Bringing these three characters together wasn’t always a part of Shyamalan’s plan, but the psychological conflict at the heart of all of these stories was too good of an opportunity to pass up. As he explained to The New York Times, Glass “is very philosophical and playing a chess match.” And, per, Shyamalan further expanded on the idea that he wanted to dig into the grounded sort of questions a scenario like this would pose to the real world. “Are they are they deluded to think these things? Or is that belief in oneself ultimately something that truly makes them something more?,” he explained. “Even if we can do extraordinary things, is it something that we’re interpreting when we do that or are some people really special or not?”