#The Implications

[forthesanityofsome]

Arcane...in Pal World.

[pinacoladamatata]

wait.....

[waywardsoul-s]

Paul Matthews and Emma Perkins are everything to me. They are soulmates and find each other in every universe but they almost never get past the awkwardly flirting stage before the world ends. They are both losers. They find each other every time an apocalypse commences. They are the only normal people in the whole universe. They are doomed by the narrative. They hate musicals. He tips her 5 dollars and she spits on everyones coffee. They are Orpheus and Eurydice coded. They are a spark that never turns into fire. They are intimate but don't like labels. They are the only constant thing in every timeline. They are what it could have been but never meant to be. They meet in that coffee shop again and again forever. He'll order a black coffee and she'll ask him for his name. And the loop will start all over again.

[rockrosethistle]

If there's one thing TGWDLM fans are gonna do, it's think about the implications. And the implications of the opening number are crazy.

So. We know that the show isn't completely chronological since the opening number takes place before the meteor hits. So that song is a sort of "flash forward" moment. But when you think about it, we don't really know how far in the future it takes place.

What we do know is that by the time it's happening, Emma is infected. She has a little solo in it singing about how Paul is pining over a barista

And we know that this is meant to be an infected Emma specifically. Lauren had other characters in the show, if they wanted to avoid the Emma implication they would've just dressed her as one of those.

So we know this is meant to be Emma.

And Emma isn't infected until the very end of the show. She's dragged off stage during the credits. So since she's infected in the opening number, we know the number takes place after the events of the show.

Another important detail is that Paul is infected before Emma. He's the one that passes it on to her.

So back to the opening number, Emma is infected. Which means by just following a simple timeline, Paul must also be infected. He should be singing and dancing, right?

But that's not what happens. Paul misses his entrance.

If Paul is infected, then there's no reason he should be missing his entrance. Furthermore, if he's a part of a hive mind, there's no reason other members of the same hive mind shouldn't know where he is. They are literally all connected by one brain, and yet both Mr. Davidson and Bill express they have no clue where he went.

What I'm saying is that Paul is not infected. He was infected (again, we know that because Emma is infected and he was infected before her) but now he's not anymore.

I'm saying there's a way out of the hive, and Paul found it. That's the only explanation that makes sense given the facts of the situation. Sometime after the events of tgwdlm, Paul is able not only to break out the hive mind, but to hide from it.

And if he broke out, others could do the same. Maybe even Emma.

Edit because a countertheory has emerged: Yes it's possible that everyone is infected the entire time and the show itself is just Pokey replaying the events for the fun of it. But it seems unlikely to me. First of all, each of the Lords in Black has a distinct personality. They all are evil, but within that they seems to fall somewhere on a spectrum of "silly billy" to "prick." For example, Tinky is more of a silly billy. He toys with humans without much of a motive and more for just shits and giggles. But in every instance, Pokey's more on the extreme side of prick.

He's one of the few with an actual motive behind what he does. In Yellowjacket, it's confirmed that Pokotho hates the sound of anyone's voice except for his own. The events of TGWDLM don't happen because Pokey is bored, they happen because he is executing a plan. So I don't think that he would just have them play out their little scenario just to entertain him, especially just one small island? I just feel like he'd be more focused on world domination.

If the theory is that all this is happening after Pokey's already taken over the whole world, no one was successful in stopping him, then yes it's plausible, but still weird. There are a strange amount of things in that show you just think an eldritch god wouldn't include.

Edit 2: New evidence has emerged???

The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals is loosely based off of Invasion of The Body Snatchers. Paul's last name is even a nod to the main character, Matthew. At the end of the film, Matthew survives, and continues living among the infected, pretending to be one of them. And wouldn't that be just such a fun little parallel...

Obviously it doesn't prove anything but the source material doesn't lie folks.

[misterpseudonym]

HEY WAIT NO HEY LOOK AT ME. Usha in G-13’s body’s catchphrase being “It’s Usha the old lady from work”

just got so much creepier

[part-time-zombie]

So yeah I'm still losing it over the Jack and Sally line but I really can't stop thinking about how Virgil could tell exactly what Roman was thinking just by the look on his face.

He knows him so well by now that he can take one look at Roman and go "oh we're doing one of his musical fantasies again" like it's something he's been around for a lot.

[artandbrimstone]

jrwi arcane screen cap redraw??? kind of???

the implications though. they'll get you

[sociallyrepressed]

I’m seeing something

[destialpal]

I need everyone to understand how crazy this, how genuinely serious I am when I say this is actually insane

[weepingtalecowboy]

Shadow has canonically disguised himself into Zelda

Fanfic prompt: Considering how much shadow x four is present in the fandom

People could have the opportunity to do the most unhinged things

Like if Wind is four's descendant

And he is together with shadow

What does this imply about their relationship in the near future

It’s not made easy by the fact that wind has dark eyes

Extreme strength and magic stamina (his canonical skull hammer and his magic arrows)

AND he is a little shit

Like the sheer emotional dread and damage that four would experience When he sees a shadow like smirk on wind's face

He would have the opposite reaction to time when it turns out he has a descendant with his stupid brain damaged partner

Like whenever I see fourdow I just want to know if anyone has considered what it implies about wind

I man shadow is a shapeshifter and has shapeshifted into Zelda on several occasions

So….

Four will probably have an aneurysm if he sees shadow and wind with the exact same smirk as a burning building collapse next to them

Like imagine the amount of judgement he would face when the other members of the chain find out about the fact that wind has a demon ancestor

AND four is his other ancestor

[stillgotscars]

the parallel between “i feel so high school every time i look at you” and “and i’ll be 87, you’ll be 89 / i’ll still look at you like the stars that shine in the sky” has me in shambles

[mosscreeper-ao3]

The fact that Keith was actually canonically rivals with James, not Lance will never not be funny to me.

[fearwakes]

Succession 3.09 / 4.06

why don't you throw out all your stuff for love

[non-cannon]

[swingingthehatchetnow]

Hi gorgeous.

Have you thought about the implications yet today?

[cosmic-ricky]

Oh! That’s so! 😃