Mark is being made a fool. If it wasn’t for his bleeding heart stupid friends getting in the way, he would have figured it out. He was asking the right questions of this “Seance Dog”
That is ShapeSmith. The Creepy Dude that was hanging around the Guardians. When he was telling his “backstory” to them it kept showing flashbacks to a devastated martian colony. It was implied that ShapeSmith was the “infected astronaut” in those flashbacks. Mark had the guy on the right questions, the shapeshifter even admitted to manipulation when mark asked “Why did you take form of Seance Dog?”. Its clear that the “ShapeSmith” was stalking mark because he saw him save Seance Dog from the trash. However ShapeSmith is oblivious to context (mark first night at college) and shows up as his childhood toy. ShapeSmith is obvious that he is focused only on his one goal… speading alien horror and he’s looking for the strongest vector to carry it out across the galaxy. Mark is being played. That is NOT OMNI MAN. They are going to mentally dope-a-rope Mark and I am absolutely terrified what is going to happen to him.
Shapesmith is a martian who is taking the form of Rus Livingston, the astronaut who was possessed by the hive-minded Sequids as a host to allow for the takeover of Mars and potentially Earth. The only thing Shapesmith has done wrong is lie about his origin and race, keeping the potential Sequid threat a secret from Cecil and the Guardians. He is completely disconnected from Mark at this point.
I am a bit confused abt nuolzot tho, even if he was shapeshifting how tf did he fly and straight up do magic like that when pretending to be the dog