It was ovious the first Master had some special powers so to speak. That in mind, how do you think he got from the island to the shore all those times to spy on his apprentice when his apprentice had taken the rowboat? he didn't swim because his clothes and hair were never wet. That was the only thing that bugged me a little.

When the apprentice is running away with the girl, the master says, "Love leads to passion, which leads to murder" or something of that sort. In the fall sequence, the apprentice comes back having killed his wife and her lover. I just thought it was a little too on the nose.

He killed the ill girl when she cheated on him.

she'd be in her 50's or 60's by then, there's no way she'd have an infant...unless it's a grandchild, but even then, she's already been killed.

The older man at the end. I, like I expect most viewers, assumed it was the convict who was the boy apprentice but they never came out and said it. Could have been a cell mate who learned of the island temple, master, and ways of the pond from the original apprentice. Point being that someone returned to take up The Way again.

I thought it kind of curious that she always had a veil on, that he tried to remove it similar to when the young apprentice tried to touch the young girl, and the way she touched his hand then, like she knew him. I dunno, I thought it might be her, I.E. could have been the story in the paper was about *someone* who killed over love, thus proving the Master right about posessions in general - the photo didn't look like our protagonist to me.

The apprentice explicitally tells the master that he killed the wife and her lover. There's no doubt he did it. Also, the reason the final guy doesn't look like the others is because it's the director of the film, not an actor cast to look like the others. And I remember in the end credits that each actor is credited as the same character, which to me is proof enough that the guy at the end is the same apprentice.