#how tf could a kid survive and go around + angela being in a locked building + all that stuff

[mochela]

playing silent hill 2 for the first time....... how tf was i supposed to know the pyramid guy's first bossfight was time based............... right now i just got out of the hospital and the scariest enemy is still the crawling one. battles are soo goofy and the game crashes a lot so i have to keep saving which kind of takes the immersion but whatever

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWD 10x01: What the Structure Foreshadows

Okay, I was going to do Details today, but it occurred to me that the details will make more sense if we first understand the structure. Because the TD symbols within each are more significant based on where they’re placed than they are on their own.

So, I’m sure you all noticed the headings placed periodically throughout the show. They were, Training Day, Skin, Bird Wisdom, Sea Dogs, New Mexico, Lines We Cross, and Embers.

I knew right away these were important. Everything is a foreshadow, so something about these should tell us about the chronological structure of what we’ll see happen in the story moving forward. I’ll explain what I mean as I go through each one.

Training Day:

This was TF training on the beach. We saw boat and ocean references, of course, and lots of badassery from our characters. 

What does this represent? I think it represents everything that’s come before. Everything from the prison to Grady to Alexandria and beyond has been their training for what comes next. While of course they miss those they’ve lost, they’re all in fairly positive places right now. (That’s sure to change soon.) I think that’s why they referenced several deceased characters. This represents all that’s come before.

In terms of details, other than the training, we also see Michonne and Daryl bantering, and they mention Rick and Tara (more evidence that it represents what’s already happened) as well as life going on at Oceanside. 

Something @wdway also pointed out that I think is worth mentioning is that a film called Training Day starring Denzel Washington came out some years ago. We don’t know if the writers are trying to invoke that film, but this is its exact title. If they are making reference to it, well, that film is about corrupt cops. Grady anyone?

Actually, if you read through the plot of the film (I’ve never actually seen it) there are a lot of parallels we could draw to Grady. The community the corrupt cop serves kind of allows him to be taken down because they’re sick of his corruption, arrogance, and shenanigans. Much like the people at Grady wanted Dawn gone. Just saying.

Skin:

Aaron radios Alexandria to tell them they found a skin mask and the Whisperers might be back in the area. Michonne takes a group out to look for signs of the Whisperers along with Aaron, Magna, Luke, Yumiko, and Alden. They find an abandoned campsite with a fully skinned walker, so they know one of the Whisperers has been there.

When Michonne returns to Oceanside, she hears Judith telling RJ about Rick, except she calls him The Brave Man, rather than telling him the story is about his dad. Michonne hugs her kids, and then the Satellite falls.

Again, the meaning of this is fairly obvious. It represents the Whisper War, which is what comes next. If Training Day represented everything that came before, the next thing we’ll see is the war between TF and the Whisperers. I’m not sure what to make of the details in this sequence. I think it’s obvious by Aaron’s angry role here that he’ll have a large part in it. 

I will say that Rick is mentioned a lot in this part. First because Michonne gets mad at Aaron for running onto the bridge, saying, “I lost Rick on a…” but she doesn’t finish. Then because we hear Judith telling RJ about him. I don’t think he’ll have much of a role in the Whisper War, so I’m not sure what to make of it. Maybe it simply represents that Michonne will leave during the war to find him? That could be it.

Bird Wisdom:

So here’s the thing. The four sections after Training Day (Skin, Bird Wisdom, Sea Dogs, and New Mexico) all take place simultaneously. They start with Aaron radioing Alexandria about the skin mask and ending with the satellite falling out of the sky. Just keep that in mind as we move forward.

So Bird Wisdom is about those at Alexandria: Eugene, Rosita, FG, Siddiq, Negan, and Lydia. The actual “bird wisdom” reference comes when FG talks to Negan in his cell. Negan tells FG he doesn’t want to be blamed by people or lumped in with the Whisperers. He encourages Gabriel to use their fear to manipulate them. Which Gabriel KIND OF does. He goes out and announces that they need to lock the gates and double the watch. He’s just doing it to show people that precautions are being taken.

Obviously this bit sets up something with Siddiq as well as Negan during the Whisper War. Hard to say exactly what will all happen, but again, it will probably be loosely based on the CBs. Then the satellite falls.

Sea Dogs:

Okay, something to keep in mind here as well. I said these four sections happen simultaneously, because they all start with Aaron talking about the skin mask being found and end with the satellite, right? Well, that’s not entirely true of Daryl and Carol’s sections. They actually have two sections are about them. And the two seconds combined are simultaneous with the previous two. 

So, Sea Dogs starts with Aaron talking about the skin mask. But then New Mexico continues the stuff about Daryl and Carol and that second section ends with them seeing the satellite. 

I don’t know why, exactly, Daryl and Carol got two sections. It might just be that they had more to show about them, so they divided it into two sections. Though I also think there might be something symbolic about the division. I’m just not sure what it is yet. It would make more sense for it to simply be more, though. With Michonne leaving, Daryl and Carol are all that’s left of the original group, so it makes more sense that the two of them will get more screen time during this arc without Rick or Michonne or Maggie around to take any of it.

So, we start with Aaron radioing Alexandria about the skin mask. Then, this is where we get the beach scene with Daryl, Connie, and then they meet Carol. This is significant because we get that ridiculously heavy Connie-gonna-bring-Beth-back-to-Daryl sequence. Plus there’s all the ocean stuff. Then Daryl meets Carol coming off the ship and they take off together. They talk about whether or not she was looking for Alpha, which she denies, and then we see them hunting together (the callback to the Claimers).

New Mexico:

Alright, I know Daryl/Carol scenes are not anyone’s favorite, and especially as they talk about leaving together here, it’s not likely to be any Bethyler’s favorite. I get that. But this is also the scene where I saw the most dialogue hints and callbacks to Beth. I know this isn’t the Details post yet, but I’m going to quickly go through them. Because I think it’s important for everyone to understand the significance of what’s being said here.

So, first off, they hunt a DEER. It does, which suggests someone else living. Also, this area where they’re hunting looks EXACTLY like the place in Inmates where Beth and Daryl saw the shoe by the railroad tracks. It wouldn’t surprise me if they filmed this in the same location. But I think that would be purposeful if they did. As a callback to Inmates.

Incidentally, Carol has a weirdo line here where she says that deer might have fed 200 people. Um, no it wouldn’t have. It was a fairly small deer. So I’m not sure what she meant by that, or even how to interpret it symbolically, but I made note of it.

When they sit down, Daryl says, “Why don’t you come on home, now?” Just an example of the coming home theme. We’ve seen Beth be involved in that theme a lot.

She then says she’s a sea dog. Sea and dog. Both heavy Beth symbols.

When she talks about making him a bracelet, she says, “should we make a matching collar for dog.” That’s huge in my mind, guys. It’s kind of a callback to the collar we saw in 5x10 when TF ate the dogs, but also if dog = Beth (because Sirius symbolism) it shows that Daryl, Carol, and Beth are being connected here and are kind of inextricably connected anyway.

She asks what his favorite color is: Blue? Green? (Both significant colors). Then, “Black. Definitely black.” To me, that just confirms that Daryl = Buttons/black horse. We already knew that, of course, but it’s nice to have a confirmation.

Then Daryl says the thing about how they are just surviving one fight to the next. Carol comments that it was like that for both of them even before all this. She means because they were both victims of domestic abuse, so they survived one fight to the next even before the zombie apocalypse.

But this snippet of conversation is also a massive callback to Still. Beth said Daryl was born to survive in this world. He said it was just because he’d grown up in a place like the moonshine shack and was used to things being ugly. Of course there’s always been plenty of mentions about how Daryl was a survivor even before the apocalypse, but he mentioned it with Beth in the show, and now they’re mentioning it here in a very similar way, and in conjunction with all these other symbolic references.

Then he says there has to be other people out there like them. Callback to Beth saying there are good people out there, and insisting more people survived the prison and are out there. Also kind of a foreshadow that Daryl and Carol might head out to look for said people at some point. More details on that HERE.

Carol then invites Daryl to go out on the boat with her. He says he doesn’t like the idea of staying in a tiny boat cabin. That’s a callback to the Cell. To be fair, even in S3, Daryl was never keen on sleeping in small spaces, like the prison cells, but I doubt what Negan and Dwight put him through helped. So a callback to The Cell, and what was going on in the Cell? Songs that referenced Beth, anyone? And written by Angela Kang? Just saying.

Then there’s the actual New Mexico reference. On the surface, this is a bit of a head scratcher. Me, @frangipanilove and @wdway all put our heads together over this one, and we can’t think of a time they’ve specifically referenced New Mexico on the show before. And it’s entire too specific for them to just throw it in without meaning. We know they don’t do that. So I think it’s a foreshadow. More specifically, I think it points to the way TWD and FTWD will connect.

The Fear people are in Texas, but New Mexico is directly next door. So maybe Daryl and Carol will head for New Mexico, but have to go through Texas to get there, and perhaps run into Morgan’s crew on the way. Conversely, we already know that Ginny (in Fear) has multiple settlements. Maybe they aren’t all in Texas. Maybe some of them are over the border in New Mexico and Daryl and Carol will meet the Fear crew there.

Obviously this is all conjecture. We can’t know for sure what the New Mexico reference refers to, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they would name a place right next to Texas, where Morgan’s group is.

The section ends, as do the previous ones, with the two of them seeing the satellite fall out of the sky.

Lines We Cross:

So now we’re all in the same timeline again and the satellite has started a fire. This section is called The Lines We Cross because they cross Alpha’s border to fight the fire. We see them fighting the fire through a long, hot night, running out of water. (We hear things like, “I’m out” multiple times.) And of course more and more walkers are attracted to the fire. So it’s just a fight all night. Kinda reminds me of TF holding barn doors closed together all night in 5x10, Them. There was no fire in that case, but it was a battle they fought together.

Embers:

Then we get the final section. They’re still fighting off a few walkers. Carol uses blood from a walker to put out the fire, which I thought was probably symbolic (maybe that Carol will kill more people for the greater good or something). 

Daryl throws the ax at the tree to take down some walkers, which was pretty awesome. Eventually, we see the fire get put out. People are hugging after making it through the night. Michonne wants to go but Eugene wants to scavenge from the satellite and Michonne finally relents. It ends by seeing Daryl and Carol go to Daryl’s meeting place with Alpha and Alpha emerging.

Okay, so what does it all mean? What do these sections and headings point to? 

Here’s my hypothesis:

I think this points to a chronology of what we’re going to see throughout this arc. Once again, the arc isn’t necessarily contained within one seasons. We might be looking at the next several. Because we have a change in the opening credits, I think this is not just the beginning of S10, but the beginning of the next major arc.

So as I explain this, go back and read what I’ve written above for reference.

So Training Day represents what’s come before. What happens with the boat—the fact that it falls apart and walkers come out, rather than just doing one at a time as they’re attempting to—may represent what happened with Beth. It reminds me a little of what happened in 4x10 when Maggie goes looking for Glenn on the bus. It represents something going wrong, and a walker horde showing up, which messes things up and changes everyone’s plans. Meanwhile, that boat is mostly blue and broken into two pieces. We already know ship/boat references are about her, so it may represent her getting shot and left behind. She is the shipwreck. Symbolically.

The “Skin” section literally represents the Whisper War. But remember that Bird Wisdom, Sea Dogs, and New Mexico are all on the same timeline. So I think these sections represent the arcs of the different characters. I’ve already explained some of the things I think will happen with Carol and Daryl. For the others, I think they’ll make more sense once we see them fulfilled. It’s hard for me to predict stuff about FG/Rosita/Eugene/Siddiq since I don’t pay very close attention to their characters. With Michonne, again, we already know she’ll be leaving during the Whisper War to find Rick. Do you see how this represents what we’ll see over the next phase of the story?

Then, only AFTER that (i.e. perhaps after the Whisper War) the satellite falls. I keep saying this, but I’ll go into more about what the satellite and radiation references are telling us, and what they mean later in the week when I do a post on them, but for now, just know that we think it’s heavily linked to the helicopter group. So I think the satellite falling represents the kickoff of a future arc that will be a big interaction (perhaps war?) with the helicopter group. But that won’t come until after the Whisper War.

I don’t have a lot of specifics to give you about these final two sections. Just some kind of big battle that TF will eventually win. We probably would have predicted that anyway. 

I actually think the part where they fight the fire foreshadows a major drought or water shortage. More on that when I get to my predictions post later in the week.

I also notice that Michonne tells Eugene he has five minutes and then they’re leaving. “Five and out.” Can’t help but wonder if that’s a reference to the fact that Gimple always says he has through S15 of the show planned. (5 more seasons = season 15). So this may be what we’ll see over the next 5 seasons of the show.

Okay, that’s it for today. I’ll do Details tomorrow and talk more about where they appear in the structure. This episode was just chalk-full of stuff!