Did you know? In kr Owen is actually being re-evaluated lately.

“We were wrong about him. He wasn’t some self-insert or ideological character —he was just meant to be a young boy.The reason he seemed rude to the protagonist or always got help from otherswas simply because, in the original concept, he wasn’t an adult — just a kid.”

“He was supposed to be a character people could joke about like, ‘Liking Owen doesn’t make you gay,’but instead he ended up being seen as a tragic coup/NTR-type character.According to the early drafts, he was actually written as a genuinely good character.”

There’s another interesting detail that’s recently come up.

Korean players believe that Owen was originally meant to die in the story,

and that the player’s role was to loop through time to save him.

Now, about Owen’s name — there’s actually a hidden clue in it.

Owen is the culprit in the mystery novel And Then There Were None,

which includes this line from a nursery rhyme:

“Four little soldiers sailing out to sea,

a smoked herring swallowed one,

and then there were three.”

The “smoked herring” here refers to a red herring,

a term used in mystery fiction to describe a false clue.

If you dig deeper, there are three “Red Herring” archetypes often referenced in storytelling:

Red Herring Shirt, Red Herring Mole, and Red Herring Twist.

Red Herring Shirt — when a seemingly minor, cute, or harmless character unexpectedly dies.

Red Herring Mole — when someone who seems loyal ends up betraying or sacrificing someone.

Red Herring Twist — when an event deliberately subverts the reader’s expectations or rewrites the story’s reality.

Based on that, you can actually tie Owen’s name to all three:

Red Herring Shirt: Owen, a cute character with little initial importance, dies unexpectedly.

Red Herring Mole: the protagonist, who seemed like someone who’d never abandon a crewmate, ends up sacrificing Owen.

Red Herring Twist: the time loop becomes a way to undo the captain’s “first sin” — Owen’s death — and erase that trauma.