#if it were ME i'd have used the sensory deprivation tank to hint at this but the writers were already mentally checked out by then

[pulsingvoid]

i'll literally never be convinced crystal/kristen was not a figment of misty's imagination, a friend she invented for herself that the others played along with because at least misty was occupied. i know she reads so fake to me just because she was poorly integrated into the rest of the wilderness plot (as in - not at all lol), she's a half-assed attempt at giving context to misty's anxious attachment style, which was almost immediately undermined anyway by her deciding to like walter. crystal/kristen never appears until misty is socially iced out for accidentally poisoning the soup and suddenly there's a second incredibly annoying theatre kid everyone wishes would go away? that dresses in misty's exact color palette? and they've been on the same team this whole time while misty was so ostracized and lonely? nobody even wanted to look for her when she "vanished"! the wilderness even magicked away her body so they'd have to hunt each other! crystal isn't even her name. i'm sorry, but she's about as real as akilah's mouse.

not being able to suspend my disbelief long enough to accept this subplot as real cheapened it a lot for me as it happened, but i have since decided her not being real could be plausibly-canon, and suddenly it's so compelling. misty invented herself the perfect friend that accepted everything about her and daydreamed little playdates and slumber parties, and even so, when she confessed to destroying the black box, her daydream turned on her. misty's own (quite vivid) imagination couldn't stretch enough to allow her a friend who accepted her wholly. she plays out what would happen if she told her closest friend this dark, fucked up secret, and it ends bloody. she convinces herself she'll never be fully accepted and loved, and ultimately it doesn't matter if crystal/kristen was real or not. i'm honestly fine with this theory never being confirmed (again, i don't think they intended it this way, crystal's place in the story was just criminally unearned and underwritten), but i'm much more compelled by a version of events where misty is so lonely and confused and guilt-ridden that her mind (or, if you'd like, the wilderness) gives her the kind of friend she was unlikely to find even under better conditions, and there's still betrayal and death at the end of it. misty's adolescent brain is already self-aware enough to know her hands will be bloodstained and unholdable for the rest of her life.