10 Surprisingly Dark Moments In Laika's Missing Link

Shortly after Link meets Frost, he invites Frost into his cave. One of the main features is a cave drawing that explains why Link is the only remaining sasquatch. The painting depicts a primitive tribe shooting arrows at two large creatures, one of which has liquid streaming from its eyes.

While the streams in question might very well indicate tears, the darkness of their coloring seems to indicate blood. Either way, there are dark implications here. This cave is Link's home, which can only be possible because the tribe that made the cave drawings doesn't live here anymore.

Does this mean that Link destroyed the tribe? Not likely. Link lives close to an Old West saloon, or at least as western a saloon as you can find in the Pacific Northwest. The likeliest explanation is that the tribe that made these drawings was hunted by the civilization that now lives nearby.

This suggests an unfortunately accurate narrative in which a Native American tribe was hunted by European settlers. The fact that this same tribe hunted Link's family suggests an odd cycle, an entirely new version of American history in which the same tribes hunted by settlers were responsible for wiping other civilizations out of existence themselves.

Rather than an accurate depiction of Native Americans as victims of westward expansion, we now see them as similarly greedy and uncaring murderers. It complicates our understanding of American history in a very strange, unsettling manner.