#it’s so hard to even look at s9 and see him in his nursery with his embroidered pillows and his star mobile

[carefulfears]

sometimes i think about the end of founder’s mutation and the baby photo of jackson that mulder had at his kitchen table and think about how scully must have given him that picture, at some point, after, and get really sad

[twdmusicboxmystery]

8x14: Still Gotta Mean Something - Re-Watch

In this episode, we have Jadis holding Negan captive, Rick and Morgan killing Jared and the other Saviors in a warehouse, and Carol finding and rescuing Henry.

So, there are lots of little things here that can be tied to Beth. We first see Jadis pretend to be dead in order to escape the Saviors’ massacre. She just slathers herself with blood and fakes being dead, and it works. I remember being excited about that because it’s an instance of someone playing dead. Like a possum. But now, knowing what we know, we can also connect it to the helicopter group through Jadis. (Yeah!)

Oh, one minor thing I forgot to mention from last episode was a Rick/Michonne thing. He’s up in the nursery of the manor house, taking boards off the windows. He says they turned off the generators to conserve energy (so no AC) and they need to get the air flowing for the kids. No idea what this foreshadows. Probably something with the helicopter group, but I have no idea what.

But Michonne comes in and says she saved him a turnip. Pretty random, no? I mean, it’s not just her bringing him food, or even another common symbol like apples or pickles, but a turnip. Like, where did that come from?

Well, turnips can symbolize about twenty different things, and they all contradict one another, so it’s hard to pin down what they’re going for here. I think I looked this up back when S8 aired, but I didn’t get anywhere. However, rewatching and watching several episodes in order like this, I noticed something. When Carol and Morgan go looking for Henry, they find a turnip he dropped. So, from that, I’m assuming the turnip symbolizes searching for someone who has left the community. In other words, the Rick/Michonne thing foreshadows Rick leaving and Michonne going to search for him, just as Carol found the turnip while looking for Henry.

Small potatoes, but yet more evidence that this foreshadowed what is happening in S10/11.

Actually, another thought I’m just having now (forgive me if I’m really fixated on the Carl/Beth entanglement this week) is that Carl is very much a part of the Rick/Michonne scene. Michonne gets after Rick in this episode for not reading Carl’s letter yet. Rick refuses and keeps his brutal mindset, killing Jared and the other saviors, which I’ll get to in a minute. It’s not until he reads Carl’s letter at the end of the episode that he goes into a less brutal mindset. The one that spares Negan at the end of the war and builds the bridge to connect the communities in S9.

So I was just thinking that if the turnip represents him going into the helicopter group, where we believe Beth is, and there’s the possibility of the two of them meeting up, then we have a suggestion of Carl/Beth entanglement here. Because Rick is mourning Carl heavily, still refusing to read the letter, but the turnip sort of suggests the arc where he might find his new sheriff.

Rick and Morgan go to kill the Saviors. So, a bunch of the savior hostages escaped the night before. Alden stayed, rather than going. Rick basically goes to kill them and meets Morgan there. He was with Carol, but she goes one way to get Henry and he goes the other to kill Jared, and he and Rick meet up. 

They’re tied up inside the warehouse by the Saviors, but when walkers get in, the saviors let them loose. Then Rick and Morgan proceed to be super brutal and kill all the saviors, even the ones who wanted to come back with them and be part of HT rather than go to Negan. (Rick hasn’t read Carl’s letter yet.)

I’m all but certain this foreshadows something with the helicopter group. For one thing, Rick and Morgan see a severed hand and foot outside where the saviors are holed up. So, missing foot symbolism. 

And the fulfillment of that, for Rick, is him disappearing with Jadis. I also wonder if it might mean something for Morgan’s future arc, which we haven’t seen yet.

In fact, I also wonder, due to this, if Morgan and Rick will meet up in the helicopter group. It’s something I’ve suspected for a while, and I know I talked about it a bit when I was rewatching S7. But this gave me the same vibe. That maybe Rick and Morgan will reconnect there. It will depend on how the Fear arc pans out, and we don’t know that, yet.

Anywho, there are also several “serious” and dog references in the saviors’ dialogue here. To me, that suggests Beth and, therefore, also the helicopter group.

Morgan kills Jared. Jadis lets Negan go. She won’t tell him about the helicopter people. Carol saves Henry. They return to HT and Zeke.

At the end, Rick returns and reads Carl’s letter. His brutality will kind of melt away at that point. 

So yeah, nothing too heavily TD, but again, I’m just seeing foreshadows we couldn’t have understood back then, so it’s really interesting to watch. Tomorrow, I’ll move on to 8x15.