#just like some small-scale spinoffs would be so fun for tf

[robotclownindulgence]

Less "optimus and bumblebee fight megatron and starscream" and more "motley crew of ocean-themed beastformers try to get their old band back together and have to trek through various galaxies to find their missing members"

[twdmusicboxmystery]

S6 Template for Where We Are Currently in the Show

Morning Everyone! So, after getting a particular Ask almost two weeks ago about shirt colors (black and white) in 6x08 and 6x09 pointing to future story arcs, I decided to re-watch the episodes and see what I came up with. This post is what came out of that. It’s a bit long, so get comfortable, but I had tons of fun rewatching these. I don’t get to do that much anymore these days.

So, I looked at Carol's white shirt in these episodes, but as I watched, I kept going back to an earlier time that we'd seen Carol wearing a white shirt. 

Remember, this was the episode where she went out together acorns and had to kill that really Beth-ish walker and then come back and shower and change her clothes. It's also in this episode that she takes Tobin acorn cookies. And they’re pink. (Pink Theory)

So, the gist of what I'm going to say is that I think the entire season is a template for what's going happen moving forward. And honestly, we’ve seen this often enough that it's probably true of every season in some way or another. But will stick with S6 for now.

So, in thinking about Carol and Tobin 6x02, something occurred to me. I think Tobin is a prequel/foreshadow/forerunner of Ezekiel. It's actually a fairly common way to foreshadow something: have a smaller instance of it to foreshadow the bigger instance. I’ve said that with Glenn's death before. His death fakeout served many purposes, but in terms of his own arc, it was a foreshadow of his upcoming real death. In this case, they just put Carol in a short-term relationship in order to foreshadow her long-term relationship with Ezekiel.

And I bet if we studied Carzekiel as closely as we study Bethyl, we would come up with a lot of dialogue parallels and such. I don't have a whole lot of them, but I can think of one major event that was the same in both cases. ( I just had the thought that Carol showing up at Tobin's doorstep with cookies is a whole lot like Ezekiel showing up at her cabin with the pomegranate.)

So, in Carol and Tobin's arc together, remember that she takes off and leaves him at the end of S6. That's when Morgan goes after her and it leads to her finding Ezekiel in the Kingdom. (Not at all an accident that she leaves Tobin and immediately runs in to her soulmate.)

I'm equating that with her leaving Ezekiel after Henry died. And Henry is the other part of the parallel. Carol left Tobin because she was dealing with Sam's death. The death of a child that she felt guilty about. She left Ezekiel for the same reason, after Henry's death. So, you can see the parallels between the two arcs. And that shows that what happened in S6 can foreshadow what's happening currently in the show between her and Ezekiel.

I promise I'll stop talking about Carol and get to the more important stuff. But one more interesting thing that kinda made my jaw drop: After Creepy Wolf Dude took Denise and Morgan, Carol, Rosita, and Tara are on the brownstone together, Carol is looking out the window and Morgan walks up behind her.

He says, "you had a child? A husband?" And it's interesting because he doesn't say daughter, and Carol doesn't reference Sophia or Ed by name. And if you think about what's happened—Morgan was trying to keep her from killing Creepy Wolf Dude because "life is precious" and all that—there's really no reason for him to randomly ask about her past. But I think this shows that it's a foreshadow of what's to come. The next time around, they'll be talking about Ezekiel and Henry, rather than Ed and Sophia.

Okay, so all that was just to show that the entire season foreshadows what's to come. And when I watched 6x09, Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham on the road with the saviors, my just my mind just kept going back to the previous episode about them, which was 6x06.

And we all know how much Beth symbolism was in that. 

We saw Daryl meeting Dwight in the woods in 6x06 and all of the symbolism there. We already know from plenty of analyzing that Sasha and Abraham represent Beth and Daryl. I also think, in some cases, the two of them together represent Beth. But if you look at Daryl's arc in a very broad way for 6x06, we have him getting separated from Sasha and Abe (Beth) and by the end of the episode, he finds them again.

So, in terms of S6 being a template, 6x06 represents Beth and Daryl's entire separation arc. It's on a very small scale, but it kind of makes sense, doesn't it? Why the place they stayed, and Daryl later found them again had a sunrise on it. Why Sasha wrote his name with the huge X in the center. It's to show that this is a type of Beth and Daryl’s separation arc and then their reunion.

 Okay, so let's go back to what’s happening in S6. I'm not going to do this chronologically, but let's start with Daryl on the road meeting saviors. I want to point out one thing. The main leader of this group says something I've always zeroed in on but could never quite make fit.

At one point, he says, "ding dong, Hells bells." That's a reference to the Wizard of Oz. Because, "ding dong, the wicked witch is dead." I've always wanted to make that a Beth thing because the Wizard of Oz template was used for the Grady storyline. When I first heard it, back when this episode aired, I felt sure it was because she was with the Saviors and it was a hint toward that. Obviously not.

But now I'm seeing that this is a Beth template, and that's probably why they put this here. Also notice the Saviors here are wearing black. Which could mean that they foreshadow the CRM. So, the most obvious thing I'm seeing here is that per 6x06, Beth and Daryl reunite after being separated for a long time. Then, on the road back to Alexandria, they run into the CRM (people in black). Maybe Daryl blows up the CRM in some way or kills them. And that will bring TF into a war with the helicopter group, much like it did with the Saviors.

(@frangipanilove​ also pointed out that there’s an AC/DC song called Hells Bells. So there’s a musical reference thrown into the mix. Which is awesome! ;D)

Okay, the next thing Nonny said is that Glenn and Enid probably represent Beth. I think that's true, but I think she's represented in a lot of different ways in this sequence. Specifically, through Sasha/Abe, Glenn/Enid, and Denise.

I won't need to go into a lot of detail about Denise. I didn’t see a whole lot more here than I’ve said in the past. I still think her being taken captive by Creepy Wolf Dude is a foreshadow of a storyline for Beth. There were two lines of dialogue that jumped out and me. When she’s in the brownstone, alone, with Creepy Wolf Dude, she tells him to "show me the wound." That SUPER jumped out at me because in 9x05 when Rick left, we heard Beth’s voice say, “what’s your wound.” Very similar.

The other one was Creepy Wolf Dude explaining how he got his injury. It really wasn't a bite. He said he was breaking into a car and got cut on a rusty bumper. So, the car mention really jumped out at me. I feel like were going to see the fulfillment of this sequence with Creepy Wolf Dude and Denise for Beth sometime after she wakes up. Maybe whoever saved her after Coda gets hurt and she tends to them medically. He also talked about wanting to take over the wall with him to the outside and about how it wasn't as scary out there as she thinks it is. So yeah, it still screams Beth to me.

For Enid and Glenn, they return, and immediately run into Beth's (the blue, green, and yellow) church. And there, they find a gun. We have a combination of the weapon and the biblical symbols. Glenn even tells Enid to look inside the Bibles in case one of them is hollowed out.

But the biggest thing here is that Maggie was in trouble and they came back to save her. And they sort of did, but then Glenn got in trouble and Sashraham showed up to save the day. So, we have two separate instances (Glenn/Enid and Sasha/Abraham) of Beth or Bethyl showing up in the nick of time to save everybody. I think we can all get behind that.

Also, when Maggie gets up on the scaffold, we see the red and green together. Green cord, Maggie’s red shoelaces. We’ve always seen that as a resurrection symbol, and said it probably has to do with Glenn being alive. I still think that’s true, but taken a broader context, it could also be a foreshadow of Beth's return and that this is a template for it.

Okay, so let's look at this from a little bit broader view. We have five main groups that these two episodes focus on alternately. Maggie, Daryl/Sasha/Abraham, Tara/Rosita/Eugene, Carol/Morgan (by 6x09, the two of them merge with Eugene’s group) and then Rick and Michonne's group who are in Jesse's house. 

(For the record, there are two other groups we see very briefly but they aren’t focused on in this episode. One is Olivia and Eric (Aaron's boyfriend) in the armory. We don't see what they're doing except that when the rest of the group runs out into the street to fight the walkers, they join in. And finally, the group that's in the infirmary before Denise gets there. This includes Aaron and Heath. Especially where Heath is concerned, I think that's super important. I’ll come back to it in a minute.)

I’ll start by talking about Morgan, Carol, Tara, Rosita, and Eugene. There’s definitely some interesting dialogue, especially from Eugene. I also think it's super important that they all seem to be wearing light-colored shirts, and that Eugene and Carol are in the same place.

Because where we are currently in the series is that Eugene and Ezekiel are the same place. Now, Ezekiel wasn’t in the show at this point, so it was impossible to have him here, but I'm wondering if at some point in the spinoff, Carol and Daryl will split up and go their separate ways and Carol will go to find Ezekiel.

(We already know there will be a falling out between Daryl and Carol in the upcoming bonus episodes and that they will go their separate ways for a time. Obviously they’ll come back together for the spinnof. But I think this separation foreshadows that in the spinoff, they’ll leave together, but at some point they’ll split up and go to separate places. We saw this with Huck and Felix in TWB, which is a template for the spinoff. And my theory is that Carol will go to find Ezekiel when that happens.)

That's really the biggest thing I think this points to. I also wonder how and if Morgan will be involved. Since he still alive, he could be. But he's also not on the show right now, so it's hard to tell. I suppose it just depends on where FTWD is at that point, and if they bring him back or cross him over into the spinoff. I think that's a real possibility.

I also want to point out the beginning of 6x08, right after the church falls, Carol trips and falls down. It turns out, she slipped on some bullets. Morgan helps her up and they run into the brownstone. It then goes on to say that she's hurt in the head and may even have a concussion.

Now, my first thought was that was super unrealistic, since all she did was trip and fall and we don’t even really see her hit her head. But she's also tricking Morgan and pretending to be more hurt than she actually is, so it may just be a ruse anyway. 

But the point is, between the bullets, and the mention of concussion, that's a huge Beth parallel. So, not sure if this points to Carol being part of a death fakeout, or somehow it's pointing back to Beth. If anything, I think it might point toward the Carzekiel death fakeout because it's after this that Morgan mentions you had—past tense—a son and a husband. So, if I'm right about that, we have a representation of the fake out, and then eventually Carol goes to where Eugene is. See what I mean?

Oh, one more cool thing about Eugene’s group? Remember at first it was him and Tara and Rosita in the garage. Eugene had to pick the lock to get into the house. As soon as he does, they run into Denise and Creepy Wolf Dude kidnapping her. Um…Denise = Beth, so this may well be a representation of Eugene and his two friends (in S10 it’s Yumiko and Ezekiel) running into Beth. Also notice the lock/key reference that led to her. Just saying.

Okay, let's talk about Rick and Michonne’s group. In a lot of ways, this might be the biggest deal, but it's also the most fluid. I had a hard time seeing much of anything as a foreshadow from this group. At least, during the first part in Jesse's house. I mean, Rick is with Jesse, and there's drama between Ron and Carl. I've said before that a lot of their dialogue foreshadow Ron’s death for sure. But I just wasn't seeing anything very new. But I will say now that I think that this does foreshadow Carl's death as well. I get to that in a minute.

But I really started seeing some important stuff with Rick and Michonne’s group in 6x09 when they all moved out into the crowd of walkers covered in guts.

When they decide to go to the quarry instead of the armory (because they can’t get to the armory) Jesse says Judith won't make it. And Father Gabriel says he'll take Judith and protect her. I'm sure you can figure out why think that's important.

1)     The Sirius character who represents Beth takes Judith with him to protect her.

2)     We have a representation of Rick and Michonne and being separated from Judith. Even if FG just represents himself in this sequence, where we are in the series now, we have Judith and FG in the same place. So again, this feels like a representation of where we are now. Rick and Michonne have left Judith in, sort of, Gabriel’s care. (I know she’s really more in Daryl’s care, but Michonne did tell her to be good for Aunt Rosita, and if Daryl doesn’t leave with Carol to get Judith in the spin-off—if it’s about Rick instead or something—I’m assuming he’ll leave the kids with Maggie and Gabriel.)

Interestingly, Rick and Michonne are still together, which they aren’t where we are now in the series, but we don't know how long it's gonna take Michonne to find Rick. She might find him quickly and the two of them will be together for significant period of time together inside the CRM. The point is, they’re in a different place than Judith.

So, the group moves on, and of course both Sam and Jesse are killed. And when Ron tries to shoot Rick, Michonne kills him and Carl is shot.

This is the next significant piece. Of course we all know that Carl was shot in the eye in the comic books, so it’s something that they were always going to do in the show. But I really think this probably foreshadows Carl's death as well. Much like Glenn, his almost death here could be used as a foreshadowing for his real death down the line.

Of course, Rick picks him up and he and Michonne make their way to the infirmary. And here's what really jumped out at me about the infirmary: Heath is there.

Angela Kang has confirmed that Heath is inside the CRM. We know Rick is inside it somewhere, and that Michonne is heading to him. So, we have this interesting sequence where Michonne and Rick arrive in a new place and Heath is already there. See what I mean? So, I think we could possibly interpret this as Carl getting shot foreshadowing Carl's death, and then sometime after that, Rick and Michonne and end up at the CRM with Heath.

But I can even give you third possibility here. With Carl being hurt, Rick goes into one of his losing-it trances and leaves the infirmary with his ax to fight the walkers. We hear Michonne screaming after him to wait. She waits until Denise has a good handle on Carl's condition and then she hurries after Rick to fight the walkers. I always loved this scene.

This is the only real representation I saw of Rick and Michonne being separated for a short period of time. Because he heads out without her.

So, think of it this way. He heads out into a hoard of walkers alone. And she screaming his name. Sounds a lot like what happened when he disappeared in 9x05. Meanwhile, Michonne stays behind, taking care of Rick's kids. In this case, it's Carl, but in S9, it’s Judith and RJ. Then, when she sure Carl is safe, or as safe as she can make him, she kisses him goodbye and goes after Rick. So, kind of like she left Judith and RJ behind to go look for Rick. Interestingly, who did she leave Carl with in S6? Denise. Who is a proxy of Beth.

So, I get that all of these overlap and they're very nonlinear. But I’m sure you can see what I mean about why I think all of S6 is a foreshadow of what's to come. And where we are right now in the series is at the crossroads of a lot of these possible foreshadows. Especially of Eugene finding Denise/Beth.

And if we’re super literal with the interpretation, we might even say that Eugene finds Beth (Denise) in the Commonwealth, but then she leaves with someone else (whoever the equivalent of Creepy Wolf Dude will be for Beth) and then Denise goes to the infirmary, which is probably the CRM because Heath is there. And she's there when Rick and Michonne arrive.

I'm not at all set in stone about what I think will happen. I'm just saying its possibility. Beth, CRM, and Rick are things we’ve been looking at closely since Rick left in S9, so this is super-interesting.

Kind of a footnote, but when Denise is still with Creepy Wolf Dude, Carol shoots him. I'm not really sure how to interpret that. Maybe that was just for this episode and not part of the template. Because Carol was still with Eugene's group, but she went outside, saw Denise and Creepy Wolf Dude, and shot him so Denise could get away. So, no idea how to interpret that for future storyline, but it's kind of interesting. Carol being at all involved could possibly be traced back to the fact that she and Beth were at Grady together. Also makes me wonder if maybe at some point in TWB, Huck will shoot someone to save Will, Felix's boyfriend. Just because of the parallels.

And finally, I feel like Rick and Michonne going outside and leading the charge against all the walkers is something that has been foreshadowed many times. Remember that when I talked about 7x08, I said that Rick and Michonne coming to hilltop represented them returning after the CRM to Alexandria to lead the war? I saw this same thing foreshadowed in 8x09 when they return to Alexandria and find out Carl’s been bitten.

In this case, they fight walkers rather than people (the CRM) so I don't know if that translates to the same thing, but the two of them being out there make other people want to join the fight. People come out of their respective hiding places and all of them fight the walkers together. And obviously, in the war against the CRM, everyone's going to have to work together.

I even wondered if these different little groups could represent different factions (Alexandria, Hilltop, the Kingdom, but also the people from Fear, the people from TWB, and anyone Beth might bring with her.) But I couldn't pin down who would be who. For example, if Carol, Eugene etc. represent the Commonwealth, that could be one group who comes out to help. Father Gabriel and the people who were in the church coming out to help could represent the people at Alexandria etc. You get the idea.

And of course while all this is going on, we had the super interesting symbolism of Daryl, driving the Paddy truck (Beth symbol), picking up several people which include Glenn, Enid, Sasha, Abraham (all Beth proxies) using gasoline (Beth symbol) and fire (Beth symbol) to set a body of water (Beth symbol) on fire (Bethyl symbol).

And it really goes along well with everything we've always said. I definitely think that the entire group is going to be fighting a big war and Beth isn’t by far going to be the only component. But something about her or maybe her and Daryl together come back with a key or a weapon that will help them win the war. If Daryl hadn't started that lake on fire, the walkers might have overwhelmed them all. It simply gave them the edge they needed to keep fighting and actually win.

And of course, in the sequence we see Daryl join the fight with two knives, including Beth's.

Okay, I'll stop there. Just a lot of food for thought, no?