The Oldest View


The Oldest View is a mystery thriller web series created by American YouTuber and filmmaker Kane Parsons. Production on the series began in January 2023, shortly after his Backrooms series entered a temporary hiatus. The series debuted in March 2023 with the episode "Renewal," which has over 3 million views as of 2025. In April 2024, the latest installment, "Dispersal," was released, as Parsons went on to continue production on his Backrooms series.
The series is related to a real life mall called Valley View Center, which was completely demolished in May 2023, except the mall has somehow manifested underground, with the only entrances to it being holes in the ground with concrete stairs leading down to the mall. The main protagonist of the series is a character named Wyatt, who ventures through the mall, recording on his phone to uncover its mysteries, with a giant rolling puppet within that tries to catch Wyatt and presumably kill him.

Premise

Set primarily in May 2023, the series follows Wyatt, a young YouTube vlogger who documents his exploration in the Valley View Center, which is mysteriously found a mile underground via a tunnel containing concrete stairs, all while a giant rolling puppet is in pursuit of him.

Episodes

Development and themes

During an interview with photographer Desolar, Parsons recalled that the conception for the series began in the summer of 2021, after he wrapped up work on his Attack on Titan shorts and before he began working on his Backrooms videos. During this time, Parsons began to view images of places that struck a strange familiarity with him, while eerie music was being played in the background. Then, he came across an image of a bizarre uncanny statue located in a dead mall. He decided to download and save it onto his computer. Parsons revisited the downloaded image in December 2022, while he began to write his 19th Backrooms video, "Damage Control." Out of curiosity, he decided to search the origins of this image and ultimately found that it was a part of archive photos of the real Valley View Center located in Dallas, Texas. The image sparked a childlike feeling of both fear and curiosity.
Parsons then got on a Discord chat with his friends and shared the image. He was also constantly talking about the uncanny and unnerving feeling that came with it, which they found annoying. At the same time, they realized the statue, which was a Julien Reverchon giant, was real since there were similar photos scattered all over the internet. They were thinking about meeting with the artist behind it, Kevin Obregón, but ultimately decided not to since Parsons didn't want to kill the mystery surrounding it. In January 2023, the group began to get together on weekend chats to search all over the internet specifically for images that had the Julien Reverchon giant, which they found entertaining. Parsons was trying to figure out how this could fit with his Backrooms series since it was built on liminal horror. The limitations he found was that people would think he was just "shoehorning something in," something he tried to avoid with his work. Realizing this can't fit with the series, Parsons decided to start production on a separate series surrounding the giant that was true to reality.
In February 2023, one of his friends, Corrupt, began to recreate the mall using Blender, after gaining an obsession with the image Parsons showed him. He would replicate the geometry of specific sections of the mall – such as the food court and fountains, while Parsons would texture and detail everything. What they found frustrating was that they had to use reference images of the real Valley View Center and line everything up with the camera movements.
During the interview with Desolar, Parsons stated that it was a personal project just to fulfill his desires and interests while entertaining himself. He said: "There's some truth to it, but I feel like it's also a crutch to lean on when your work is sort of relying on vagueness and ambiguity." Initially, Parsons didn't have high hopes for the series on YouTube, as people saw that he was being too vague with his vision. He said that despite these videos being less popular than his Backrooms series, it has had the best reception out of any of his previous projects.
Parsons stated that it was "the scariest thing I've made." Within the first few hours of the video, "Renewal," people began sharing their accounts of visiting and working at the Valley View Center when they were younger. Parsons said: "It's just so cool to see how it's reaching back to all of these real people who interacted with this real place." Parsons intended the series for this audience in mind, seeing that even if some people never went to the mall in their lives, these places would resonate with their memories very quickly. Parsons aimed this project to not take place in an alternate universe, but instead, be represented as a dramatized realization of real places that existed and will never be seen again.

Reception

Reception for the series has been largely positive. Many viewers and critics have been praising it as a creative and ambitious leap forward for Parsons, temporarily moving from a government conspiracy thriller aesthetic to something more abstract and existential. The series' antagonist, the Rolling Giant, has generated a point of fascination, with many viewers describing it as one of the best antagonists in the analog horror genre due to its ambiguous nature and unsettling design.
The series' connection to real-life locations and historical figures, such as the Valley View Mall in Dallas and botanist Julien Reverchon, has also sparked a lot of community-driven analysis and theorizing, as discussions have been revolving around the series' deeper meanings as well as the themes of liminality, impermanence, history, and memory.