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twdmusicboxmystery · 7 years ago

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8x08: Details

Okay, let’s talk details in this episode. I have a lot to go over here, so let’s just dive in. I’m going to do individual details first, then I’ll talk overall analysis. (P.S. Sorry that some of the images are grainy. I had to lighten most of them. Everything in this episode was so dark!)

***Again, spoilers abound for 8x08 in this post. You��ve been warned.***

The first thing I noticed was during the flashback to Carl and Rick talking after getting the gas and seeing Siddiq, Carl says, “If you care, you do something.” That’s a callback to two different lines Beth had in S4. There’s the whole, “we might as well do something,” as well as when she talked about the bodies at the funeral home. “It’s beautiful...Whoever did this cared…”

Carl is talking about some way to move forward, and Rick says, “Do you think we’re gonna be picking strawberries with Negan?” That line is super suspect to me. Strawberries really haven’t been mentioned in a bit way since S4/S5 around Beth. We’ve seen a few references here and there, but not many. And we haven’t seen any strawberry patches in the area that might have come to mind for Rick, so this is a very random reference.

The biggest thing in this sequence is that Carl’s dialogue specifically says that Rick will live, but he doesn’t include himself. This is what I’m always saying about dialogue foreshadowing. At this point, Carl hadn’t been bitten yet. He wasn’t trying to prepare Rick for his death yet. So realistically, he should have said “we” and “us” rather than you.

So he’s talking about what comes after the war and says, “there will be something after this is over.” Rick replies, “not for everyone,” meaning that some people will die. (Foreshadow right there.) Carl says, “yeah, maybe not, but what will there be for you? YOU’RE gonna live, Dad.” If he hadn’t been bitten yet, why didn’t he say, “for us? WE’RE gonna live.” ? Again, it’s not an accident. And in the plot, it’s not even a thing. But the writers do this on purpose to foreshadow Carl’s death and where they’re going with this.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, once again, Beth’s dialogue NEVER did this. She never said, “everyone will survive except me,” or “The group will make it” without including herself. Her dialogue was all, “I’m getting out,” “we made it,” “I am strong.” Carl’s wasn’t.

Then we see the close up shots of the faces again. We saw these in episode 1, and Gimple said we’d see them again. Well, here they are. We saw Rick, Carl (with sweat on his face), Carol, Ezekiel, Jerry, and Maggie. One of the first things my group noticed was that Daryl wasn’t included. Remember that Gimple said these shots meant that these characters were gonna go through something in this episode. So not having this episode focus on Daryl was kind of a big clue that this wouldn’t be about Beth.

Carl writing goodbye notes was suspicious to me. I wasn’t thinking he would be bitten. If he died, I thought he’d be killed by Negan or one of the Saviors. So it all felt too purposeful to me. But it makes sense now, unfortunately.

Carl saw an egg in his book. I’ll do a TTD post tomorrow, but this was emphasized in the quiz, so it’s obviously important. The first thing that came to mind is the Easter egg. (I mean literally. Like the holiday eggs left by the Easter Bunny, not just ones TWD writers put in for us to find. ;D) Remember that it’s a major resurrection symbol. So like the phoenix, they’re really signifying that a resurrection is about to take place.

I also really want to draw a parallel between Beth’s note and Carl’s. And not just because they both wrote notes. It occurred to me that in both cases, the note was meant to be found after they were gone. Now, if Beth and Daryl had stayed at the funeral home, the note wouldn’t have been necessary, as Daryl said. But she first wrote it thinking they would leave and wanting to leave something for the house’s owner to find and read. Carl had the same idea. Something to leave his dad after he was gone. And in both cases, the notes were never read. (I’m not sure if Carl’s note was blown up. I suppose if not, Rick might still find it.)

Let’s talk about Enid and Aaron. They found a truck from the Roanoke Distillery. We can only assume it has alcohol in it that they were going to use to bribe the Oceansiders to help them. Now that Natania is dead, Cyndie will probably be less open to the idea. But again, I find it very interesting that Oceanside now has no leader. Because Tara’s opening credits card changed, I don’t think she’ll be leading Oceanside. So who would? Let me think… ;D

The thing is, not only do we have the distillery, which is reminiscent of the moonshine still, but Roanoke is a lost colony. One that disappeared without a trace. It’s disappearance remains a mystery today. Kind of like a certain blond we know? That liked moonshine? Just saying.

Honestly, there were things in the Aaron/Enid sequence that didn’t make a lot of sense to me. They drove the truck and the car to a certain area, but then just waited there, sleeping in the car. We don’t know exactly why they did that. I can only assume it was to wait for the Oceansiders to come to them. But then why did Enid fire without trying to talk to them first? It was just kind of odd.

The fact that both Aaron and Enid (who’ve both been paralleled with Beth at certain points) were sleeping in a car has me side-eyeing this a little bit. And sitting next to the Roanoke Distillery truck no less. But I honestly am not sure where it’s going. I feel like the symbolism is heavy here, but until we see where this Oceanside arc is going, we won’t really understand it.

And by the way, pretty sure the time lines synced up pretty well here. Natania probably died just as Eugene was drinking his liver away, and Rick and Michonne were finding out about Carl’s bite. So we’re all in the same place, several hours before dawn.

There were several 3s. Negan says they have 3 minutes to open the gate or he’s coming through. Later Simon says, “Three guesses” to Maggie. And that one is especially superfluous, because after saying that, he just tells her. She doesn’t guess at all. Why have the line in there for no reason?

Honestly, the whole Maggie sequence (in the car, I mean) was super-interesting to me. First we had the fallen tree. I mentioned it before when the sneak peek first came out. I’m starting to wonder now if the fallen trees are always about death. We saw a fallen tree in 6x14, just before Denise died. Then we saw one here before finding out Carl was bitten. The thing about the trees around Beth is that we saw them after the storm in 5x10, and that was right BEFORE the music box woke up. So I’m wondering if the trees were supposed to represent her still being “dead,” and then the music box = resurrection. I looked it up and found this, which supports my theory:

Anyway, Simon tried to put Maggie (a Greene sister) in a coffin, but didn’t. It just feels like a parallel of Beth not being buried.

Jerry’s note to Ezekiel was ADORABLE, btw. Just wanted to throw that in.

At the gate, Negan is talking about how he wants apologies. He says they can even work up a poem or sing a song. Not the only musical reference in this episode, but a very random one.

We also find out that Negan knows about Gracie and mentions her. Not sure what to make of that, but it’s interesting. He also says there were “children” at the sanctuary. Because Gracie is only one child, that implies there are others. Not sure what to make of that. We’ve never seen children at the Sanctuary before Gracie. So don’t know if there really are more, or Negan is just exaggerating.

We had REALLY heavy dialogue foreshadowing from Carl at this part. He says, “No, I don’t want to die. But I will. It’s gonna happen.” So one more thing I want to point out has to do with THIS post I wrote about a million years ago. Not only the does the dialogue foreshadow the death, but the character has to accept it as well. I made this point with characters like Dale, who said he wouldn’t be part of the world anymore, and T-Dog, who said he’d put himself in God’s hands.

Now, understand this has very little to do with the plot. Of course it’s easy for the characters to accept their deaths if they’re already dying (T-Dog had been bitten as well), but that’s not even the point. The writers make sure the character says something that makes it clear they’ve accepted their own deaths. So they’ll be at peace for themselves. This was Carl doing this. So his death is following the rules and patterns of every other major character death. Except Beth’s.

I don’t think I entirely understood Carl’s plan when watching the first time. In case anyone else didn’t, here it is: he sent the heavy-hitters (Daryl, Tara, Rosita, Michonne) out in the trucks, which broke through Dwight’s wall of cars. This was to make it look like all the Alexandrians were escaping. In truth, only those four even left the walls. Tobin and others rounded up everyone else and took them straight down to the tunnels. The idea is to make Negan think no one is in Alexandria anymore, when really, they’re all safe beneath Alexandria’s turf.

When Daryl led the convoy out, Carl stopped talking to Negan and went down the ladder. The ladder is SUPER interesting to me. I’ve been keeping a close eye on that damn ladder since it first figured prominently in S6. In 6x08 (exactly two seasons ago), Maggie clawed her way up it, and she survived. Here, Carl went down. And I don’t even think it’s the descent that’s important. What’s important is that he fell off of it. And his sheriff’s hat fell off.

As soon as Carl spoilers were first leaked several weeks ago, we started connecting dots. We immediately wondered if Negan knocking Carl’s sheriff’s hat off in 7x01 and 7x16 was a death omen for him. This, in my mind, proves that it was. Because his hat fell of YET AGAIN, right before we learned he’d been bitten.

And guess what guys? If the hat falling off is death omen, that proves that when it fell off in 4x16 (in the flashback), that was a death omen too. Chandler said in an interview (Source) that Carl’s death was 100% story-driven, and not because he asked to leave. So I was right about that particular element. Gimple was planning his death, all the way down to the minute detail of the hat as a death omen, clear back in S4. And who else was in that scene? Beth. So as I said in THIS POST, Rick picking up the hat and putting it on Beth shows that Beth was never gonna return until after Carl’s death. We just didn’t realize it. We would never have guessed that Carl would die. Now that he is, things are really clicking into place where TD is concerned.

Other Musical References: When talking to Maggie, we hear the Fat Lady music again. Simon says they’re using it to lead the rest of the herd away from the Sanctuary. Later, Eugene is telling Gabriel and the doctor that he’s letting them go, and he says something interesting that I had to look up. Doctor Carlson says FG isn’t well enough to travel. Eugene replies that that is conversation the two of them (FG and the doctor) should be having “sotto solo.” I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded familiar and I thought it might be Italian. I was right.

It can mean “in private” or “very quietly,” which is how Eugene meant to use it. But guess what? It’s also a musical term meaning to play very quietly. Remember that we saw those three Ps on the card Tara found in 7x06. We don’t know what they mean yet, but if they’re meant to be the musical PPP, it also means playing very softly. So I’m seeing a theme emerging here, but I don’t know what it means yet.

So two of the three musical references here revolved around Eugene. And the weird thing is, we still don’t know exactly what Eugene’s solution for getting the Saviors out of the Sanctuary was. I’ll talk about this more tomorrow, but Gimple wouldn’t answer what it was either. They’re purposely keeping that information from us, and I really want to know why. It doesn’t seem like it can have anything to do with Beth, but all this music around Eugene is making me uber-suspicious.

Meanwhile, Eugene seems to be self-destructing. It’s obvious he’s already regretting many of his decisions. He’s drinking to make himself feel better. Two things about this:

1) @boltthrutheheart pointed out that his clock changes to 12:00, and Still was episode 12 of S4. Just kind of an interesting number parallel, considering that both episodes feature characters getting drunk. Then there’s all the distillery stuff with Aaron/Enid. Feels like a lot of callbacks to Still.

2) This may be kind of random, but this made me think of Carol’s speech to Tyreese in The Grove. He talked about the dead haunting the living and she said the dead were teaching them, helping them live with the terrible things they have to do to survive.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think one has much to do with the other, other than being a general, show-wide theme. But I was just thinking that Eugene already can’t live with what he’s done to survive. That doesn’t bode well for him. And while we’re on that subject, they showed several times that TF knows it was Eugene who helped the Saviors win this round. They’re going out of their way to show that TF knows that and is pissed. Not sure where it’s going (though I have theories), but I doubt it will end well for Eugene.

We had what I think was a dialogue callback to WHAWGO. Remember the line, “It went the way it had to. The way it was always going to.” The title of this episode, How It’s Gotta Be, is already kind of reminiscent of that line. But Rosita says something very similar to Daryl and Tara when they’re in the woods.

She’s telling them that even if their actions with the garbage truck got the Saviors out. She says it was just a mistake and she made one too. Maybe if she hadn’t gone to kill Negan at the Sanctuary, Sasha would still be alive. But then she says, “Or maybe she would have gone herself. Maybe everything would have ended up exactly the same way.” So it’s a theme we’ve seen a lot. It calls back to several conversations about Beth in 5x09, and also I think to Maggie’s dialogue to Aaron in 6x05, saying that maybe if she’d gone with Glenn things would have been different, but they don’t get to know that one way or the other.

Dwight is shot in the shoulder, exactly where he shot Daryl in 6x16. It would have been more satisfying if Daryl had been the one to shoot him, but still. Some poetic justice in play.

When Negan enters Alexandria, he specifically mentions the solar panels. I thought that was interesting, not only because it was random, but because it’s a sun/lamp reference, and keeping the solar panels up and running was a big part of the plot in 5b.

I realized, rewatching, that Carol sent the Kingdomers to her little cabin. Kind of interesting. And Morgan is inside the Kingdom’s walls with Ezekiel. One of the main problems I’m having with this episode (aside from Carl dying and us NOT seeing Beth) is how many unanswered questions there are. Every story line is so wide open. Will Carl leave without Ezekiel, or hang out to see if he’s okay? What’s Morgan’s plan? Will FG and the doctor get out? Where will they go? Will they be stopped by the Saviors? What’s up with Enid and Aaron?

It’s interesting that Morgan is in a position to save Ezekiel though. It opens some interesting ties back to all the Morgan/Carol stuff at the end of S6. I’m sure there was heavy foreshadowing back then that we weren’t even picking up on, so I’m interested to see where this goes.

We saw the Morse Code picture behind Negan and Rick when they fought. It’s kind of tattered/ruined now. I’ll come back to that.

(Btw, why did Rick go home? That was kind of a face palm moment for me. I know he’s looking for Michonne and Carl, but with the state Alexandria was in, did he really think they were just chilling in the living room? I thought the same thing of Michonne going back into Alexandria. I know she wanted to find Carl, but it would have made more sense to check and see if he was in the sewer first before just running back inside the walls. All this might be a foreshadow of something, but it might have also just been a plot setup so that Michonne and Rick entered the tunnel together, after everyone else had, to find out about Carl’s bite after everyone else, but together.)

We saw the face shots again at the end. And I also was asked (by @wdway, I think?) how many candles were lit in front of Siddiq. It’s actually hard to say for sure, since the shot is so dark, but I’m pretty sure there are 7. That’s interesting to me. There were several sets of 7 candles around Beth and Daryl in Alone, and that was one of our main reasons for thinking we’d see her in S7. But if this IS a tie or theme, then we weren’t crazy in picking up on the number of candles. We were just wrong about what they meant. And then there’s the fact that CB Siddiq has ties to Oceanside. So yeah. Kind of side-eyeing this.

Okay, that’s all the details I have. I was going to do some over-arching plot analysis as well, but this is getting long. So tomorrow I’ll do my TTD post, which won’t take very many words. I’ll tack the analysis on to that. It’s probably better that way anyway. I can tie everything—resurrection symbols, Carl’s death, details, and what was said on TTD—all together so you can see why I’m thinking what I am. Stay tuned.

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here

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