For the briefest moment, when Quentin says 'that's not like- him', he wonders if Mysterio was something like the Goblin, but that's ridiculous. He immediately realizes he's trying to put too much of himself into the read and tries to listen more objectively. Five years - that was how long that Snap thing had lasted. So Quentin had done a lot of 'what if it had been me' thinking, by the sound of things. Norman knows the feeling of being trapped with one's own darker thoughts - he'd chased enough of them down with bourbon back home, hadn't he? About Caroline, about his parents, Harry, school, all of it. What If It Happened Differently.

But what if nothing ever comes... wasn't that the question hanging over all of them, their own Swords of Damocles in one way or another? But Quentin was asking it as though he didn't still have several good decades ahead of him, as Norman himself did. As though all that was left to do was sit around.

"You created Mysterio when you didn't think you had anything, too, didn't you? You never know. There could be something else between your ears waiting to shake loose."