There’s one chink in the armor of Frank Tilghman’s “everyone murder Brad Wesley together and then lie about it” plan. And yes, I’m assuming it was his plant. He delivers the killshot. He drops the one-liner. When Emmet and Strodenmire and Red Webster all ask each other if they saw what happened, per the sheriff’s request, they fail to ask Tilghman too; they know, without being told, that the Double Deuce owner’s role in the downfall of Brad Wesley must go unspoken.

Who do they ask instead? Who gets the final “You see anything?” The fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench, the pain in the ass: Tinker.

Tinker is Brad Wesley’s sole surviving core goon. He is the only man in the Wesley organization present at his house on that day not to be brutally murdered by Dalton and his accomplices. No one knows better than he how the balance of power has shifted. No one knows better than he whose town this now is. Despite the fact that he came closer than any other goon to killing Dalton, way back in that fight in Tilghman’s office when he knifed the cooler’s side, Tinker is reconsidering his loyalties, and reconsidering them fast.

But he’s still been asked by Red Webster if he’d seen anything. Like Red and Emmet and Pete, he needs to say something to answer the question. The police want to know. What can he say that will allay the suspicions not just of the cops regarding his complicity, but of Dalton and the town worthies regarding his newfound allegiance to their cause? What are the magic words?

“A polar bear fell on me.”

That’s it. That’s his reply.

“A polar bear fell on me.”

That’s the final word on the death of Brad Wesley and the triumph of Dalton and his friends.

“A polar bear fell on me.”

That’s Tinker coming to terms with Dalton sparing him the fate of all his fellow goons by toppling a taxidermied animal on top of him.

“A polar bear fell on me.”

That’s…that’s…that’s the final line of dialogue in the film. That’s the note on which the filmmakers wish to leave us. That’s the last word, the summary statement. That’s “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” That’s Road House beating on, corpses against the current, borne ceaselessly into the JC Penney.

“A polar bear fell on me.”

Fin.

No one comes closer to killing Dalton than Tinker. No one. Not Jimmy, in all his beachside posturing and martial-arts prowess. Not Ketcham with his knife. Not Pat McGurn with his shotgun. No, way back when, when he and O’Connor travel to the Double Deuce to forcibly reinstate Pat to his bartending sinecure, Tinker opens a gash in Dalton’s side that it takes a hospital visit and medical intervention from Dr. Elizabeth Clay to close. A few inches to one side and this movie would have ended a long time ago, at Tinker’s hands.

Yet in the end, Tinker is a comical figure, a Pierrot in suspenders and a trucker hat. Why? Because he’s afraid of Brad Wesley’s extensive collection of stuffed and mounted animals, and Dalton exploits this fear by dumping a stuffed polar bear on him, knocking him out. But first, Tinker stammers and sputters and empties his gun into the thing’s inanimate carcass, as if he’s facing not just a living polar bear, but a spectral polar bear, a Tuunbaq, sent from the Arctic wastes to consume his very soul. Everyone else in the goon squad gets popped offscreen, or gets a knife to the torso. Tinker? He’s dispatched by taxidermy.

“You’re made for each other,” Dalton quips after toppling the bear onto his enemy, incapacitating him. This is a fat joke, most likely; Tinker is the most heavyset of the goon squad, ergo a big ol’ bear is his logical nemesis. But keep this in mind: Tinker is the sole survivor, after Jimmy and Morgan and O’Connor and Ketcham and Pat McGurn and even Brad Wesley are long gone. And what animal knows better how to survive in an inhospitable environment? Perhaps that’s the message Dalton intended to send: Survivors know.