Miles Valence

**Miles Valence**, often known as simply **Valence**, is a character on the Paramount+ original series *Rabbit Hole*. He is portrayed by Jason Butler Harner and by Finlay Wojtak-Hissong in flashbacks of the character's youth.

## Profile

Valence is a business associate of John Weir who gives him a fateful assignment.

## History

Miles Valence is John Weir's oldest and possibly only true friend. The two of them met after John was sent to a private school as a child following the apparent suicide of his father, Ben. A troubled student, John nevertheless recognized Valence's keen intellectual mind. He presented him with a book titled *The Mathematics of Combination Locks*, asking for his help with cracking safe that his father left behind.

Within the safe, John and Valence discover a number of documents including a treatise titled "The Algorithms of Control." John is at first upset, as whatever he was expecting within the safe wasn't this. Sobbing, he tells Valence that his father didn't care about him. Valence, however, tells him that this isn't so. When John asks him how he knows, he explains that people don't just use random numbers for things they want to remember, but something that means something to them. The combination for the safe was an alphanumeric which spelt "J-O-H-N."

John and Valence use the materials found within the safe as the basis of a corporation which specializes in using psychological manipulation to help businesses to gain an edge up on their competitors. This includes tactics such as infiltrating market research for potential competing products and influencing the opinions of the testers, delaying product launches for potentially as much as a year.

As children, Valence and John learned the story of the *Epic of Gilgamesh* as part of their studies. The story struck a deep chord with them, particularly the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

One day, Valence is stunned to learn from John that a man has come to him, claiming to be his father. The man claims to have faked his own suicide in order to go into deep cover to take down a man named Crowley whose ambitions involve secretly taking over the entire United States. The both of them conclude that the man must be both lying and mentally disturbed, as the various conspiracy theories he raised to John are outlandish. They are, however, forced to accept the truth of the matter when one of these theories comes true before their very eyes. Reluctantly, they agree to help the man, now going by the name Ben Wilson, to bring down Crowley.

Ben's plan involves splitting off the company that John and Valence built into two companies, one of them now a publicly traded company run by Valence named Arda Analytics. Knowing that Crowley will be attracted to the data-gathering capabilities of the new company, Valence becomes the public face, while John continues to work undercover at the original company. Valence allows Crowley to infiltrate his company, thinking that he is playing him. However, things go badly wrong when he realizes that it is *Crowley* who has outplayed him instead.

Crowley gives Valence an order to kill John, wanting no loose ends. Valence had thought he could convince him he was on his side without ever actually being on his side, but knows at this point that Crowley has eyes and ears all over Arda. As he is not about to kill his best friend, he commits suicide himself, but not before recording a message for John informing him of the truth, which he secretly posts to John's ex-wife, Olivia Bonen. He tells John that no matter what happens, he is a dead man. He tells him that he still has a chance and that he hopes he can find somebody else to rely on, but he knows that he will be okay because he's stronger than he thinks he is.

The suicide of Valence rattles John deeply. His entire world crumbling around him, John questions whether Valence even committed suicide at all. He continues to try to contact Valence through a back-channel the two of them established. He is even more confused when he eventually gets a response, not knowing that the response is actually from Crowley, who secretly discovered this channel. It is not until he finally watches Valence's recording that he understands the truth and steels his resolve to take down Crowley once and for all.

## References

1. ↑ Snierson, Dan (January 6, 2023). 'Things are not what they seem' in first look at Kiefer Sutherland's thriller *Rabbit Hole*. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on February 25, 2023.