#God how good is this episode going to be

[vibinginthedreamlands]

I'M JUST NOW STARTING EPISODE 44 AND EVERYONE. EVERYONE. THE DESCRIPTION CALLS HIM JOHN. IT USES HIS NAME. FOR THE FIRST TIME IT CALLS HIM JOHN OVER THE ENTITY WITHIN.

FSGOWHDKSVKXVSHDBIWVDJDV

Not fucking okay

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Must be a Sugondese joke.

[aunmenosheteroenespanol]

2.12 Chimney Begins - 2.09 Hen Begins - 2.16 Bobby Begins Again - 7.04 Buck, Bothered and Bewildered

Tommy's family arc

[goosesartblog]

“close your eyes, evbo” or whatever she said

[lara-cairncross]

take so good im posting it here too

[dragonageruinedmylife]

With the conversation with the Arch Heart and some of the things brought up, I keep coming back to the idea of: You live in a world where Gods are fully confirmed existing beings. You are a cleric of Bahamut. You are a Paladin of the Everlight. You are a believer that makes small prayers to the Wild Mother for safe travels on the sea. You find comfort and solace in your faith and in serving the Gods.

Then one day, the gods are suddenly gone. The powers they blessed you with are gone. Perhaps on a random Tuesday for you. Perhaps in the middle of a battle when you needed to save your friend's life. You can no longer hear them. You're panicked, you're scared. You finally learned what happened and it is people saying "the gods left! we're not beholden to them anymore! We can live our own lives!" And your entire world has been ripped apart without anyone asking if this is what you wanted.

[starryluminary]

Ridonculous Race but Noah is friends with Owen part 9: Teamwork makes the dream work!

Don't you LOVE IT when Noah gets to play the stupid game? Don't you LOVE IT when Noah and Owen work together and Owen isn't left to do everything himself? Don't you LOVE IT when they mutually support each other and care enough about each other to give it their all??? Personally I love it when that happens

No transcript cause there's no dialogue. Instead have scrapped doodles for this part that I refuse to leave in the jail of the IbisPaint canvas

[gayspock]

i love it when a tv show has lows that are so low you're so ashamed to ever show it to anyone ever but then highs that melt your brain a bit, like, "good fucking god, this is genuinely such an astounding piece of craftmanship... my perception of the medium, and perhaps of myself, has been challenged/changed in 40 minutes" but you cant even express that to ppl without feeling like youre fucking deranged bc my god the lows .....

[dang-dood]

i think the thing that gets me so bad with this last episode is that there was no consequences. everyone came back unharmed. like they fought a god of death and he was gone in like thirty minutes and everyone is vibing while eating pizza??

[brofightiscancelled]

little brother / older brother

[winepresswrath]

I will laugh so hard if it turns out that John is making a sincere effort at being a decent parent and it's such an awful outcome for Gideon that I feel like it's plausible. He's giving off such man who thinks of himself as a good guy confronted with oops baby vibes.

[night-triumphantt]

I don’t Care about the ships WHERE IS JINX

[buck-up-buck]

7x09 is titled "Unfinished Business" ....

Tell me that is not a revenge plot against Bobby. TELL ME. You can't. If I was not convinced before, I AM NOW.

hErE mE oUt.

I'm not saying they are going to burn down Buck's loft, I AM NOT... BUT, imagine Bobby is dropping a patient off at the hospital with Hen and Chim (I know this hardly ever happens but roll with me guys), and our friend, the Burn Unit Nurse, sees him, and is like...

"Bobby?" BECAUSE, he recognises him, from all those years ago in Minnesota. He lived in Bobby's apartment complex, they were somewhat neighbours, and he saw Bobby go into that vacant apartment that night (the night we do not DARE talk about), on his way to work, and was working a night shift at the hospital when suddenly, they get an influx of patients with burns and smoke inhalation from an apartment fire downtown, and he hears in passing from a nurse the address, and his heart sinks because no his fiance was at home asleep at that address and he hears from someone a few weeks later that the fire started in a vacant room due to an electrical issue with a space heater and HE JUST KNOWS.

And Bobby turns around to face him and is like "Sorry, do I know you?" Because Bobby was going through it back then, he doesn't remember this guy, and the guy is like, "Sorry, no, I was mistaken." And he walks away leaving Bobby all like huh.

Then the episode ends with the truck pulling into the firehouse and the camera pans out and we see BURN UNIT NURSE GUY STOOD ACROSS THE ROAD STARING UP AT THE FIREHOUSE BECAUSE DUN DUN DUN- He has some Unfinished Business to attend to.

If this so happens to lead to the burning down of Buck's loft because this guy does his research and he does some stalking and he sees a connection that Bobby has with Buck that he doesn't seem to share with the other members of the team, then well, ya'll didn't see it here first but I fucking called it if so, because you're telling me that is not a CRAZY storyline right there.

BUT, even if not, even if we do not get our beloved loft burning down scene that we have been writing and praying for on Fanfiction for years, you cannot tell me that there is not going to be some kind of dark revenge plot going on in the last four episodes. This nurse is about to cause some HAVOC I CAN SENSE IT. MY SPIDEY SENSES ARE TINGLING GUYS.

Anyway, @whollyjoly and @thetangycheesemanwithaplan had the absolute joy of hearing this from a very sleep-deprived me last week and now that the episode titles have been released, Buck's loft burning down and Burn Unit Nurses revenge plot is going to be my new personality trait. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.

[coffeecatcraze]

Will never get over Charlie's absolutely feral growl, this woman was ready to lunge across the courtroom and tear Adam to shreds and I am HERE for it

[deelovesbooks]

ok y'all I gotta be honest, but I totally knew that Ragh had gotten Kalina from Porter and thought that everyone else also knew this so seeing some people surprised threw me for a loop a bit

However this certainty of knowledge had absolutely no impact on any of my thoughts and theories this season 😂 not once did it cross my mind that Porter was the one with the spies tongue curse and honestly it didn't even cross my mind that Porter had infected Ragh on purpose I figured it was an accident like when Sandra Lynn and Tracker did the healing

I just didn't like Porter bc he was a dick and mean to Gorgug 😂

[swordscleric]

I don't know if anyone's gone through the original Dawn War pantheon* and compared the events of the Dawn War to the events of the Calamity, but it's interesting comparing how Tharizdun acts in the Dawn War to how little we know about it as the Chained Oblivion and might be useful as a theory-crafting aid for how the Chained Oblivion fits with Predathos**.

In the Dawn War, Tharizdun was a normal god, driven mad by extradimensional demons who provided him with huge amounts of power and attempted to force him to open a portal in the Astral Plane to release them. He took this power, and instead of releasing them created the Abyss. He and his would-be masters fought to a stalemate over control of the Abyss, until the rest of the pantheon found out and sealed him away, leaving him chained to a remote part of the Abyss[1].

By contrast, the Chained Oblivion is "something other entirely"[2], "less like a god and more like another world"[3]; it's been categorised as not of the Primes or Betrayers[4], and generally Matt has leaned much more into the cosmic horror vibes (sans a connection to the Far Realm) of the Chained Oblivion. It's a creature of "roiling ink and hungry darkness"[5], and was sealed at the bottom of the Abyss by the Dawnfather and the Knowing Mistress, with support from the Allhammer and the Changebringer[2, 3, 6]. The Chained Oblivion also wants to consume all and end the world and is kept at arms length by the Betrayers[5], and as a result of that plus its association with an unknowable hunger some people have now associated it with Predathos or think it and Predathos are of a similar species.

I think the Chained Oblivion is not Predathos in another form, but I do think that it's of a similar species. Looking at the Dawn War, and assuming (with the full acknowledgement that I'll more than likely be wrong) that Matt will stick as closely to the Dawn War as he has in the past, I think the Chained Oblivion is a smaller and weaker being of nothingness that decided to forge its own path instead of following Predathos' lead. My gut instinct is that the Chained Oblivion, seeing Ethedok and Vordo get eaten, took up Ethedok's mantle of darkness[7]*** and avoided working with Predathos and porentially fought the God Eater in order to survive and work its own odd plans of destruction. The Chained Oblivion makes a lot of plans to try and free itself (see the Angel of Irons or Cognouza), so I wouldn't be surprised if its propensity towards planning was present from the very moment it set foot on Exandria. Does this mean the Chained Oblivion will be let loose to fight the God Eater if Predathos is released? I doubt it, considering that it nearly killed the Knowing Mistress. And we know how the gods feel about family.

Footnotes

*The Dawn War pantheon is the slimmed down pantheon used for 4th edition D&D; can be found on page 11 of the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Used by Matt for the Primes & Betrayers with the addition of Sarenrae from Pathfinder.

**I'm aware of the pitfalls of using existing narratives and non-Exandrian lore to try and predict what's going on in CR at this moment in time; while there's not a 1:1 overlap between other D&D worlds' lore and Exandria, some of the major relationships do stay the same. For example, Pelor, Ioun and Tharizdun are all linked in Exandria and in D&D "canon" (Pelor, Ioun and Tharizdun all looked into the Far Realm and saw mysterious secrets, secrets which drove Tharizdun to want to destroy the universe as per Gates of Madness (2010). Additionally, Tharizdun is deeply associated with the Abyss across both settings). Bear with me.

***Zehir, the Cloaked Serpent is also associated with darkness; however while the Lawbearer and the Platinum Dragon are associated with order there is no explicit god of order which was Vordo's other domain. The Chained Oblivion is explicitly described as a god of darkness in both the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount (page 27) and the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn (page 34).

References

1. Demonomicon (2010), pages 7-9. The wording of how the sealing took place is intentionally vague as it's a plot hook for DMs to expand on in their campaigns.

2. Titles and Tattoos, CR Campaign 2, Episode 84, from 14:00.

3. Explorer's Guide to Wildemount (2020), page 27.

4. Matt's Discord post during Nick Marini's AMA (linked here).

5. Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, page 36.

6. The Endless Atheneum, CR Campaign 1, Episode 106, from 1:08:16.

7. Axiom Shaken, CR Campaign 3, Episode 43, at 3:02:19.