#and they too got their wake-up call if Tarak and Bill were puppets

[aquaaquila]

One must remember that while Titan Trappers served under Bill, their God and the figure they looked up to was the Grand Huntsman... who they never actually met, so most likely they confused him with the Collector who is his relative.

The Collector was familiar with them but probably didn't know that Titan Trapper's purpose was always to kill Titans, hence he said they started acting weird. The fact that he's weirded out by them would be world-shattering to the other Titan Trappers. Like it's their God standing right in front of them and is not pleased and even confused with their actions.

Titan Trappers are not evil people. They were incredibly hospitable to Luz and co. and even agreed to help them fight Belos off no questions asked. The only reason they turned antagonistic is because they're a cult that ironically hunted down King and no one figured until later. However their cult was built on lies and Titan Trappers already started to doubt Bill the moment he started to boast about only him being the greatest, as if they didn't matter and it was followed with Hooty and Luz questioning if Titans deserved to die in the first place.

I'm pretty sure it would stay with them even if they still didn't give up just yet on hunting Titans. But once their very God that supposedly gave them the purpose to hunt down Titans flat out said that they did wrong, it was all a lie and said God punished them all, I think all of them would have a turning point. In the end, much like the rest of the Boiling Isles, Titan Trappers were also deceived by someone else, but they were not at fault for this, so they leave to rebuild their culture right from scratch to make amends and quit living in a lie, much like Boiling Isles had to get over Belos.

Bill certainly faced a punishment for what he did, but I think the rest of Titan Trappers just returned home to reflect and probably no longer seek to destroy Titans because clearly, it was never a good thing in the first place.

I can't remember if I've already said it, I don't think I have... But I can see the parallels to Bill and King, with the first and most obvious ones being their appearances; Specifically, Bill's 'costume' and King's natural look. They're both pretenders that way, Bill intentionally, while King was accidental when it came to his past.

They're scrawny little guys with delusions of grandeur, and they rely a lot on the bigger, taller people around them to help out; Such as Tarak and the other Titan Trappers, but even the Archivists. Likewise, King in S1 often had to resort to calling upon Luz or Eda to destroy his enemies for him.

And indeed, that obsession with destroying others to prove their strength is there; But Bill took it genuinely seriously, and because of that is a factor into King being an orphan, the last of his kind. But most of it can be attributed to the Archivists, whom I theorize made Bill immortal, which is why he's still alive even after all these years.

There's their relationships with one Archivist in particular, the Collector: Bill's is insincere and remote, he's using the kid for his own purposes not unlike Belos with the Titan, and also like Belos period. King doesn't do that, but had he met the Collector a lot earlier, he could've! He very well could've. The Collector even mentions Bill as one of the people they felt used and betrayed by, and they mistook King for another in their paranoia and cycle of being hurt.

And what intrigues me is that based on the murals we see, there might've been a giant Titan Trapper that helped the Archivists kill the Titans; Of course, this could be more of a visual metaphor for the group as a whole. But a part of me wonders if this was meant to be Bill in his youth, and that's why Tarak holds him in such high regard. Obviously he's a puny wimp now, but considering it's been probably millions of years since those times, Bill is technically looking great for his prehistoric age.

I can see the parallels between this and the stylized depictions of King's 'original' form as the King of Demons. They're both giant monsters who slay their enemies and have followers, although by the present-day Bill's an actual example of someone past his prime; All of the other Trappers are presumably descendants, because they've never seen a living Titan themselves.

This makes Bill the last of his generation, his 'kind' in a sense; And so is King. Because of Bill and the Archivists; Likewise, Bill can only be the last survivor because of the Archivists, per my speculations. Him, the Collector, and King had their worlds rocked by the Archivists in different ways, as I wonder if Bill wasn't even able to successfully hunt Titans until his 'Grand Huntsmen' came along.

But now he's ruling over people who can only dream of that fame, and King ruled over toys and plushes and the like. The Titan Trappers are fake; They wear fake costumes, they call themselves that despite only one having actually had that experience, it's a delusional dream. And King was also fake, a kid who misunderstood the world around him and was admittedly encouraged to by his mother. Of course, the way Eda feeds into King's dreams is different than how Bill does his younger Trappers.

I dunno; Maybe the Archivists are the older, powerful, magical beings like Eda; Bill and King, as I've explained; And the Collector and Luz, who have their own magic. But Bill's relationship with the Collector is so parasitic and insincere, whereas King looks up to Luz as his big sister and his worst lies to her have been merely kiddish (because he's a kid).

Makes it all the more fitting that King and Bill have a pseudo-confrontation in the finale... Maybe not exactly, because it's ambiguous as to how conscious Bill actually was in his puppet state. You can't help but wonder what happened to Bill and the other Trappers; If him and Tarak were turned into puppets, they must've either arrived at the isles during the two-month time skip, or the Collector's spies scoured the entire planet.

I wonder if the Collector recognizes Bill pre-imprisonment? If he worked with the Archivists, they might've seen him... If they didn't then, they did when Bill needed a new Archivist after the adults ditched him. Oh to see that scene of Bill trying to take his 'rightful place' next to the Collector, only to see an actual Titan there, and King has all the power to destroy this dude. But after all of his self-reflection, and not wanting to enable this behavior from a kid he's trying to make reasonable, King just settles for "These guys make me uncomfortable, puppet them" and that's it.

But afterwards... Did the Collector free them too? And the Titan Trappers were sentenced to community service like Kikimora? Or did everyone agree to turn a blind eye to Bill at least, and he's trapped as a puppet somewhere in the depths of the Archives, or somewhere else, to be forgotten forever...

Okay that last bit sounds too dark for the protagonists and the lessons they're trying to impart to the Collector but man. To be a broken record, I have to wonder if we would've gotten more conflict and a proper resolution between King and Bill.