When Hamilton the first success of Broadway in the year 2015, it blew audiences away with its creative storytelling and musical performances. Now, a new audience is introduced to the award-winning musical with the film in Disney+. If you’ve seen the live show or you’re watching for the first time, there are so many intricate details of all, you might need to rewatch a few times just to catch all of them. Case in point: the innovative way death is portrayed throughout the show.
While Hamilton, Burr, and Eliza play big roles in the story, one of the most important characters of the Vignette. Played by the ensemble of cast members Ariana DeBose in the Hamilton film (pictured above on the right), the Bullet is literally death personified. In fact, the Bullet is one of the first characters to die in the show. After King George III sings the song “you’ll be Back,” she discovers that acts as a spy and a redcoat hollow of his neck.
On multiple occasions, the Bullet foreshadows the death of several characters. During the “Yorktown”, the performance, the Bullet gives you a hand to John Laurens, who finally dies in a couple of songs later, and during the “Blow Us All away,” she tells Philip Hamilton where to find it Eaker, who finally kills Felipe in a duel. More significantly, the character that portrays the bullet that kills Alexander Hamilton in “The World Was Quite Large.”
If you rewatch the show, you will notice that the The bullet actually has multiple interactions with Hamilton during the whole show. “It is very intense for me, because I always know that I’m pointing to him – even if the rest of the members of the group not,” DeBose said The Great Discontent. “So, even if I’m just a lady in a ball gown at a party, there is still a part of my character that you know that time is going to come. You can look at the final duel in a couple of different ways. We are slowing the bullet down to give Hamilton time to say everything you want to say, or what we’re saying, ‘This is it. It is inevitable. What is going on, so that you can look right in the face.’ There are a lot of different ways to interpret it. It was really special to create something like that, because it is inspired by a lot of different parts we have already seen, it is very Array-as. I’ve never seen a moment on the stage as her.”
Image Source: Getty / Walter McBride
