Frankenstein’s monster must always turn on his creator, and with one punch directed at Wade Garrett’s face, Dalton renders himself monstrous. Look: You can see his fear of what he’s becoming all over his face. It’s not just that he tried to strike his mentor down, though one can only imagine what he would have felt and done had he succeeded. It’s that the violence within himself, the violence he has kept at bay for years by obeying the Three Simple Rules and walking the Dalton Path, the violence he lets out only when it’s time to not be nice, the violence that has haunted him since Memphis—that violence is besting him, growing beyond his control. The dam sprang a leak and it is only through good fortune and Wade Garrett’s own skill that he was able to plug it back up before drowning. Will others be so lucky?

Dalton thinks—Dalton knows, I suspect—that the answer is no. This is why, when he gainsays Frank Tilghman’s assertion that Brad Wesley is afraid of him, he’s only telling half the story. Dalton is afraid of Brad Wesley because Brad Wesley is not afraid of him—because without that fear Wesley is free to act in such a way as to bring out the side of Dalton that Dalton is afraid of. It’s that side of him that scares him worse than anything.

Perhaps he can see himself mirrored in Wade Garrett’s eyes in this moment. Perhaps he sees what is happening to him as clearly as we do. The horror, the horror of knowing what you’re capable of, and feeling powerless to stop it.

“No, we don’t wanna do this,” Wade Garrett says as he takes Dalton by the hand as only a fellow cooler can: by stopping the punch the younger man just aimed at his face. Toughness and tenderness in a single gesture.

But there’s more.

“I wanna tell you something else,” says the old man: “You taught me as much as I ever taught you.” The teacher has become the student. The Way of Wade Garrett, shaped by the Dalton Path as it shapes the Dalton Path. Applied Philosophy 101.

But there’s still more, and it means more than anything.

“I love you, mijo.”

At last, at long last, the subtext is text. More than a teacher, advisor, mentor, friend. Mijo means “son.” A father’s love, bestowed mere seconds after the son tried to kill the father. There is no love greater.

“I’ll see you.” Wade Garrett departs, leaving his mijo, his Dalton, to contemplate his words, and to succeed or fail in the quest he has chosen to take on. He is armed in Wade Garrett’s love, now.

We will soon see what happens when that love is taken away.

Wade Garret is calm. Cool. Collected. Most importantly, clothed. After the events of the past two days he’s ready to blow this popsicle stand (whether or not Brad Wesley brought the Good Humor Man to Jasper is unknown) and head on down the road. He wants his amigo, his mijo, to come with him. “You don’t need this,” he says, referring to Brad Wesley, to Jasper, to blown-up auto parts stores and run-over auto dealerships and aggressive stripteases.

“Don’t tell me what I need!” Dalton growls as he hits the heavy bag like a man possessed. “If you wanna go, go, get the fuck out of here and leave me alone!”

There’s a juvenile growl that creeps into his voice in that last phrase. The sound of a child desperately telling a bully to cut it out, a teenager yelling at his mom to get out of his room, Karen from GoodFellas reverting to girlhood and shouting “You don’t know how I feel!” at her mother when she complains about Henry Hill’s late-night gallivanting. Dalton, too, reverts to childhood around his mentor.

If Wade were thinking more clearly he’d know that this would happen, he’d know that telling Dalton what to do when he’s like this all but guarantees the opposite outcome. But I think it’s less naïveté that animates Wade’s words and more a grim premonition of the future should he and Dalton stick around. Horny Marines and drunken yokels they can handle. Brad Wesley and his goon army have proven themselves to be a whole new order of trouble. Faced with overwhelming firepower, the Way of Wade Garrett is to walk away, before it’s too late.

Alas.