutely right! I do think Stack would have loved vampirism if it had worked out right, meaning having Smoke and Annie there with them too. I think he loved the idealized version of it, but just accepted/tolerated it once he lost his family (besides Mary.)

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I was always confused about their ages.

Is Stack, Smoke, and Annie older than Mary?

Mary and Sammie appear to be close in age, with her seeming a few years older than him, but I could be wrong.

I believe the twins were a few years older than Mary. Since they were practically raised in the same house, I assume they were present when her mom gave birth to her. However, I want to emphasize that this is all speculation and not based on reality or what was said in the movie.

Oh, I am SO bad with ages. I always assumed they were a bit older than Mary. I could see Annie being the oldest out of them, Stack and Smoke a little younger than her, and Mary a little younger than them. I do think she's a bit older than Sammie, though, because she calls him "little Sammie"

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Stack is just like me, TOXIC. I know it's not healthy, and I'm working on not being toxic at all, but I relate to him, that's why he's my favorite character. He pushes the woman he loves away to protect her, which is the same thing I've done before but to say he didn't love that girl is crazy.

I'm not a fan of interracial relationships, or in other words, "swirl 🍥 dating" either, but let's be for real.

Staying with the same person for 60 years out of lust, infatuation, familiarity, and convenience sounds quite boring, specifically for STACK of all people, and especially if there is, according to the Sinner's fanbase, "no love." There must be some form or type of "love" that has kept him with her for so long.

"I'm not a fan of interracial relationships, or in other words, "swirl 🍥 dating" either, but let's be for real."

This is not a safe space for racism.

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Why do you think people say that Stack didn't love Mary?

I think a big chunk of it comes from people disliking Mary. They view her actions as chasing him and trying to "encroach on black culture." I've seen people call her a white savior. They look at Stack pushing Mary away and see it as a rejection of her, rather than what it is which is him wanting to keep her safe.

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television's most homoerotic scene, 2005