#season 2-3 daryl you will always be famous

[koytix]

Rolling tobacco

[twdmusicboxmystery]

10x21: Details

Okay, let’s talk details. And most of these will just back up what I’ve already said about these sequences being callbacks to Grady and leaving Beth behind, as well as foreshadows of finding her again.

***As always, spoilers abound below for 10x21. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

Carol and Dog:

Of course Dog goes with Carol and I noticed that when she gets back to Alexandria, she says, “let’s get you home.” So, home theme, and it’s especially potent because Dog = Beth.

She says to Dog, “For the record, I didn’t need an apology for him.” It’s the ‘for the record’ part that caught my attention, not only because Beth mentioned records at Grady, but Negan said the exact same thing to Daryl about Carol several episodes ago. “For the record, I don’t think she’s coming back.” So, it’s something of a theme.

She tells Jerry the story of the Stone Soup, which to me parallels Rick’s “Rock in the Road” story, which we’ve always thought was about Beth. (X). And I’m not sure how exactly to interpret the rock in either story, but biblically Christ = the rock. So, there’s that.

We see her fixing the solar panels as well. Because of the sunlight angle, that could represent Beth. I’m actually seeing a lot of symbolism here for both Carol fixing Beth in some way and Beth fixing Carol. So, I think this has to do with the template for the future. I think the two of them will come together again, as they did at Grady, and they’ll both be kind of a mess at that point and need to help each other through some stuff. I’ll talk about it in more detail later when I do another forecasting post.

When Dog starts chasing the rat and Carol runs to see what’s happening, he knocks over a lamp. Lamp Theory. And the cord of the lamp has been gnawed on by the rat. So can you see how all these symbols kind of interlock?

When Dog chases the rat and knocks over the pot, Carol has a serious/Sirius mention. She says, “This is serious. We need that food.”

Now, for the record, I think food shortages are going to continue to be a thing, and Beth and the CRM will be the answer to needed resources, so both sides of that sentence are important.

She makes a trap to catch the rat, which I talked about yesterday. Then she goes out looking for more ingredients for the soup. While out there, we see a dragonfly, a blue butterfly, and a spider. All three of those are important symbols. 

They all represent some form of transformation, wisdom, renewal, and fertility.

It’s probably important that Carol uses Leah’s knife to fix the solar panels. Again, just more Beth symbols on top of Beth symbols.

@frangipanilove also pointed out that it’s important that the instant she can’t see the rat anymore, the power goes out. See how that works? Rat (Beth) is unseen and suddenly no sun power.

Carol also says at this part, “there will be more sun tomorrow, right?” That’s super important. Sun = Beth. And ever since AOW, I’ve thought the “tomorrow” theme pointed to the CRM war. So again, just more evidence that this is both a callback and a foreshadow of what will happen with Beth and CRM.

As I said yesterday, Dog watching over Carol as she sleeps = Beth watching over Carol while she’s unconscious at Grady. She also says to Dog, “You miss him, don’t you?” Which is exactly what Beth asked Daryl about Merle in Still.

And then of course she destroys the wall. The next day, Jerry comes to see her, and we get lots of interesting references. There’s the poker, poker face reference. He says, “caring…yeah that’s a problem,” which we’re connecting to Beth’s famous line, “when you care about people, hurt is just part of the package.”

Jerry also says, “2+2=Eureka.” Now, Eureka is an expression which means “a cry of joy or satisfaction when one finds or discovers something.” We’re hoping the 2+2 is a reference to episode 22, and the discovery is that Beth is alive. *fingers crossed*

The song that plays, No Worries by Amateur Blond, has references to dogs in it. And it keeps saying “Oh, oh, oh.”

Of course Daryl returns, Rat gets free, and I especially love how Dog runs to Daryl. Cuz, you know, Dog = Beth. :D

One other thing @frangipanilove​ brought to my attention. The scarf Carol has in this episode can be linked to the scarf she wore in S3. They actually look very similar. Remember that at the prison, when T-Dog died and Lori gave birth to Judith, Carol was wearing a scarf over her head. Daryl found it with blood on it, which led him to assume she was dead. They even created a grave for her. But of course he found her (after finding her knife, btw) soon after and she lived.

It’s just a little too coincidental that this can be connected to a death fake out in season 3, and there’s a major knife exchange going on in the same episode. 

Daryl and Bike:

Okay, so I talked a lot about Daryl yesterday and how Bike = Beth. The part where he gets under the car is really interesting. I’m not entirely satisfied with how to interpret it yet, but I do think it represents leaving Beth behind and stuff that happened during the missing 17 days. 

You could call Daryl’s behavior here destructive. I mean, he crawled under a precariously perched car. And that could represent his depression, to the point of self-harm, after losing Beth. He does find the part he needs in the 3rd car (rule of threes). And that car was somewhat hidden at first. 

He didn’t see it until he’d already reached and checked the first two cars. So, that could represent looking for Beth’s body but there’s an unseen element he isn’t aware of at first. It also parallels the “third man” theory. (X).

When he gets back to the bike, he suddenly realizes he gave the knife to Carol and he needs it. His huge, Rambo knife is just too big to get it into the crevices of the bike to attach the new part. 

I think this is important for the future story line as well. After the spinoff starts, when he and Carol part ways, he’ll give her something and realize he needs it later on. It’s when he goes looking for this part that he’ll run into the CRM and Beth.

I also noticed kind of a cute little parallel here. When he realizes he doesn’t have the knife and he needs it, he sort of does this thing where he brushes his hair out of his face. He did a similar thing in Consumed. 

I just remember a lot of people commenting on how adorable it was. So I thought I’d point it out here as well.

So then he goes looking of Beth, er, I mean a new knife. I talked about a lot of this yesterday: the Beth walker, his limp, the dry river bed, etc. It’s important that he finds the knife with military walkers (probably the CRM). I can’t help but wonder if letting walker fall into the ravine represents him letting one of their communities get overrun with walkers or something. 

I also REALLY want to connect it to when the group did this in Them. In that scene, Rick was almost bitten. Daryl came running up at the last minute and helped him, but I think it’s significant that they were doing the exact same thing there that we see Daryl doing here. I’m thinking it represents something about maybe him finding Rick with the CRM and helping him in some way, or something. Again, just speculating about future storylines here.

But he finds the knife he needs and goes back to the bike. And two more military walkers come at him. Yes, two. You may have missed that, as I and my fellow theorists both did the first time. But one is coming at him from ahead of the bike, down the tracks. 

The other is coming at him from his right side. You can tell because he turns his head to look at it.

Couple of things here. Part of the reason it only seems like one is that they show it weird. We only see him killing the one straight ahead, not the one to the side. I’m sure there’s some symbolism in that, but I honestly have no idea what it is.

But here’s an interesting thing. He finds a second knife on that second walker. It doesn’t do a close up on the second knife, so it’s easy to miss. But there are actually 2 knives.

Not entirely sure how to interpret that, but remember that in Still, there were two knives. First, Daryl gave Beth his, but between rooms in the golf club, she found her bone-handled one that she always carried after that, and gave his back to him. So it might just represent Beth and Daryl and their 2 knives.

He also finds military rations (food) on one of them. As I said yesterday, I think TF is going to get to the point where they desperately need resources. Where food is scarce and even water becomes undrinkable. It will be part of the CRM plot. So I think him finding food on military walkers hints at that. They will need the CRM’s resources to survive.

The other thing I’m curious about is what he says. He says, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” To me, that’s a weird reaction. There are walkers all over the place in these woods. And neither of these two are a massive, immediate threat to him. So his reaction doesn’t make tons of sense. But again, I’m sure it has something to do with a future storyline that simply isn’t clear here yet. 

Also, the walker he takes the knife from is missing his leg/foot. That’s part of the missing foot/shoe symbolism, and just proves in my mind that this is symbolic of something to do with Beth. 

He then sets to fixing his bike. But it takes a while and it’s dark before he finishes. This was super cool and something I missed the first time through. While fixing it, he hears a wolf howl. And they draw attention to it by having Daryl turn his head toward it, as thought acknowledging it. 

Plus, the captions say it’s a wolf, not a dog or a coyote. So, this is wolf symbolism. And I think what they’re trying to say her is that when Daryl finds and “fixes” Beth, the wolf symbolism will be in play. I’ll talk more about what the means and how it MIGHT manifest in coming days.

Finally, he gets the bike fixed and started and heads back.

@wdway​, as usual with her eagle eyes, noticed something about this shot. In the sky above him, we see three stars. They look suspiciously like the “spoon” portion of the Little Dipper. And guys, at this distant, stars wouldn’t even register on camera, which means they were put in purposely with a computer. Daryl is riding toward the spoon/star/Sirius symbol. Just saying. 

The only other thing I noticed (other than all the stuff I talked about yesterday, anyway) is that there is some missing time here. Daryl fixes his bike at night and we see him drive off into the darkness, but by the time he gets back and talks to Carol, it’s late afternoon or early evening, and he’s talking about going to bed. I don’t know if he could have gone out far enough for it to take him that long to get back. Of course, maybe he just looked some more the next day and didn’t come back right away. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. But it’s something I noticed.

So, yeah. I think that’s all the details I have. Anyone notice anything I missed?

[whateverisbeautiful]

Reveling in Richonne

#156: The Reward (9x16)

Every protagonist needs a reward. Even if they don’t get a happily ever after or a perfect ending, they have to get a reward for all their efforts. And Rick’s reward was/is/and will always be Michonne and the family they created. 

So even though he’s not able to still witness it all yet, the fact that his family can have a joyous moment like they had in this s9 finale shows the reward of all Rick and Michonne’s hardwork and sacrifice.

And getting to watch Richonne and their family all these years has been such a treasured experience and a reward for me. So, y’all, I’m walking into this final season 9 post like...

So the finale jumps ahead a bit, to the first snowy winter we’ve really seen on the show. And it’s actually really pretty. 

And y’all, you already know the main scene that I need to bring up from this finale in regards to my love for Richonne and the Grimes family. 😊🙌🏽 ❄️

But a few observations before that moment:

1.     I admit I found Negan’s commentary on this messy love quadrangle hilarious. He was Jerry Springer up in that joint. 😂He was straight up giddy to be out of that cell and crack his “Father Not The Father” jokes.

2.     I absolutely love seeing little Judith and RJ in their beanies and winter clothes and Judith being a good big sister by wrapping a blanket around her and RJ. ☺️ 

Carl took care of her and now she has a little sibling to look after. Full circle. 👌 And I cannot wait until Rick gets to reunite with his little ones. They’re too precious! 🏽

3.     Judith somehow lost Dog and I was legit fearful for her cuz Daryl would lose his mind if they didn’t find his best friend before he got back lol. But seeing little RJ in this moment was adorable. How I would love if Rick and Carl would have got to be in his life and watch him grow up.  

4.     Michonne and co stay at the Sanctuary (which makes me sad cuz the last time she was in the Sanctuary she was all cuddled up with the famous Rick Grimes. I need that Richonne reunion asap.)  The group at Sanctuary tries to figure out how they should best travel home and when they go over the map Aaron says Rick’s bridge would’ve saved them which is sad too. 😔 Rick had the right idea about that bridge all this time and it would’ve helped people just like he believed it would. 

5.     Michonne and Ezekiel have a talk, leader to leader, and Michonne expresses how being apart didn’t actually make them stronger and they can’t let that happen again. She reminds Ezekiel that “that charter we signed, it means something.” But that dialogue had me looking at the writers like...

Again, I wish it was “we” tho and that they had let Michonne sign her charter so that she could sign it with “Michonne Grimes”. But I digress lol. 😪

Michonne passionately says the kingdom people aren’t just King Ezekiel’s anymore. “They’re ours. And we’re gonna get them home” I was like Kingdom, it’s your lucky day cuz now that you have Michonne claiming you, you gon’ be alright. When Sis is leading, people live. 👸🏽💯

6.     Judith thinks she hears Dog so she runs after him (which I was like baby girl please stop running off. She’s about to beat Carl’s record) and then Negan chases after her and again I’m not with this. I just don’t want him near her no matter how much he’s “changed” and I especially don’t want him holding her or acting as a pseudo dad. The father/daughter vibes the show might be going for...

Negan asks if Judith’s okay and gives her his coat and then he jokes that she’s doing all this running to get extra Negan time...and y’all, I really think Rick would dislike this moment. ☹️ I don’t care how harmonious Rick wanted the world to be, he def didn’t intend for Negan to be buddy buddy with his daughter. 

And while yes someone needed to go after Judith so I’m glad someone helped, cuz those Alexandrians stay slacking whenever it’s time to look for some kids. But still, Negan needs to stay in his lane. 

I know this show will be adamant to redeem Negan going forward tho so it’s pretty much inevitable. And the show really was working double time to redeem this guy with having him save a little girl and a dog at the same time. 🤷🏽‍♀️

7.     The only thing colder than this winter weather was Carol breaking it off with Ezekiel 👀🥶 I felt really bad for the king cuz that’s a lot of loss to go through with losing your kid and then your wife leaving you. It also just makes me really grateful for Richonne cuz, y’all, there’s a lot of couples both in this show and in other shows who fall apart or get really mishandled but Richonne is so solid and so everlasting. #StayWinning 

8.     Michonne and Negan have an interesting exchange in the very room where Rick and Michonne were once laying down the law to Negan in the prior season finale.  

Michonne thanks Negan for saving Judith and Negan brings up how last time the two were in here together Rick had just slit his throat open. Good times. 😝 Negan says Judith is a special girl and again my gut reaction was just to be like; Negan step back cuz you aren’t a pseudo dad, uncle, or anything else. 👏🏽

9.     Interestingly one of the most compassionate things said to Michonne since this time jump comes from Negan in this scene. Cuz he looks at her and says “And you…you’ve been through enough.” It’s true. It’s so true. 💯 

Her friends needed to express this sentiment too. You can tell it feels strange for Michonne to be having a fairly friendly moment like this with Negan so she just says “Get better.” and leaves. But then Negan asks if everyone’s okay and she questions if he cares and then they end up having a whole little conversation about how no one sees themselves as the bad guy. It’s true that from most people’s perspectives they’re the hero.  

I feel like this scene was low key meant to plant the seed of Michonne and Negan having a more friendly open dialogue with each other moving forward and all I can say to that is...tread very lightly TWD lol. 🙃😑

Alright so now onto the perfect winter wonderland scene. 🤗

The group gets back to Alexandria and there’s this great aerial shot of Alexandria’s queen, Michonne being the first one to walk through the gates and then we see Judith run and hug her. 

I adore that Judith runs to her with open arms just like she did in 9x14. Mom and daughter love, y’all. 🙌🏽

Mama Michonne of course checks on Judith and asks how she is and she notices Judith’s cheeks are super red so she immediately asks, “What happened?” and Judith doesn’t want to admit that the Carl in her had her running out the house and off into the frigid storm, so she instead adorably says, “It’s cold.” And Michonne smiles and hugs her again. I love their love. 😭😋

And then y’all, I’m sent straight to another galaxy when Michonne looks over and sees RJ adorably laying in the snow. 

PRECIOUS. She cutely walks up to him and scoops him up into a hug and this is some of the best Mama Michonne content. 😭 

Can you believe we’re here? We’re at a point in this series where Michonne can hug her son who belongs to her and Rick. Richonne is the best journey. 🙌🏽💯

Rick and Michonne’s love always felt like a character in itself. It was that evident and present and powerful. And now it’s precious to know that their love gets to take form in this adorable little boy.

I just adore seeing Michonne hug her children. And Judith’s little face of joy as she watches her mom and brother is the adorable cherry on top. More of this in season ten, please!

Michonne has hugged all the Grimes in the most beautiful way. 😭Especially, in times they’ve been in danger Michonne’s always right there to hug them and be there for them. 

The Grimes are lucky to have Michonne as the matriarch. ☺️ #Royalty!

And then it gets even cuter as Judith and RJ play in the snow and Daryl gets in on the action and throws a snowball at RJ which is the sweetest thing. 😊

And RJ throws a snowball back at Uncle Daryl and I don’t know about y’all but on my TV I heard RJ throw that snowball and say “This is for not taking my dad back to Alexandria like you said you would.” 😂Was it just my TV? 😋

Lol but for real it is cute and I love seeing Daryl interact with Rick and Michonne’s son. 

So then they all engage in this adorable little snow ball fight and it’s really heartwarming. This is the world Rick wanted. This is the life he wanted to give Michonne and their kids and I’m glad that in this moment his wife and kids got to enjoy the bliss he so deeply wanted to provide for them. 

This is the reward. 😌

The only thing that would make this scene better is if Rick and Carl were here to join in this family fun. But Rick will get his chance. I know he will. 💯

Every season finale had pretty much always gave us a notably special Richonne moment. Season 3 Finale: “Must’ve been something else then.” Season 4 Finale: “Cuz I’m okay too.” Season 5 Finale: “I’m still with you.” Season 6 Finale: Rick being sent into a whole daze after finding her locs on that walker. Season 7 Finale: Rick finding her and hugging her after that battle and letting her know they will be the ones who live. Season 8 Finale: R&M holding hands as they head off to war.

So going into the season 9 finale I was sad that this would be the first finale without a sweet Richonne moment. But what’s great is that Richonne lives on through their family. So the finale still gave us something so precious.

If they’re going to take Rick away from us then ending on Michonne hugging both her kids in the snow is a nice touch to give us some Grimes family love. After everything Michonne went through this season I’m glad we get to see her smile and embody the sentiment she expressed to Negan in 9x04; As long as you’re still breathing then there’s life worth living. 

The final moment is Ezekiel and Judith talking on the radio and before Judith leaves to do homework she tells Ezekiel, “I’ll tell my mom you said hello.” And again, I just love how often Judith says “mom”. I was hoping we’d hear Judith call Michonne mom at least once this season and we got that ten times over so I’m happy. 

And y’all, I heard about the rumors leading up to the finale that Rick’s voice might potentially be heard on the radio and I was pretty certain that those rumors were just that; rumors. But you know there’s always that little tiny piece of you that hopes. And then it was some indiscernible woman’s voice so idk, we’ll see where that goes I guess. 

But even though Rick being alive didn’t get foreshadowed in this finale, I have hope that at some point Michonne will learn the good news that her man is alive because once again, they’re the ones who live. They’re also #MagnetsForLife 🙌🏽😊🎉🥰

And that is everything from Season 9!

Season 9 was quite the roller coaster. Even though the show isn’t what it was, this season was a refreshing upgrade from the last two seasons. And as always, in my humble opinion, Richonne and their family was the brightest beacon of light this season. They never fail to deliver and shine. 

On the eve of this s10 trailer, (Michonne’s last trailer 😭 ), I know I’m going to watch for Michonne and Danai’s final season. (And imma need this show to give both Danai and Michonne their things. Said things include but are not limited to: Their respect, their honor, their peace, their accolades, their time to shine, and their route to the movies with Rick) 

But after that, it’ll be the movies I wait for. I want Michonne, Rick, Judith, and RJ content. All of it. Every second of it.  😍👌

(Side note: And I don’t want Michonne to leave Judith and RJ for any reason at all, so I seriously hope wherever she goes she takes them with her. Even though I have a feeling Judith will be around for the rest of the show, but a girl can dream that Michonne gets to leave with her kids)

Whatever happens with the show or movies all I know is I’m in it for the Grimes Family. I’m glad Andy and Danai get to move on and go thrive beyond this show. I’m grateful for the time they’ve put into these characters and I’m especially glad that their characters are alive, Richonne’s love lives, their son and daughter live, cuz this family be giving me life. 

And y’all, just know that so long as Richonne is alive my love for them and my need to revel over them lives on too. So your girl is not done gushing over the GOAT couple lol. 

I’ll of course have to analyze every moment in those movies but even before then I’ve already got some ideas. I’ve mentioned before how I have a non-existent top ten Richonne moments list that I don’t have written down it’s just in my head. And that’s true. Or at least it was. 

Now that we’ve officially gotten every Rick and Michonne moment we’re gonna get from the series, I’ve compiled a whole Top 30 list of my all-time favorite Richonne moments ranked in order, leading all the way to my number one favorite Richonne moment. (Y’all know my extra self couldn’t stop at a Top 10 lol).

So at some point down the line, I’ll try and share that list with some updated thoughts on those scenes. And I’d love to hear your lists too! 

Until then, I can’t wait for these “alleged” movies lol. They’re coming. They have to cuz I need this all to conclude with Rick and Michonne back where they’re always meant to be; together. I need Judith and RJ back with their mom and dad. I need Richonne/Grimes Family gold. A whole pot of it. And I believe we’ll get it. 

I’m excited too cuz If Rick and Michonne are in a movie it’s going to be good, no matter what else goes on, cuz those two don’t know how to do anything other than be excellent. 💯And imma be there cuz that’s our family so you know we gotta be there to reunite lol. 😋🙌 🏽 🏆

I already know that reunion is about to be just like Richonne and their family...

So before I conclude this post, I really want to say a sincere thank you to everyone who read all these s9 posts and all the little dissertations I’ve done thus far. As I always say, and I always mean it, y’all are the best and have great taste in TV couples lol. I know writing these when I have some free time puts a smile on my face and if this last 30 days of posts put at least one smile on your face then it makes all this time spent worth it. 

Thanks so much for letting me revel on your TL and thanks for sharing the comments, kindness, and conversations. I so enjoy hearing from you and your opinions are on point for real. Your insights make me love Richonne even more. So thank you! I genuinely appreciate the support and that even seasons later, even with all the stuff and thangs this wild show puts us through we’re still here rocking with Richonne. #Always&Forever

All that’s left to say is Richonne is amazing and the GOAT. When you have two iconic multidimensional characters played by two iconic multidimensional actors you’re gonna get magic. And that’s why a “zombie” show ended up having the greatest healthiest most beautiful love story I’ve ever seen. #GospelTruth #StayBlessedY’all #LongLiveRichonne!

gifs source: the amazing & gifted @michonnegrimes

[theprocrastinatingalien]

Battle of The Walking Dead - Champions Edition (featuring Glenn, Alicia, Michonne, Rosita & Negan)

The Battle of The Walking Dead heads into the final stretch of the competition.

We started with 64 characters from THE WALKING DEAD and spin-off show FEAR THE WALKING DEAD.  We split them over four batches, and from each batch we whittled them down to a champion.

We have our five champions (there was a tie), and they now they face each other.  Which two of them will make the finale to find the ultimate champion?  Well, like always, that's down to you.  Head over to twitter, add procrastinalien - and get voting!

BATCH#1 CHAMP - ALICIA CLARK

This was my first big surprise the game, I had Maggie down as the first winner, but no - you guys had a different plan -  Alicia Clark became our first champion!  Alicia is an original FEAR THE WALKING DEAD character.  Initially she was (possibly) seen as the weakest of the Clark family, but now in season four, Alicia is the only member of the family still alive!  Alycia Debnam-Carey has played the character in all four seasons.  Will she return for the green-lit season five?

BATCH#2 CHAMP - MICHONNE

Michonne was first spotted at the end of season two, as she rescued Andrea.  Since then she's become a fan favourite, and one of the strongest characters in the show.  Her story has swerved from her comic book counterparts, as she entered into a relationship with leader Rick in the last few seasons.  Actress Danai Gurira will take over as lead female once Lincoln and Cohan leave the series during the ninth season.  Gurira, herself, has now garnered quite a lot of non-TWD attention lately - playing Okoye in BLACK PANTHER and AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR.

BATCH#3 CHAMP - NEGAN

He beat out leader Rick to get here, but you guys voted Negan your favourite character from the third batch.  Negan crashed his way into the season six finale of TWD, and has dominated the series since.  He make his mark by using his barbed baseball bat (Lucille) to cave in the skulls of Abraham and Glenn, and has lead his Saviors in a war against Rick, The King and The Widow.   In the season eight finale, he finally lost and got his throat slashed by Rick. He was allowed to live, however.  He'll start season nine in a jail.  Jeffrey Dean Morgan - famous from films such as WATCHMAN, and THE LOSERS, as well as TV shows such as Sam and Dean's dad in SUPERNATURAL - brings a lot of charisma to the villain - it's a cool but fiery combo.

BATCH#4 CHAMP - ROSITA ESPINOSA

Who would've guessed - in a batch that included the likes of Carl Grimes and Daryl Dixon - that Rosita would've made it to the finals?  Not me!  I honestly didn't realise the character was so popular - but here she is!  Christian Serratos has played the role since her introduction in season four.  Rosita was travelling wit Abraham and Eugene when they encounter Glenn, which lead to them joining Rick's group.  Initially in a romantic relationship with Abe, he dumped her for Sasha.  It was still hard for her when he was killed by Negan however.  She rebounded to Spencer, only to have him killed by Negan too - it's now wonder she tried to take him out herself.  She survived the war and is expected to get more screen time in season nine as the ladies take the focus.

BATCH#4 CHAMP - GLENN RHEE

One of the originals, I have no surprise that Glenn is here in the VIP Lounge.  He's my personal favourite to win.  Steven Yeun played Glenn from his introduction in season one, all the way up to his death at the hands of Negan at the start of season seven.  He was the show's 'heart', and held a level of morality in the zombie apocalypse.  Viewers watches as his romance with Maggie Greene became a backbone to the series.  He died whilst she was pregnant, and we expect to mean their child in season nine.

So there you have it guys.  Those are your champions... you have three days to vote for your favourites - only two will go forward to the grand finale.  Which two - that's up to you! 

[superleeleehipster]

Why Carzekiel Won’t Happen

Phew, okay guys. Let’s try and calm our tits, alright? I definitely understand the short fuse that us Carylers have. It’s been 7 full seasons and Caryl still hasn’t gone canon, so many of our attitudes in regards to scenes is either ‘All or Nothing’. I get it, I really do. But there’s nothing to be scared of at this point, it’s only one day of filming spoilers and lord knows that filming spoilers and episode spoilers can be vastly different in the end. 

I think this will help the many who are disappointed over the spoilers. So obviously a lot of us are terrified of having just a little bit of hope b/c TWD storyline could absolutely go anywhere it wanted to. However, to me Carzekiel does not make sense not only as a storyline, but also as a marketing tool. So here’s why I don’t think anything will happen between Carol and Ezekiel:

Under the cut b/c this wound up being more lengthy than I planned, as usual XD

Why Carzekiel won’t work for the storyline:

Many Carylers are fearful of Carzekiel being a thing partially b/c Carol has been on a similar path as Michonne in the comic books. However, a lot of characters on the show have gotten snippets of the character’s arcs in the comic books. When the governor was alive, Michonne was the one that was captured and she was raped by the governor. But in the show, back in season 3, it was Maggie and Glenn, and even though Maggie wasn’t raped, she was assaulted. That’s just an example of how just b/c Carol seems to be on a similar arc as Michonne was, that doesn’t mean it’s going to follow through completely. Comic Michonne had slept with Morgan and Ezekiel and comic Carol slept with Tyreese and tried to convince Rick and Lori to have a threesome… obviously the show didn’t follow that arc.

Also, putting Carol with Ezekiel would make no sense b/c of how they’ve developed both their relationship and Caryl’s relationship. That famous speech Zeke gave her in episode 2, the writers specifically left out the part that was flirtatious. In the comics, he says this speech to Mich and they get a little flirty after the speech but he and Carol don’t. Throughout season 7, Carol was visited both by Morgan and Zeke and she was always annoyed when they came to visit her. However, when Daryl visits, she hugs him… HUGS HIM, with tears of relief and happiness. 

I know others have said it too but it’s an important reminder, in that if TWD writers wanted to promote Carzekiel b/c they knew they’d go canon in the next season, Daryl wouldn't have been at the Kingdom at all. Think about it, Daryl didn’t try to convince Ezekiel to join the fight, not even once. The only thing he did there was go see Carol and then leave. Thats it. If they wanted to promote Carzekiel, they wouldn’t have had an entire episode of Daryl not only praising Carol, but also taking the time to find her, spend time with her, and basically reminding the audience of just how powerful of a bond they have. If they wanted to promote Carzekiel, then Carol wouldn’t have been as annoyed when Zeke came to visit her. 

It would just not make sense for Carzekiel to happen b/c Carol’s already had the dead end relationship with Tobin, so whoever she chooses next will be real for her, and Daryl is by far the closest person she has in her life. 

SHE DIDN’T WANT HIM TO LEAVE HER DAMN HOUSE! SHE WANTED TO RUN AFTER HIM... *crawls into a fetal position* 

Why it wouldn’t make sense for Carzekiel to be a thing in terms of marketing

If you look at every single voting poll AMC has done on who the audience wants to see come together, it’s always Caryl. They have also had polls that ask which couple is the best and they have Caryl as an option even though they’re technically not a couple (and by the way, Caryl winds those a lot too). 

Even though we’d like to think so, AMC is not stupid, they know that a BIG portion of the audience wants something to happen between Daryl and Carol, and they also know that putting Carzekiel together, even if for a short time, would cause them to have more disappointed fans than happy fans. So having the audience lose interest in the show is NOT what they need right now. They know they’ve got a lot of convincing to do after losing a ton of their fanbase, and they know that their best wildcard is Caryl. 

But if anything else, leave it to the actors themselves to set things straight. Lennie was taken aback by the idea of a romance between his character and Mel’s, and he said that “if that ever happened, then I think Daryl would have something to say about it”. Khary was a little baffled at the shipping as well. Despite his initial joke on talking dead about him getting laid, he had said in interviews that it blows him away how quickly and how easily ppl start shipping other characters. He even said that they’ve only had a select few scenes together and ppl already think they’re going to be a couple, yet Caryl has been shipped for way longer. 

So even the other male counterparts that are shipped with Carol are a little baffled as to why some of the audience are already shipping them. If that tells you anything, it’s that the ACTORS are not expecting their characters to go that route. 

Filming Spoilers

Now we’ve gotten spoilers for one episode out of 16, just one. So much shenanigans could happen the rest of the season, so we shouldn’t judge one episode’s spoilers on what the entire season will be like. Also, they spent a few days at the studio (I think the Sanctuary), and we have no idea who was filming those days. So that’s a few days worth of possibilities there too!

What we should seriously focus on is the fact that Caryl is actually sharing breathing space in the first episode of the season, which is A LOT better start than last year. It’s sad but that’s gotta be a fucking record for those two, so things are already looking up. 

Also, I understand that the armband is what’s freaking people out, but we don’t know for certain as to the significance of it, or even how Carol joined the Kingdom team. For all we know, maybe before the battle, Rick goes to Carol and asks her to stay with Zeke and the Kingdom during the attack. Think about it, Rick was just betrayed by a group he had entrusted to help him, so of course he’d still be a little lacking in complete trust over Zeke. He’d feel better if Carol were with them just so he knew someone he trusted would be on the inside. And Daryl himself was spotted with a red armband in his back pocket behind the scenes, so that could play out into something significant too. Could it be just Norman with a random piece of ribbon in his pocket? Sure, but there’s an equal chance that it’s part of his scene.

Even with the armband business, why would TWD make the effort to have Daryl be the one to be near Carol and the others. Why would they want them close if there’s no significance between each other? And even though they may be on different teams, according to the armband, Daryl is still choosing to be near her before the fight. This could be like a ‘seeing off’ with each other before the attack begins. You never know.

But even IF (big if) this does mean that Carol 

Now don’t be surprised if Carol and Ezekiel are sharing scenes together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a bad thing. I would love for Carol to gain a friend like Zeke b/c he’s such a genuinely nice guy, and I’m sure she’d gain a lot from a friendship with him. 

Look, I know that we all want canon and we are sick and tired of our babies being separated, but we just need to be patient. We are our own worst enemy at this point, so let’s just take everything with a grain of salt for now. And if you’re feeling hopeless or doubtful, just keep looking back at what the writers have given us. According to the actors, every shot is taken for a reason, and there has to be a good reason for Carol to prefer Daryl over Zeke man.

Besides, you could do so much with those two, even if they have to share the scene with Tara and Morgan. You could capture them having quick glances at each other with nervous smirks on their faces. POTENTIAL IS EVERYWHERE!!

Anyways, Caryl on loves. 

[whoareyouandwhyshouldicare]

Recommended Reading: Richonne Edition Part Seven

Here’s another quick list of some Richonne fics. Enjoy! (Part 1  here, part 2  here, part 3 here , part 4 here, part 5 here and part 6)

7 Days  by twriter12   AU. It's been almost a year since the survivors arrived in Alexandria. In safety and comfort, Rick starts a new life with Michonne. That happiness is threatened when Rick awakes from an injury and doesn't remember his new life.

The Art of Control  by avintagekiss24   Maggie Greene has always been Michonne's Achilles heel. Whatever the green eyed beauty wants, Michonne usually gives. So, when Maggie suggests a night out at one of her famous social mixers, Michonne obliges. Unbeknownst to all, a blue eyed stranger will shift her actuality from distinct to obscure. Limits will be tested, desires will be realized, and no one will be left the same.

Bad Thangs by kendrawriter32 Rick and Michonne are putting the pieces back together after the walker herd hit Alexandria hard, and the losses it brought them. With Maggie pregnant and the future for them all to consider, Michonne knows exactly what she wants, and so does Rick. They want each other. And they will have each other. In as many ways, on as many surfaces, in as many positions as they can get each other. The only question is who they'll hurt, and what plans they'll derail, in the process. Richonne smut, with a dash of angsty romance, stirred in with some plot. Enjoy!

Before The Reign  TheBaeTide Set Before 'Sympathy for the Devil' and long before 'Just Call me Lucifer', this is the story of how Rick obsessed Rick and flawless Michonne came to be, starting from their first encounter. AU. No Walkers

Contractions of the Heart By: Richonne4Life    Richonne. Michonne is a surrogate for Rick & Lori; Lori can't handle reality; Rick is a lovesick fool; Richonne eventually rises.

Epic Love  By: 2violetflower15   Rick and Michonne navigate their way through an unexpected pregnancy. (Set post 6x16, about 4 months after the couch scene.)

Fires  by reciprocityfic   "Because sometimes fires burn to make way for something new...something beautiful." The evolution of Rick and Michonne's relationship throughout the course of season seven.

Girls With Brown Eyes  TheBaeTide Rick has been stuck in an undesirable position with his wife for months, and just as it begins to take its tole on him, he finds a reason to try happiness, over torture

The Great Wait by Nattah_Gudgrrl  Judith's baby monitor spills the beans about Rick's secret feelings for Michonne...Happiness for all my favorite characters! (because I'm a sap who can't deal with tragedy very well) Ending with Richonne's first time. (Because I need more swirl in my life) Kill me.  

Law & Order  by love.devil.movies.baby  It was just a normal day at the office until Michonne looked out the window to see two police officers brawling in the street. Now she feels compelled to help out the handsome cop who's fighting for custody with his cheating wife and best friend. It should have been a straight forward case, but she and Rick seem to be spending more time together than necessary...Richonne AU

Me & You  By: blacklitchick Rick and Michonne enjoy some down time after the events of the mid-season finale.

Must've Been Somethin' Else, Then  by idcabtthisish  This is a collection of Richonne one-shots.

My Best Friend's Wedding  by  cakeby_thepound   Michonne and Rick recently ended a seven-year relationship, and now, Glenn and Maggie's wedding is forcing them back together for the first time since the last time. (Richonne AU.)  

No Rest for the Gifted  by  Nattah_Gudgrrl   One Shot Michonne is insatiable. Can Rick keep up?(uhh... duh)             

Palm Trees  by cakeby_thepound   Rick and Michonne have been friends for years. They've seen one another through everything – marriage, divorce, new life, and even death. Now, as they look to leave the past behind, an island getaway with their closest friends may prove to be a second chance at life. And a first chance at romance… if they're willing to take it. (Richonne AU.)              

Red Dirt Road  by Siancore   AU Richonne. This is focused on teenaged Richonne. Set in rural Georgia where Michonne has been spending her summer vacation visiting with family. Both she and Rick meet one day on Old Route 3 and a surprising friendship blossoms.

 Ride by  cakeby_thepound  "Every April, the county fair would come into town with a setup like this," Rick fondly recalled, surveying the scene around him. He and Michonne had stumbled onto what was once the campus of a middle school, where a small carnival had been constructed in its parking lot. They were supposed to be on a weapons run, but in reality, it'd turned into a search for anything useful. And if nothing else, schools tended to have plenty of bathroom tissue and cafeteria food. "We would take Carl," he went on to say. "Make a whole weekend out of it.            

Seven Days  by RickRhymes   "She knew, in her gut, if she started something with Rick, it wasn't going to end with a one night stand. For either of them." Richonne short story. Pre-apocalypse AU.

Something New  by dimples33  Ghanaian Princess Michonne Edo Okeke comes to the US to meet her betrothed Prince Desmond Umaze and to further her studies and falls in love with another man. (Rick, Michonne, Lori, Andrea, Maggie, Sasha, Daryl, Shane and others.) AU, No walkers.

Whisper  by  charrrmed  After surviving a herd and an explosion with Rick, Michonne feels alive. Rick, on the other hand, is preoccupied with what could've gone wrong. Despite being constrained by an occupied car, Michonne decides to give him some of her optimism. Set in 6x09 Rock in the Road.       

[recentanimenews]

How Jump Festa 2020 Predicts Next Year’s Popular Anime Series

Last weekend was the biggest event of the year for Shonen Jump and Shueisha series’, Jump Festa 2020. Held at Makuhari Messe on December 21 and 22, the event saw the announcement of MANY new and returning anime series. While that was being covered on news, our Japan Correspondent, Daryl Harding, had a Dragon Ball of a time enjoying the festa.

    Jump Festa 2020 doesn’t only deal in Shonen Jump series; Young Jump, Jump SQ, and all of Shueisha’s series are showcased over the weekend event at Makuhari Messe. While it was a cold rainy weekend—which meant the cosplay area wasn't as big as it usually is—I trekked down to Makuhari Messe once again to go to my third Jump Festa. One of my favorite parts of the weekend is seeing how series grew from last year, as well as see what’ll be popular next year.

    Over the last year, we saw the rise of Demon Slayer: Kimestu no Yaiba. The series seemed to come out of nowhere and became the biggest media franchise in Japan in 2019, and beating out One Piece with more manga volumes sold! While this seemed to be out of the blue, I saw the seed being sawn at Jump Festa 2019 with displays set up and promotion for the upcoming series. Same with THE PROMISED NEVERLAND.

      This year felt different; while of course there were series I know will be popular next year, like Dr. STONE season 2, or World Trigger season 3, there weren't many new series being promoted like years prior. The most prominent new anime series announcement was Moriarty the Patriot, with two dedicated stage events, and a huge exhibition of items and costumes from the already popular musical.

      Outside of Moriarty the Patriot, the only other prominent new anime announcement, that wasn’t a sequel, was Dokyuu Hentai HxEROS. While they didn’t have much of the series, the visual of the main character Retto Enjou was seen all over Jump Festa 2020, with posters being given out and a standee in the Aniplex booth.

    These were the other standees at the Aniplex booth:

        Including one of the best standees, I’ve ever seen in the form of a Santa Chika from KAGUYA-SAMA: Love Is War standing next to the new poster from the upcoming Gintama anime film.

      Demon Slayer was of course in full force at the booth, with tapestries and figures that were seen at Mega Hobby Expo, but set up in a much cooler way.

      And found on the Christmas tree in the Aniplex booth—a set-piece seen every year where attendees can write notes to add to the tree—was an adorable Nezuko and Zenitsu drawing. Nothing is better than a good ol' "Nezuko-chaaan~!"

    Jump Festa is usually split into three halls, one with the entrance, and the Jump SQ stage, one with the bigger booths, such as the Nintendo and One Piece displays, and the final one with the main stage. The bigger displays are always the most fun, especially when you have a giant Thiccachu overlooking the festival.

    The most impressive displays this year came from Dragon Ball and One Piece—no surprises there as they’re both the biggest franchises from Jump at the moment, other than Demon Slayer. The Dragon Ball booth was set up two ways: one side with Capsule Corp and bigger than life-sized villain statues from the series, and the other side as the stage from the World Martial Arts Tournament with Shenron overhead.

          While the Shenron statue was reused from the year before, newly placed at the booth was an exploding Cell photo spot where you can recreate the famous scene from Dragon Ball Z of Goku sacrificing himself to save the day. Of course, I had to do it!

    While that was all nice and dandy, the best looking booth was the One Piece Banpresto beauty. As I walked through the gate and was transported into Wano Country, I was greeted by two girls in yukata handing out One Piece scrolls with the current key art on them.

    Inside, I was amazed at the layout and detail that went into the display. The entire booth was surrounded by walls that resemble those found on traditional Japanese castles and in the center was a recreation of the Castle from the One Piece series. Surrounding the castle were Cherry Blossoms, of which if you got a picture at the right angle, made the booth look like a Japanese matsuri.

        Attached to the walls were goods being shown off to promote merchandise from the current arc. While a lot of these were the normal figures or banners, I really liked how they set up the ship display, with an overwater section and an underwater section.

      At every Jump Festa I’ve been too, they’ve always had giant inflatable characters around the halls, usually to either promote an upcoming series that might take off or to look back at popular series from the last year. Here are the six from Jump Festa 2020:

  Deku from My Hero Academia

  Boruto from BORUTO: NARUTO THE NEXT GENERATIONS

  Yusaku from Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS

  Rin Okumura from Blue Exorcist

  Asta from Black Clover

  Super Saiyan Blue Goku from Dragon Ball Super

  Luffy from One Piece

  Hopefully, we might see an Emma or Tanjiro represented next year!

  That was Jump Festa 2020! From all the announcements over the weekend, what was your favorite? Personally, I’m looking forward to season 2 of KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR and Dr. STONE. Let us know in the comments or on Crunchyroll’s social media!

    ----

  Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs the YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza and posts photos of his travels on Instagram. 

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[fifiweihao-blog]

2016

Like everyone else, I’ll agree 2016 had some pretty shitty times. A lot of famous celebrities passed away like Alan Rickman, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Kenny Baker, Gene Wilder, and David Bowie but of course the one that hit me the hardest was Carrie Fisher. What a shit way to end off the year, right? There’s are a lot of bad events entangled in 2016, but I don’t want to talk about those so I can talk about all the good 2016 brought:

Rogue One was pretty cool.

Joking aside, I think 2016 was great in terms of my progress as a customizer, and the customizing community in general. There’s lots of improvement in the community with both skill and maturity, and I’m always grateful to be involved with awesome people like you all. Some notable good events this year are my graduation from High School/starting college, BrickFair (as always, I love actually being able to hang out with you all), Rogue One, and a badass season premiere for TWD.

So for this year’s picture, I have all of my figures I made in 2016, which are actually all just Star Wars and The Walking Dead. I’m fine with this since I fuckin love Star Wars and TWD is pretty awesome usually. I did also make Captain America, Azrael, and Rick Deckard this year but they aren’t in the photo since they were commissions.

Like last year, I’ll do some Top 5’s to share my favorite things from this year.

Top 5 Favorite Customs I made: 1. Darth Vader 2. K-2SO 3. Cassian Andor 4. Negan 5. Daryl Dixon

Top 5 Favorite LEGO Sets (that I purchased): 1. Krennic’s Shuttle 2. U-Wing 3. A-Wing & Vader’s TIE Advanced 4. Resistance X-Wing 5. First Order Battle Pack

Not much variation here, I’m trying to cut back on buying sets.

Top 5 Favorite Movies from 2016: 1. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story 2. Deadpool 3. Civil War 4. Zootopia 5. Doctor Strange (I guess)

I really missed out on movies this year, so I have some catching up to do. Some that I really want to watch are Hateful Eight, Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, Jungle Book, The Nice Guys, X-Men Apocalypse, Star Trek: Beyond, The Accountant, and Sully.

For 2017, I have some dope stuff planned such as Friends (hell yes), Saving Private Ryan/Band of Brothers, ESB/RotJ, Episode 8, and a bunch more so hopefully I can get to all of that next year.

Let me know in the comments which of my figures is your favorite from 2016, I’d love to hear your thoughts! 🙂

I don’t think I forgot anything, so thank you all for such a great year on YouTube/Flickr/Instagram and I wish you all a Happy New Year!

~Aaron

Posted by LegoMatic9 on 2016-12-31 22:28:04

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[tenorlss123]

5 Behind the Scenes Facts That Change Famous Movies

It’s the sign of a well made movie when we can watch it without thinking about the fact it’s just an actor on screen reading lines. Sometimes, though, there’s stuff that happens behind the lens that completely changes how you see a given scene. For example, did you know that…

5. RoboCop blew away all those drug dealers listening to a soft rock ballad

The film RoboCop follows the journey of an invincible sentinel of justice and righteous robotic backhands on his journey to discover what it means to be a man and solve his own murder. In one of the movie’s most awesome scenes, RoboCop casually walks into a drug lab and proceeds to shoot, like, 100 guys in the dong with his wicked-awesome auto pistol. There hasn’t been a more one-sided fight scene since Ryu got into a fist-fight with that car in Street Fighter 2 and throughout the whole thing, RoboCop never once seems challenged. Which may have something to do with the fact he was grooving to the dulcet tones of Peter Gabriel the entire time.

You see, the actor who played RoboCop, Peter Weller, admitted in an interview that during that scene, to drown out the sound of all the gunfire, he was actually listening to a walkman hidden below the suit’s helmet. That walkman was, according to Weller, playing nothing but Peter Gabriel’s Red Rain on repeat the entire time.

4. Grand Moff Tarkin was wearing a pair of fuzzy pink slippers when he detonated Alderaan

Prior to being resurrected and becoming a permanent resident of the Uncanny Valley in Rogue One, Peter Cushing was best known for his role as Grand Moff Tarkin in A New Hope. Throughout that film, Tarkin establishes himself as a ruthlessly efficient leader and a bit of a dick, what with the whole “committing global genocide” thing he does just to prove a point.

If you watch the scenes Cushing appears in (in the original trilogy), you may notice that he’s only ever really shown from the waist up. This is because for virtually every scene he appeared in, Cushing was wearing a pair of fuzzy pink slippers while portraying Tarkin. Reportedly, because the boots he was given to wear didn’t fit. This means that Grand Moff Tarkin was such a badass that nobody, including Darth Vader, had the balls to call him on not wearing his uniform while he detonated Alderaan.

3. Christopher Reeve’s Superman had a big metal dong

To many people, Christopher Reeve is and always will be Superman, and his portrayal of the Man of Tomorrow is consistently voted one of the greatest interpretations of the character ever. Something that’s made all the more amusing when you realize that for every scene he appeared in as Superman, Reeve’s dong was being cupped by a big metal codpiece.

This is because the costume designer and producers for the various Superman movies couldn’t agree on one rather unusual issue: how big Superman’s penis should be. This argument raged back and forth until it was agreed that Reeve would wear a metal codpiece to give his package an aesthetically pleasing, but not distracting shape. Reeve apparently hated wearing the codpiece, especially because the actress who played Lois Lane would flick it between takes, as she liked the silly metallic twang it made. In other words, when you watch those old Superman movies, the reason Superman’s bulge never moves is because it’s made of metal! Gee, no wonder they call him the Man of Steel.

2. Whenever you see the back of Carl’s head in The Walking Dead, it’s a 29-year-old woman

The character Carl from The Walking Dead has all the personality and charisma of wet flannel wrapped around a stump of wood. He’s annoying, he never really does anything, and his floppy, impeccably coiffed hair breaks all sense of immersion because how does his hair look that well maintained in the apocalypse?

As it turns out, the reason for Carl’s luxurious flowing locks is partly because the actor’s stunt double is of the female persuasion. Yep, pretty much any time you see Carl from the back, he’s being played not by a teenage actor who grew out of his cute phase five seasons ago, but a seasoned female stunt actress who can do cool front flips. Which makes us wonder: why not just cast her as Carl? They already strayed from the comics by adding Daryl to the story, and everyone loved that. Why not double down by making Carl a girl, and have her drop-kick zombies into next week in every other scene? Don’t tell us you wouldn’t find that awesome because we only just thought of it and are already considering starting a petition on Change.org to make it happen.

1. Jason Voorhees ends most scenes by apologizing to the people he just killed

Jason Voorhees is one of cinema’s most omnipresent and terrifying villains, and he’s probably killed more teenagers with a big knife than most Call of Duty players. Over the years, Jason has been played by a lot of actors, most of whom are closing in on being 7 feet tall… and all of whom are absolute sweethearts.

The most famous of these is probably Kane Hodder, who portrayed the hockey mask loving immortal stab-man during the ’80s. Since retiring the mask, the cast and crew he worked with on those movies have waxed poetic about Kane’s tenure as the villain and his sense of humor when in costume.Things Kane would do to alleviate tension include ending scenes by excitedly disco dancing when he heard the word cut, and staring at members of the public, standing stock still between takes, to freak them out before walking over to shake their hand.

Another man famous for wearing the mask, Derek Mears, was similarly light-hearted when playing cinema’s most famous machete wielding murder, going out of his way to comfort actors he worked with and apologize for hurting them during scenes he was pretending to violently murder them in. So yeah, the next time you watch a movie with Jason Voorhees in it, there’s a fairly good chance the actor playing him ended whatever scene you’re watching by breaking it just all the way down and throwing out his best dance moves.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWDTWB 1x07: Truth or Dare

Okay, let's talk about TWB, ep 8. We saw a time of interesting symbols in this episode.

First, we see Huck. She's on her own, scouting ahead. She sees some walkers walking by on an overpass. So, a miniature bridge of sorts. She saw one walker that had a backpack that she wanted to raid for supplies. This walker to me was that it was wearing a dark red jacket. We've seen this symbol pretty often lately. Clothing the color of the cloak in Beth’s cell.

Huck took some boots off the walker. That's important because of the missing foot/shoe symbolism but also @frangipanilove​ has done quite a few posts about how the trunk and boot symbols are similar. It all points to Beth being left in the trunk of the car.

Huck also finds a pin on this walker. This made my jaw drop. It turned out to be the insignia of the Marines, which Huck has a tie to. But what really struck me about it was the bird on top. Look at this. We saw this exact bird in Still and in a shot with Beth.

My fellow theorists and I are always going back and forth about whether this is a Phoenix or Thunderbird or an eagle or something else. Given the blue field, stars, and red banner, I always wondered if it was some sort of American patriotic thing, but maybe this picture represents the marines. Either way, the fact is, we can tie it directly to Beth. Also keep in mind that the Marines are all about water.

They drink Mountain Dew in this episode. @wdway​ reminded me that we saw a Mountain Dew bottle in Still with Beth and Daryl. I also thought they treated the Mountain Dew in this episode a lot like it was alcohol or moonshine. They talked about how long it had been since that had it and made yum noises, saying it was so good, etc.

In one of Huck’s flashbacks, she's in a bar. They have a dart game, and there's a jukebox. All Bethyl symbols.

Later in the episode, Tony has a flask, so we do see some alcohol. And the kids play a drinking game. It’s truth or dare, which is a little different than “I never,” but still. It's a drinking game.

There's definitely an art theme. Iris talks about the Louvre and then Percy sets up a little art room for her. I'll come back to that in a minute.

There’s a dark tunnel moment, when they go in looking for the fuel. (Dark Tunnel Symbolism).

In Huck’s flashback, she and her fellow Marines use thermal vision to discern which of the people in front of them are walkers in which are alive. I thought that was interesting in and of itself, but the thing that jumped out at me is that the walkers, who were obviously cold because they're dead, were blue. Kind of a blues clue as @frangipanilove​ would say.

When Hope and Huck were up on the roof, the stars were very bright and obvious. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it almost felt like an emphasis on the stars to me.

They encounter a guy in the basement who takes Hope prisoner. Lots of important background symbols in this scene. Lots of yellow, which reminded me of the basement of Grady when Beth and Noah try to escape. 

There were blue coolers, and even a fire extinguisher sign, which we’ve often seen in the background of scenes tied to Beth.

We also get a clear shot of Huck’s watch here. It’s hard to see, but I think it matches the grandfather clock in Still. Second hand between the 10 and the 11 (so perhaps at minute 52 or 53) and hour hand on the 3. 

They also had a queen of hearts theme. So, it's the poker queen theme. I won't go too much into that, except to say that it was present.

Then Iris went to meet Percy and he'd set up the back of the truck as though it were the Louvre, so she could look at the art. There were actually quite a few things that stood out to us here. We looked into several of the paintings.

One that @wdway​ pointed out is this famous painting set during the French Revolution called “Liberty Leading the People.” 

We like the idea that it's a revolution being led by a woman. Kind of interesting, no? We’re hoping the woman here Symbolizes Beth rather than Iris, but we'll see. The two books she looks at seem to be fictional, but when I looked up the one about the great masters of art, Caravaggio was always listed as one of them. So, another possible tie to Grady.

Furthermore, Iris falls asleep under the art setup and we see her wake up. This is pretty much an altar or shrine to all things art, and the way she’s laid out, rather than curled up, kinda looks like a Snow White pose. So, we’re thinking this is definitely a resurrection symbol. Especially as it happens under the Mona Lisa (arguably the most famous painting/woman in art) and the painting of Lady Liberty leading a revolution.

And hey, I’ll grant you that, normally, I would say this all represents Iris, and it might in some way. But we already know TWB is a limited, 2 season event. Then it will be done. That doesn’t necessarily mean all the characters will die or anything, but I can’t see them doing anything quite this important, either. Especially given that they’re still teenagers.

I think this represents a revolution against the CRM led by some woman. Three guesses who I think that woman will be, and the first two don’t count.😉

Also, the place they’re staying at is apparently a country club with a pool, as evidenced by this sign that the camera focuses on for several seconds. So more ties to Still and to water in general. (Also remember that in last week’s episode of Fear, Sherry’s group was hanging out in a dry, vacant public pool. Ties and parallels, my friends. 😉)

That's most of the symbolic stuff. We found out some interesting things in this episode, plot-wise. They found some encrypted data from the CRM. I'm definitely curious to find out what that's all about. The episode ended with Tony dying, Percy disappearing, and it looks like Silas might've killed him.

Most of us agree that that's probably not what happened. Or at least there's more to it. It seems a little too obvious that they're trying to make us believe Silas is a killer. I don't think he is. Personally, I feel like Percy is the Lizzie of this situation. But again, we'll just have to wait and see.

Thoughts?

[twdmusicboxmystery]

10x11: Morning Star - Details

Okay, let’s talk details. I’ll go chronologically.

***As always, spoilers abound below for 10x11. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

The very first thing we see in the episode is Beta collecting tree sap. They dig into the trees and collect the sap into these little…things. They kinda look like animal bladders to me, but I have no idea if that’s what they actually are.

It’s this tree sap that they use to start things on fire during the battle. My first thought on seeing this was of Tyreese. Back in S4, Carol put tree sap on his arm and it helped heal him. I think it’s got anti-fungal properties and that’s why, but still. It’s a healing agent. And I even want to read into the fact that they had Lizzie and Mica find it. Only because of the parallels/anti-parallels between them and Beth. I think we could argue that a Beth proxy found the cure for Tyreese. And I honestly don’t remember another time we’ve seen the tree sap symbol used. It’s not very often that they use it.

So then I googled to see if tree sap is really flammable, and it is. I found this: 

Also, if you’ve read @frangipanilove​’s tree trunk posts (I’ll repost them later in the week) you know how important tree trunks are in general.

But here’s the thing that REALLY jumped out at me. Once it hits—and EVERYONE gets drenched with it—Jerry smells it and literally says the line, “It smells like a Christmas tree.” Cuz, you know, pine sap.

So we have an agent of healing, that BURNS, a Christmas tree reference, and it’s used as a weapon. 

That’s like fourteen rabbit holes all rolled into one.

Okay, let’s switch gears to Eugene. 

There’s a clock behind Eugene that seems to read 1:33. 

So me and @wdway​ and @frangipanilove​ all discussed what this might mean. First of all, this is definitely a Slabtown clock. What I mean is, this simple, white, plain wall clock with regular numbers (vs. roman numerals or no numbers at all) isn’t seen very often. The biggest time it was seen was with Beth, when she woke up at Slabtown. The only other time we could think of where we saw this particular kind of clock was in 7x08 when Daryl escaped the Sanctuary, which was also super important.

My brilliant friends came up with a few possibilities of how we could interpret this. We looked at it point to S1 ep3, S3 ep3, series number 33 and series number 133. For me, I lean toward the 1:00 hour pointing to S1, but I had to figure out the right way to interpret the minutes, because S1 only had 6 episodes. So I think you’d have to divide the hour by only 6 episodes. And assuming that’s the case, the clock is almost exactly half way through the hour, which would suggest ep 3. And what happened in 1x03? Rick reunited with Lori and Carl. So we’re looking at a symbol of reunion. More than that, they believed Rick was dead. He got left behind by them. Um…in Atlanta? So we’re also talking about a resurrection theme.

Then @wdway started talking about the clock in Still. Remember that Beth and Daryl passed the grandfather clock in the golf club. The first time, it said 2:52. When they passed it again, it struck 3, which means 8 minutes had passed. I interpret that as 8 years passing before Beth returns and they “reunite.” But @wdway made the very good point that all the 3s we see around Beth could well be pointing toward reunions, just as Rick had the original reunion with his family in 1x03.

So then I re-watched the episode and I noticed something else.

When Rosita comes upstairs looking for Eugene and ends up answering Stephanie on the radio, it doesn’t focus on the clock like it does on the first, 1:33 clock, but we do see the clock again very briefly in the background and it says 2:00, so roughly half an hour has passed. So that reminded me of the passage of time in Still. And while it’s not a 3:00 clock, it is drawing closer to 3:00, right? But there’s something else I thought of, too.

When I first thought of the 1:33 clock pointing toward 1x03 my first thinking was a little flawed. I didn’t immediately think of Rick’s reunion with Lori. I thought of the fact that that’s when Daryl first came into the show. And I sort of leapt from that to it being a Bethyl thing. Then I had to stand back and go, “wait. That doesn’t hold up because Beth didn’t show up until S2. Okay, never mind.” But of course the Rick/reunion explanation works very well.

But now looky, looky. We have a 1:33 clock (Daryl debuts in 1x03) and a 2:00 clock (Beth debuts in 2x02.) Just saying.

I think those are the biggest things I noticed on re-watching. Here are some more minor ones:

In this pic, Zeke is totally in a crucifixion pose, and then they talk about “dying tonight,” which is at least partly a sex reference, but I won’t get into that. He’s sort of taking a martyr pose here, and I think this is yet another way they’re pointing at his looming death fake out. I have no idea how it will come about, but I think they could be setting it up with this battle. I’ll come back to that.

Zeke gave Henry’s armor to Lydia, which is a lot like Carol giving Daryl Beth’s knife after she did. Something of hers that he fights with.

I also noticed Eugene made a Waterloo reference, which is a famous battle.  I was thinking they might use it as a template for this battle. I looked it up and nothing huge jumped out at me, but I don’t think we got far enough into this battle to know for sure either way, so no sense in getting too excited about it yet. 

I’m going to address a Caryl theory. I really don’t go into the tags myself, but others do and send me things to get my take on them. So, this is a detail I totally missed, and I actually think it’s a stellar observation. In this scene, there are 8 windows behind Daryl and Carol, and the 7th one has a light on in it.  A light in the darkness is definitely a Beth thing, right?

Well, the shippers are actually counting this as 16 windows because there’s a top and bottom pane. Which means the light is on in the 14th “window.” They’re interpreting that as ep 14 being the one in which Daryl and Carol will finally hook up and live happily ever after. (Please give me a minute to control my laughter.)

But as I said, I do think it’s a good observation. Maybe it does point to something happening in ep 14, but it won’t be Daryl and Carol hooking up. If we count the ACTUAL number of windows (8), that’s the number of years it’s been since Coda. And having the light on in the 7th window actually supports biblical Christian symbolism. 7 is the number of perfection and therefore the number of Christ.

And as I said, I don’t mind the “episode 14” possibility. It just won’t be a Daryl/Carol romance thing. I think the only way to save Carol at this point is if Zeke lives, and I think he will. So what does that mean? Maybe in 14, he’ll go to the hospital and discover that he can be saved. Something like that.

But the thing is, I think there’s a good possibility Beth will be involved in that, too. 

Predictions:

So here’s the thing, guys. I now we’ve come up with a million ways in which Beth might return. I know I’ve campaigned for it being through the Michonne/Virgil story line. And it might still be. There’s no way to know for certain. But I have a really good feeling about this Eugene story line as well. I mean, they’ll be going to a hospital. One that filmed at the same location as Grady. And there are other clues I’ve mentioned above and yesterday: the fact that Charleston is at the crossing of two rivers. The fact that there’s water involved at all. The fact that we see a clock representing reunions, and then time passes. The fact that Eugene “loses” Stephanie for a short time after Rosita gets on the radio and then finds her again by singing to her. (Remember Daryl’s “I Never” line about never singing out in public.)

So I could see this playing out like, Zeke, Eugene, and Jerry go to the hospital and Beth is there and Zeke also learns that he either doesn’t have cancer or else that it can be treated fairly easily through their radiation. I also think he (and possibly Jerry with him) will get a death fake out in there somewhere. But Beth’s return would “save” both Daryl and Carol emotionally. Remember my post about the clock in Edwards’ office. Because Beth saved Carol at Grady, I think her arrival will save Carol in some way here as well, though it will probably be emotional/psychological, rather than physical. I’m just saying I can see this story line leading to that. Will it? That remains to be seen.

Also, I mentioned yesterday that this is a replay of 4b, in which everyone will scatter and end up in small groups, right? Well, that’s been pretty much confirmed by one of the sneak peeks, in which Aaron and Luke (who is injured) are out in the woods together and run into Negan, who doesn’t seem to be with the Whisperers right then, either.

And I think this thing with all of them running around in the woods could easily lead to Zeke’s death fake out, or else to Negan saving Judith in some way, which was foreshadowed in 9x16.

I also talked yesterday about the Glenn theme, right? Let me say a few words about that, and then I’ll stop for the day.

I was re-watching the scene in 5x10 where Maggie opens the trunk and sees the Beth walker. I was actually looking for something else entirely, but it struck me in a way it never has before, and in a way it couldn’t have before this season.

Maggie opens the trunk, then gets freaked out and shuts it. But the walker is pounding on the inside so she goes back to kill it, but of course it gets stuck. Glenn comes to help her. He’s the one who opens the trunk and kills the walker and then leaves the trunk open. Kind of like this? 

 But 2 things about that jumped out at me. Maggie left…and then returned. How many times have I said that Lauren’s absence from the show, no matter what they try to infer about her contract, has been long planned? I think this represents that Maggie would leave for a short time and then return before she truly understands what happened to Beth (i.e. that she lived).

But it also strikes me that Glenn being the one to open the trunk for her is important. Now, I’m not saying Glenn is secretly alive and we’ll see him again in the show (unless it’s a flashback) but I think he’ll be important somehow in helping Maggie understand the truth. I don’t know how that would manifest in the show, but I was thinking about that, and then in this episode, the camera focused on Glenn’s portrait, and Daryl starred at Glenn’s grave, and we know Maggie is returning in 10b.

See what I mean? So I don’t know what this all means in terms of events in the show, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

Also, if you haven’t, watch THIS deleted scene from 10x11. It has major shades of Still in it. See if you can spot them. ;D

I’ll stop there for today. Thoughts?

[twdmusicboxmystery]

8x01-8x03, Re-Watch Part 2

8x02:

Okay, at the beginning of this episode, we see a group of saviors working at the Sanctuary. One of the workers is wearing bright yellow coveralls. I don’t know what this character’s name is, but he’s played by Lee Norris, who I recognized from my high school/One Tree Hill days. He’s basically bullied by other saviors, and then TF shows up and starts shooting at them.

So, because of the yellow coveralls, I’m thinking this guy is a Beth proxy, but I’m not sure what the point is here. And actually, this happens more than once in this episode. The female savior who bullies him also seems to be a Beth proxy at one point. She has a green strap of some kind across her chest, probably from a purse or bag she’s wearing.

That caught my attention because we saw the exact same thing with Spencer at one point back in S6. With him, the reason for it is much more obvious: during that sequence, he tried to escape, failed, and lost his shoe. So it was part of the lost shoe/foot symbolism, and he could be paralleled with Beth because he was trying to escape the community on his own and failed, which is what happened with Beth at Grady. Overall, he was more of an anti-parallel to Beth than a parallel, but it still works.

Here…I’m just not sure what the point was. The dude in the yellow coveralls only shows up one other time, at the end of episode 3, and is shot by Daryl. I wanted to see if he was still wearing the yellow coveralls at that point, and he isn’t. He’s taken them off by then. So I don’t think he’s a Beth proxy anymore at that point. They’re really not trying to tell us that Daryl shot Beth or will.

And, you could see him as a parallel to Beth in an EXTREMELY broad way: he’s kind of a prisoner of the Saviors. He’s there because he has to be, not because he wants to be. He’s bullied by them in the same way Dawn bullied Beth. But this really doesn’t lead to some significant character arc or moment of enlightenment, so I’m not sure why they put this in.

Same with the woman and the green strap. She’s kind of an evil, bullying Savior. She just basically takes some shots at Aaron and Eric and Scott when they show up, and then partway through the battle, she gets bitten by a walker and dies. So, even if she’s an anti-parallel to Beth, what’s the point of this symbolism?

It did occur to me that maybe she represents Dawn, rather than Beth. If you think of the guy in yellow being Beth. Well, in the end, he is shot and left behind by Daryl. In this case, he really died, where Beth didn’t, but it may work in terms of the symbolism (or anti-symbolism). But then this woman would be in Dawn’s role as the one who was supervising/bullying him.

And in case you think maybe, in this one instance, I’m reading into the colors too much and that’s not what it means, there are also dialogue clues around these two. When they talk in the first picture above, she has a water bottle. He mentions “a dozen” (walkers, I think) and she gets mad at him and tells him to go pack up the coolers. So there’s a lot of things pointing to these two being Beth proxies.

But overall, I think this probably points to something in the future with the helicopter people that hasn’t happened yet, and so we just don’t entirely understand it. It will probably make sense when the symbolism is paid off.

This is small potatoes, but at one point, Aaron gets into one of the cars and mows down a bunch of the Saviors to help save Eric and his people. This just struck me as another instance of Aaron being a Beth proxy, especially as this sequence leads to Eric’s death, which is DEFINITELY a parallel to Beth. But he doesn’t die in this episode, so more on that later.

Here we also get Tara, Morgan, Jesus and Diane at the satellite station. 

They find Dean in the closet, who tries to kill Jesus. 

This is also where we first meet Alden. We actually have another death fake out foreshadow for Morgan here. He and several other Kingdomers are shot by saviors inside the outpost. I think the idea here is that the bullet hits Morgan’s body armor, but like Kevlar, being hit by a bullet is still akin to being hit with a sledgehammer, even if the bullet doesn’t pierce your body, so it knocks him out for a moment.

But we have this moment where everyone else has left (left him behind) and his eyes suddenly open. He stands up admist the dead and keeps going. So that’s what we think happened with Beth but it’s also what is happening right now in FTWD.

Carol and Zeke and Jerry are heading toward another Savior outpost. Not much to say about this part in this episode (more in later episodes) except that we see walkers who are affected with the hazardous chemicals for the first time here. Once again, we don’t know exactly what this points to, but we’ve seen a lot of the theme of water being poisoned lately, and the satellite falling in S10 has a biblical/wormwood connotation to it. And we know the helicopter people are purifying water. So you can see how this might foreshadow something in the future with them. 

Also, Jerry uses orange golf balls to leave a trail and point the way toward where they’re going. That kind of screams Beth’s participation in the helicopter story line, doesn’t it?

Oh, also, I had an insight into Shiva here. I don’t know if I’ve been super clear about this in the past, but I do think Shiva = Beth. Lots of reasons for that. She’s always had a Zeke vibe about her (because she’s his animal, so that’s not surprising) but remember that in terms of the couples, Zeke is very like Beth (positive, hopeful, faith-filled, etc) while Carol is more like Daryl. So naturally, Shiva would be that way too. I mentioned that Shiva showing up in 7x16 struck me as a Beth thing, because for a long time many of us have suspected that Beth will kind of show up as TF’s secret weapon during a fight and help save them. I honestly think we COULD see the fulfillment of that in 10x16, whenever it gets here.

But back to 8x02. Quick recap: Carol and Zeke’s group shoot a bunch of Saviors but one of them gets away and is out ahead of them. They’re pursuing him because they’re afraid he’ll get to the outpost before they do and warn the Saviors there that they’re coming. That would be bad. They’re going for secrete ambush and don’t want anyone to be warned.

They nearly catch up to him, but in the end, they don’t actually kill this guy. They don’t have to, because Shiva shows up and does it for them. They look ahead and see Shiva pounce on him, which means he’s dead and can’t warn the outpost anymore.

The insight I had about this—which really just reinforces that Shiva symbolically = Beth—is that this happens next to a bridge. They literally reach the bridge and you can see the sign behind them when Shiva arrives and takes care of business. So there’s the Bridge aspect, but also another example of Beth showing up to save the day in some way.

And of course we have Rick and Daryl searching for guns in this episode. This building they’re in has TONS of Beth symbols. Omega signs in the background, pink carpet, they climb an elevator shaft, and of course they find Gracie.

Now, there was TONS of conjecture that maybe Beth had been staying here before and taking care of Gracie or something. I considered the idea at the time of course, but I no longer think that’s the case. This all seems highly symbolic to me and like it foreshadows something with the helicopter group.

I’ve talked before about Rick arriving at the helicopter group and Beth already being there, right? So Gracie could represent Beth in that way. Daryl also sees the handcuffs and dog food in one of the rooms, which suggests a prisoner (Beth being a prisoner to the helicopter people) and a Sirius character.

And, I gotta say, while I haven’t really seen a lot in the past of Daryl and Rick looking for Beth in the helicopter group together, they did go into this place together looking for WEAPONS, so make of that what you will. It’s hard to say how far the metaphor extends.

Interesting to note that just before finding Gracie, Rick fights with one of the Saviors and they crash into a shelf full of matches and flares. (Symbolism brain imploding over here.) 

And of course this is the famous scene where the blue heron painting is scene behind Rick in the background JUST AS HE’S SEEING GRACIE FOR THE FIRST TIME. Yeah, I really think him finding Gracie here foreshadows him finding Beth in the helicopter group.

And finally, we have Morales. Yet another example of Rick entering this place and finding someone he hasn’t seen in years and didn’t even suspect might still be alive. But more on that in episode 3 when they actually get a chance to talk.

So here’s my biggest new take away about Morales, guys. Before, I was mostly fixated on the fact that they brought him back 7 seasons (from S1 to S8) after he disappeared. So saying it’s been too long for Beth’s return just isn’t viable. But here’s what I’m realizing now. Remember the 8 next to Beth. All the 8s around her and Rick, which I think signifies that she’ll appear 8 years after disappearing in Coda (in other words, where we are now in the narrative)? Yeah, they brought Morales back in S8 guys. 

I’ll show you more about how Morales = Beth in 8x03 rewatch stuff tomorrow.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWD 10x05: What It Always Is - Details

Okay, how did everyone like the episode? Let’s dive in.

***As always, spoilers abound below for episode 10x05. Don’t read until you’ve watched!!!***

Opening sequence:

This was the part with Kelly. There were quite a few Beth symbols here. It starts out with her hearing lots of birds chirping. 

There’s the dragonfly (think The Deer and the Bug Theory), the banner which had red, blue, green, and yellow on it, 

and of course the yellow and black pig, which she kills. 

The pigs pretty much always die. It’s also kind of a callback to 4x01 when Clara (Creepy Walker Chick) wanted to eat the dead pig Rick found in the woods.

I started thinking about the pigs and trying to define them, much as I did the bus. Here’s what I came up with. In 4a, Rick literally kills the piglets to lead the walkers away from the walls, so they can fix the fences and keep the people at the prison safe. So I think the pigs represent a “sacrifice” to keep the living safe. And it often involves a walker horde. You could say the same of the pigs in S7. Ezekiel was giving them to Negan so Negan wouldn’t attack the Kingdom. So by fulfilling the deal, he was sacrificing the pigs to keep the Kingdom safe. Here, Kelly allowed the walkers to have the pig to save herself. Just some thoughts I had on the pig theme.

When Kelly falls down, sitting by the rock, it reminded me of the dead guy Daryl saw by the deer in Them. She’s just sitting exactly the same way.

Here’s the thing about Kelly in this sequence. I felt like she was a representation of Beth, but it was hard for me, at first, to put my finger on why. As always, hashing things out with my fellow theorists helped. The best we can say right now is that she was, for a short time, a missing girl. And eventually, she was found. It even focused on her forehead injury. (Opposite side as Beth’s, but still.)

Even more interesting, she was found by her sister and, um…Daryl. Well, if Kelly = Beth, Beth’s sister and Beth’s Daryl are alive and well in this world, aren’t they? Just saying. There are more symbols that play into this (such as the colored flags we saw) but I’ll talk about them in more detail later in the week.

Negan and Brandon:

I definitely saw some Bethyl callbacks around Negan this episode. When they’re near the barbed wire—which apparently marks some of the Whisperers’ boundaries—a walker attacks him. He manages to kill it, but only after quite a fight. Brandon doesn’t lift a finger to help him. Once Negan puts the walker down, he says, “Thanks for the help.” That’s exactly what Beth said to Daryl in the golf club in Still. He also fights like both Beth and Daryl did, by using his heel to smash the walker’s face.

When Brandon gives him his coat and “new Lucille,” he asks if Negan likes them. Negan answers, “does pig shit stink?” So, another pig reference.

At one point, Brandon and Negan are rating walkers for “hotness,” which was kind of funny. But the numbers they mentioned were important. Brandon said one was a 7. Negan then says she’s clearly a 3. I was happy to hear both those numbers. Just recently, Emily posted the tarot card with the 7 stars on it, and of course there’s the rule of threes.

Amelia said she and Milo used to have a camp, but it got scattered and now it was just her and her son. That’s actually a lot like what happened in S4 with the prison. And when Brandon wants to follow Amelia and take her stuff, Negan says, “It’s best I go on alone and you go home.” That stood out to me because it has “Alone” and also the “home” theme in it.

Brandon also says, “I get it.”

Later when Negan talks to Milo, the kid is playing with an airplane. That’s super-significant. It’s been a much bigger symbol on FTWD than TWD, but I immediately thought of the plane crash on this past season of FTWD. 

I said that I thought the plane crash represented some major disaster, and maybe was even symbolic of Beth getting shot. Here, Milo is playing with the plane and Negan even says, “oh no, we’re gonna crash.” So, I think this could have foreshadowed Milo’s death later in the episode. Which would just back up my theory about what it meant in FTWD.

Negan planned to take Milo and Amelia to Hilltop, but of course Brandon killed them. So, Negan killed him with a rock. (Ew. Seriously gnarly. *shudders*) Which, again, I think represents Negan killing his former self or his former way of life. This is him rejecting that and choosing a different path.

And then Negan goes to seek out the Whisperers. Which is pretty much what happens in the CBs. But I am glad to see this happening because I still think we’re right on track for what they’ve foreshadowed and this chain of events, no matter how long it goes, will lead to running into Beth.

When he crosses the barbed wire border, he’s wearing his Negan coat and carrying Lucille. He also calls himself the Big Bad Wolf again and says his “little pig, little pig” line. So he seems to be his old, Negan self, but I think it’s all an act to get the Whisperers to trust him. I also can’t help but wonder about that “little pig” reference. Yes, I know it’s something Negan says in the CBs, so it’s not specific to the show. But we’ve looked at it as part of the pig symbolism since Negan first appeared, which was one reason—of many—we thought Beth might show up with him. She obviously didn’t, but now this symbolism is back and I think this sequence will lead to her. Kind of interesting.

Alpha and Gamma:

I don’t have a lot to add here to what I already said yesterday. One thing I did notice was Alpha’s line to the male whisperer who was skinning the face off the walker. She said ears were the trickiest part. I’m not going to explain why that’s significant right now, as I’ll do a post about it later in the week. But just remember it for now. Also, there was a big emphasis on Kelly’s hearing loss in this episode, so it was kind of a theme.

Also, they said on TTD that the walker they were skinning in this scene was one Kelly killed in the opening sequence. That’s interesting to me. Not only did they make sure we caught it via TTD (I for one wouldn’t have otherwise) but think about that. If Kelly was a proxy for Beth, a walker she fought with ended up with the Whisperers. I just feel like it’s another hint at the tie between Beth’s arc and the Whisperers.

In terms of Aaron, I wanted to add that I’m seeing a callback to Them. When Gamma hurts her hand, he shows up with supplies to help her and introduces himself. That’s what he did in Them when TF was in need of water and a home. And of course, that’s when the music box woke up.

Ezekiel:

One thing I forgot to discuss yesterday is, assuming Zeke survives his cancer—which I think he will—how much of a parallel this is to Beth. Obviously, it’s cancer rather than being shot in the head, but the situation is similar. How often do non-believers tell us that because it’s the apocalypse, Grady wouldn’t be able to save her from her wound? Even being near a hospital, they still don’t have the resources they used to have and so won’t be able to save her. This is kind of similar. It’s something that would have been fine in the old world, but given how little they have in the way of medical treatment, they SHOULDN’T be able to save him. Especially if he goes to Grady or somewhere a lot like it for treatment, that will be a huge parallel.

At one point, Siddiq said that Zeke’s lump looked bad. Zeke answered, “No. It’s just the slings and arrows.” That’s a line from Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” speech. He talks about the “slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.” I’m reading this about three different ways.

1.       Hamlet’s speech, at its core, is about suicide, and why the majority of people are too cowardly to commit suicide. And while A) that may be in line with Zeke contemplating suicide last episode, it also B) ties him more heavily to Beth and realizing that, overall, he wants to live.

2.       Everyone who dies at the end of Hamlet dies because of poison. So, I think this links Zeke to the poison (and possibly by extension, the radiation) arc.

3.       There’s the “outrageous misfortune” line. In terms of the tarot cards, that wheel we keep seeing is the Wheel of Fortune. It represents life cycles, good and bad fortune, and fate. I might do more detail on this at a later point, but I think for Zeke, this foreshadows his death fake out. His happiness with Carol is over for the time being. And unfortunately, things are about to get worse for him. He’s about to have “outrageous misfortune.”

Near the end, he almost tells Carol over the radio, but doesn’t. Probably a mistake. Maybe to foreshadow that they don’t speak again (or say goodbye) before everything goes really bad?

During this part, Siddiq talks to Dante on the radio. We learn that Rosita is sick. Not sure what’s up with that, but they went out of their way to tell us that. 

Also, apparently Gabriel isn’t at Alexandria. He left for some unknown reason and hasn’t returned. Thanks to @wdway​ for catching that. Why is it important?

Because Gabriel is the embodiment of the Sirius symbolism. And right now, they’re literally waiting for him to return.

Then Siddiq says, “I’m still here.” (Beth line.) And Dante has an interesting line where he says, “The universe is on pause until God returns.” He’s saying that not much is going on there medically and he’s referring to Siddiq as “god.” But it’s still an interesting line about God returning, no?

Connie, Magna, and Daryl:

Of course there’s the fact that they’re looking for the missing girl with all the Beth symbolism around her. Lt’s talk about Daryl’s story about Merle. Obviously it’s a callback to Still, where he talked to Beth about Merle and told a story about him. Beer is mentioned. And it all takes place on a lake. So, a body of water. Also, when he did the motion to tell how he’d hauled Merle alone, he put her arm around his neck. It looked exactly like the way he helped Beth in Alone, after she hurt her ankle.

I don’t have a whole lot more detail than that, other than what I’ve already said. Daryl does say, “I get it,” in that final scene when he’s talking to Connie.

I did notice one other random theme, here. It was a magic theme, of all things. First, Ezekiel, talking about the old world, said it had been a time of sorcery and witchcraft. (In other words, they could do awesome things to fight cancer.) Later, when Negan was talking to Milo, he used the term “voodoo magic” to describe flying. I just thought it was a weird theme. No idea what it means.

Emily’s song:

So I wrote yesterday’s post long before TTD aired, and I totally didn’t catch that they used Emily’s song in the show. By then, I didn’t want to add it to my post. But it’s AWESOME!

So there’s what @angelthefirst1​ said: in 5x10 the music box awoke, an din 10x5, Emily’s song was used. Coincidence? No. Really not, my friends. Plus, just a few days before this episode aired, Emily shared some Bethyl artwork in her story. And a few days before that, she posted the tarot card picture. Yeah, I feel like she’s super close.

I have more to say about the song and how I’m interpreting the symbols in it, but that will be a post all its own later in the week. Overall, I think this is an awesome win for us. It’s music, it’s happening in this episode. It’s played over the scene when Yumiko mentions to Magna that the supplies are missing. That became part of Daryl and Connie’s arc when they were searching for a lost girl. I don’t think any of that is a coincidence, y’all. And I’m super excited to see it.

Also, Magna is reading a book called The Promised Land in this scene. I need to look into it more, as there are many books with that title. Most of them are about Israel or things related to the Old Testament. Given all the Moses symbolism around Beth, that’s not a coincidence either. One in particular was about the Exodus. So I’m wondering if that is a foreshadow about something to do with Magna or, better yet, something to do with Beth. 😉

Thoughts?

[twdmusicboxmystery]

Mailbag Fan Question and Oh the Possibilities!

Okay, this came out the week before the finale aired but I never got around to posting about it. There’s the obvious suspicious stuff, which I’ll point out, but doing research on the details, I also found some interesting connections.

So part of the Mailbag Fan Question post for the finale was, “What happened to the remaining hospital staff at Grady Memorial?”

Let's appreciate the fact that I don't think this came from a TD-er. It probably came from someone in the GA, which means we’re not the only ones who’ve noticed the oddity of Grady being left standing and what to know what’s up.

Why include this in the fan mailbag right before the finale? Obviously we didn’t see Grady in the finale or anything about it. So why put this here? They get thousands of fan questions and generally only include the ones that are asked the most or are super relevant to the upcoming episode. And of course thy don’t reveal any spoilers. So again, why have this question?

You could argue it’s to remind us of Grady's unfinished story line. Between this and all the suspicious tweets the Grady actors have written over the years, it’s obvious Grady will become relevant again at some point. That alone doesn’t prove we’re right about Beth being alive, but let’s be real. She was the ONLY character that had a meaningful arc at Grady. The ONLY one privy to all the things going on there or who learned anything meaningful from it. If Grady is going to become relevant again, then Beth is going to become relevant again.

But again, why give us a Grady Update now? Again, the actors have tweeted things out over all the seasons, so why is AMC choosing this moment, this finale to post this?

Obviously we can’t say for sure, but I think it’s just more proof of how close she is. They post this before a finale that had Alone parallels, a blond walker who got an icicle in the eye, Christmas themes, and Daryl staring at Beth’s picture. Not at all what I would call a coincidence. I’m thinking more and more that we’ll see her early in S10 (kinda like we saw Morgan early in S5). I think all of this points to that. While we may have a long hiatus ahead of us, I think we’ll see Beth in the next handful of episodes which, in the scope of the show, really isn’t far away at all.

Now let’s look at the answers. First, let me credit those in my group who hashed all this out for us. They include @frangipanilove, @bethgreeneprevails, @thegloriouscollectorlady, and @wdway. This is a collection of their thoughts and mine.

First of all, it says that the Grady people perform an apocalyptic musical. Do you really think “music” is a coincidence? Even putting Beth aside, the last episode the Grady staff were in is called Coda, which is a musical term. But we can't really put aside Beth because she was the songbird on the show. The only one who literally sang.

They also say the musical is called Mammalton. I would've known that reference but luckily other people in my group did. It's a play on the show, Hamilton which is a famous off-Broadway musical. More on that in a minute.

Then it says Mammalton is the story of mammals taking over and forming their own democracy following the collapse of society. That strikes me as pretty much exactly what was happening at Grady. Society collapsed and this group of people was trying to create a new society on all their own. Of course, it was extremely flawed and not much of a democracy, but still. So perhaps this is a way of saying that Grady is still standing, and that maybe it created a better society after TF family left. Hmm. Wonder who could be leading that.

I also had the thought that it might be a play on the word, Slabtown. Even though Mammalton is a play on the name, Hamilton, it sounds a little like “Mammaltown.” In a way, that might give some insight in the title, Slabtown. If the “town” part simply represents a particular society, then Slabtown signified that this society bread only death, rather than hope, and was a subtle clue to Beth’s fate in 5x08.

Then there's the songs that are mentioned. "Stay Alive," "The Dead Commandments," and "The Gory of Tonight (reprise)." These, too, are plays on titles of songs from the musical Hamilton. The songs from the play are called, “Stay Alive,” “The Ten Duel Commandments,” and “The Story of Tonight.” 

Come on now. Stay Alive? Can we get any more obvious than that? The Dead Commandments. Obviously, it's a biblical reference to the Ten Commandments, but remember that we saw pictures of baby Moses and the burning bush on Father Gabriel's wall in Strangers. You know, right before we saw Beth on the Grady story line?

And it strikes me as a progression. Moses was separated from his true people and family as a baby. The same thing happened to Beth back in S5. She became separated from TF. Now we have reference to the Ten Commandments. Moses didn’t bring the Ten Commandments to his people until years later (*ahem* time jump *ahem*) after he’d reunited with his real family. So seeing Baby Moses pictures in 5x02 foreshadowed Beth’s separation from TF, and Ten Commandments referenced before the finale may foreshadow…her return.

The Story of Tonight has less obvious ties to TD, but the “gory” part is obviously a general TWD theme. I did look into what the song is about and it’s about revolution and fighting for what you believe in, even when it’s not by far the easiest thing to do. So it works well with TWD.

So this “Grady Update” would be super suspicious just with what I’ve said so far, right? But naturally, there’s more. As I looked into the musical Hamilton, something else occurred to me. Another connection between this and something else AMC put out this season.

They’ve used two real paintings as part of their promotion this season. There’s this Thanksgiving picture, and then this Crossing of the Delaware picture. In both cases, they superimposed TWD characters onto the faces in the picture. I’m going to reference the Crossing the Delaware picture today. 

Our group has discussed it back and forth quite a bit and tried to read TD stuff into it. We’ve been moderately successful. But reading through the plot of Hamilton, the musical, I made a huge connection.  

So, a little background for those who aren’t familiar. This painting depicts a famous event during the American Revolution, when George Washington crossed the Delaware River (an extremely dangerous crossing) on Christmas Eve and surprised his enemies at dawn. It was a major victory because they took the enemy's camp while the enemy were still asleep and half drunk on Christmas wine and were able to completely overtake the camp without a single loss of American life. I think a few of the enemy were killed, but not many. It's a very famous story.

In my group, we found this interesting anyway because of the Christmas references here, the river (water) and of course the founding fathers suggest DC. And of course in the finale, TF did cross a river, albeit a frozen one.

So what does this have to do with this mailbag fan question?

Well, the plot of the musical Hamilton is basically about Alexander Hamilton. It's a play that tells the story of his life through true historical events and the eyes of other founding fathers, who are all part of the play. I connected it to the painting of George Washington, because during the famous Crossing of the Delaware, Alexander Hamilton was Washington's aid-de-camp, which means he was Washington’s right-hand man.

So this reference to the musical Hamilton and the picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas Eve are connected.

Reading through the plot of Hamilton in more detail, there’s a few suspicious things. Rick’s face is the one on George Washington’s in the picture, right? Well, if Hamilton was Washington’s right hand man, who does Hamilton represent in this analogy? You’d think it would be Daryl because Daryl has always been Rick’s right hand guy. In short, it’s not. Hamilton is Beth. Let me explain why.

1. Hamilton isn’t actually present in the famous painting. Most of the others in the boat with Washington don’t represent real historical figures. They’re more like composites of people involved in the American Revolution in some way. Many of them have varied cultural clothing to represent different countries and factions who took part. So Hamilton, though he was there historically, is not actually represented in this famous painting. (Beth is not there with TF right now.) Plus, Daryl’s face is on another character in the boat, (the one near the front) which specifically is NOT Hamilton, so Daryl can’t be Hamilton.

2. Reading through the synopsis of the play, there’s a whole section about a man named Charles Lee who is granted a command by George Washington, but turns out to be a terrible field commander. After Washington fires him, Lee goes on a tirade against Washington, claiming that he’s an unfit leader. Hamilton wants to challenge this man on Washington's behalf, but things get complicated. I was just thinking that sounds an awful lot like what happened at Grady with Dawn and Capt. Hansen. Unfit leaders, challenges, duels? Major parallels there.

3. When Hamilton dies near the end of the play, he’s shot in a duel. He ends up in musket duel with someone he truly doesn’t want to kill. So when they turn and fire at one another, he misses on purpose (kinda like Beth stabbing Dawn when she must have know that wouldn’t kill her) and is in turn shot himself (just like Beth.) Interestingly, the final musical number in the play is called, “Who lives, who dies, Who Tells Your Story.”

In short, I think it’s safe to say that Beth = Hamilton in this scenario, which makes even more sense because Hamilton was used to answer a question about Grady. If the musical is about Hamilton’s lives and battles, then applied to Grady, it pretty much has to mean Hamilton = Beth.

So the short of this is that both these things—the Grady Update and the Crossing of the Delaware picture—point to Beth’s imminent return.

The long of it is that this has me spinning in tons of directions. It’s all just conjecture and head canons and predictions I have absolutely no way of verifying right now, but I can’t help myself. Given that Hamilton is Washington’s right hand man (Rick in the picture) and that I’ve always compared the Dawn/Hanson dynamic to a Beth/Rick dynamic (details HERE) and the fact that Grady was practically part of Rick’s hallucination right before he disappeared… 

And then there’s THIS POST I made a million years ago about how this shot from Coda shows that Rick, Daryl and Beth will be on similar leadership levels…

I’m just thinking more and more that it makes sense that Rick and Beth will end up in the same place. That would make all their parallels make perfect sense. And while I 100% think she’ll be a leader in her own right, wouldn’t it be super cool if she met up with Rick and sort of stepped into Daryl’s shoes as Rick’s right hand person for a while? That would REALLY put her and Daryl on the same level, wouldn’t it?

Not to mention…Legs? Beth? Red Machete? Rick?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Okay, okay. Again, this is all conjecture and my imagination is running away with me. Just wanted to point all this out because I think they’ve give us some heavy foreshadowing here and even if I’m not interpreting it entirely correctly, it’s super-important for S10. Thoughts?

[twdmusicboxmystery]

Alpha, Omega, Carol and Beth - It’s All Coming Together

Okay, I've been thinking about this theory for several weeks now and I'm just now getting around to doing it. I'm glad that I hadn't posted it for now because meeting the highwaymen did change it a little bit.

So, keep mentioning Carol symbolism, and how she ties into the Alpha arc. Let's start with the symbol we saw by Carol in 9x11. Everybody wondered what it was and we now know the highwaymen left it there.

Before we knew that, @bluesandbeth did a little research. She found this. 

Look similar? This is the first letter, Alef, of the ancient Phoenician alphabet which actually predates the Greek. Think about this. It's the first letter, which means it's the ancient Phoenician equivalent of “A” or “Alpha.”

At first, we thought this was another symbol for Alpha (the character). If that had been the case, it would simply have foreshadowed that Carol was on some sort of collision course with Alpha. And due to Henry spoilers, we already know that.

Now we know it wasn't Whisperers who left the sign here, but rather the highwaymen. In terms of the plot, the symbol does not represent Alpha. However, I think that symbolically, it still could. Let me explain.

If this symbol represents an A, it may not only be about Alpha, but about the A theme we’ve seen since S4. We’ve seen tons of As and there have been dozens of TD theories about what the A's might represent and how everything fits together. And yes, we do strongly believe the As either point to Beth or are somehow tied up in her arc.

So, then we wondered if maybe all the As in the A theme pointed toward Alpha. Alpha never seemed (to me, anyway) like she was quite as big a deal as other CB arcs, especially Negan. I felt like the show made a much bigger deal about Negan than they ever did about Alpha. People knew she was coming, of course, and she’s still a big deal, but there just wasn't as much hype about her as there was about Negan.

It's also important to note that spoilers have told us the Whisperer arc will be much bigger and more complicated than it was in the CBs. So that may feed into this. Maybe they always meant Alpha to be bigger, but there wasn't as much hype about it because in the CBs, she's really not bigger than Negan.

If the A's are specifically tied to Beth and she comes back during the Whisperer arc, then it really may be that all the A's pointed toward Alpha.

(P.S. I really think this Phoenician alphabet symbolism is a thing because if you look farther down, the 9th symbol in the alphabet, theth, looks damn close to the symbol Morgan keeps carving into trees.)

Alpha truly showed up in 9x10. Yes we saw her at the end of the previous episode when she took Luke and Alden captive, but we didn't see her face or really know who she was. Her true arrival was in 9x10 when she came to the gates of Hilltop.

So, Alpha showed up in an episode called Omega and in it, she's wearing an infinity belt. Guys, I literally have a post that I wrote after the finale of S8 called Alpha, Omega, the 8 Clocks, and Infinity Signs. Feel free to read it and others on the subject HERE, and I'm going to draw from them a bit, so I would suggest re-familiarizing yourself with what I'm talking about.

I won’t say much more about the infinity symbol, except that Alpha’s belt is important and it’s part of the Alpha/Omega symbolism. Read the above post for details. (Btw, I’m also pretty sure that, in addition to an infinity sign, her belt is a snake eating it’s own tail. That’s another common infinity symbol, and we can tie snakes to both Morgan (ouroboros) and Bethyl (Still).)

We’ve seen several “Alpha and Omega” references in the show throughout the seasons. Remember, the reason “Alpha and Omega” is a big deal is because that phrase is a very well-known name for Christ. He says he is Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. And of course Beth is the Christ figure. In other words, Alpha and Omega is both a Christ and a resurrection symbol.

One of the more references to this phrase was in 7x16 when Sasha died. In a flashback to her and Abraham talking, Abraham said, "alpha to omega, battlefield to beach." I was very excited about that at the time, not only because of the Alpha and Omega, but because of the “battlefield to beach.”

The “battlefield to beach” was exciting because of all the beach/ocean/Oceanside/water symbols we've seen around Beth.

But let's travel further back. To show how Carol is tied into this, we need to return to episode 6x13, The Same Boat. In this episode, Carol and Maggie were taken prisoner by Paula and her group of Saviors. This episode had tons of great Beth and Grady parallels. The biggest was simply that Carol and one of the Greene sisters were taken hostage by a group of baddies. TD gleefully pointed out that Maggie—the Greene sister in this instance—survived, which means Beth must have too.

But there were way more suspicious parallels than only that. For this episode, lots of people talked about (and I believe tptb leaked this) how the set they used came from the film, Saw. I’m going to give you some spoilers from that film. (It came out in 2004; if you haven’t seen it yet after 15 years, it’s really your own fault. 😉)

In the film, two men who wake up in a strange room. They’re chained on opposite sides of a room and spend most of the film figuring out how to get away. Lots of mind games ensue. In between where the two men are chained lays a dead body who has obviously been shot in the head. You can see his head wound and he lies in a puddle of blood.

After the entire movie happens, in a major twist at the end, that dead man stands up and is actually alive. In fact, he's the one who put the two men there and set up this entire game. It’s a cool film, but the point is, they used that same set for 6x13 and made heavy reference to a movie where someone who'd been shot in the head and was playing dead turned out to be alive.

Similarly, in this episode, Carol and Maggie are tied up on opposite sides of the room and there's a dead body between them. I this case, it's a walker, which doesn't get up and turn out to be alive at the end.

But…

What does this walker look like? That's right. It's a blonde, Beth-walker. We have a walker that represents Beth in a position that mirrors the character in Saw who is just playing dead (kind of like a possum?) and turns out to be alive at the end.

But there's more. And here's where Carol comes in. At some point Paula’s Saviors drag the walker out of the room. The walker has a crucifix on it and Carol takes it and holds it for most of the rest of the episode. 

Why does that matter? Because Beth famous wore a crucifix at Grady when she was shot.

We may not have understood why at the time, but we knew 6x13 was a retelling of Grady. 1) Carol + Greene sister taken captive by a bad group, 2) the idea of someone being shot in the head, 3) everyone assuming someone dead who in the end, and 4) the crucifix. We found other details as well, but these are the big ones.

Everyone’s already talked about how they’re setting up up a Carol vs. Alpha arc because of Henry and Lydia. My point here is that 6x13 ties Carol very heavily to Beth’s story line.

So, what does this have to do with S9? Well, in 6x13, we also had some major, heavy “Alpha and Omega” symbolism. When Paul first takes Maggie and Carol to the building, and they're both blindfolded, Paula references the Greek alphabet when using her walkie-talkie. He calls. Check out THIS POST for interpretations of her actual words I’ve done in the past. That was back when I hoped Beth would arrive in S8. For purposes of today's theory, it's only important that they use the Alpha and Omega symbolism, because we think it may have foreshadowed Alpha’s arrival in S9.

Check it out: Paula used the phrase “Alpha and Omega” in an episode that had massive Grady parallels. Then the villain Alpha arrives in an episode called Omega, an episode that also had massive Grady parallels (Lydia's prisoner exchange).

So, what does it all mean?

In a very general way, I think it's a good thing to have Carol and Alpha on a collision course because chances are Beth will be in the mix somewhere, too. In other words, it’s another way to say this will probably lead to Beth's arrival in some way.

This next part of this is a little bit more conjecture, but I think it's worth noting.

I’ve said that I think when Ezekiel "dies" it will actually be a death fake out. Which means Carol and Ezekiel will have a very similar, if not identical, arc to what Bethyl (and now Richonne) do. Namely, that one of them thinks the others dead when they're really not.

This is where things get really complicated but interesting. If I'm right about Ezekiel having a fake out and Cazekiel repeating Bethyl’s arc, then the Carol/Beth entanglement takes a whole new meaning.

For example, Carol being 6x13 probably foreshadowed that eventually Carol would have an arc much like the one that started it, Grady. I also think that's true of the references to the serious piggyback we’ve seen around Carol. Remember that in S7, she read a book that had the piggyback on the front and that was right after Ezekiel came to see her, when he was still courting her, but she wasn’t open to the relationship yet. 

Then we saw another one this season on the poster at the movie theater. So, of course, those are things we link to Beth, and rightly so, but I also think they foreshadow a similar arc for Carol and Ezekiel.

We can even take this back to Consumed. Carol went with Daryl into Atlanta to search for Beth. 

Plot-wise, it didn't really have to be her. The same stuff would have happened if Michonne had gone with him or Maggie or anyone else. Maggie might have made more sense because she and Daryl were the ones closest to Beth. Now, four seasons later, we can see that there was a bigger plan in place. They had Carol accompany Daryl, not to tease a certain ship as so many have claimed, but because it foreshadowed that eventually, she would have a similar arc to the one about to play out in Atlanta. 

Remember we saw the toy tiger on her bunk, which foreshadowed Shiva and the Kingdom. We never realized it before, but seeing the tiger and this foreshadow specifically in 5x06 ties the Kingdom to this death fake out arc.

Once again, this shows how much planning and how far in advance the writers plan for the show. At the very least, they were already planning Carol's also arc in S5 (toy tiger) but we already know Rick's departure was planned in S4, so I think most of this has been planned since S4 as well.

Another idea I’ve been toying with: Remember that in 6x13, Carol took the cross, and it was specifically Beth who wore the rosary around her wrist at Grady. That made me think that maybe it won’t be Ezekiel in Beth's place, but actually Carol. You would think her taking the cross would make her Beth, symbolically. 

On the one hand, it would be super crazy if Carol “died" or disappeared. Not only have they leaked things to try and make us think Ezekiel is dying, but Kirkman has said Carol is probably the one character he’ll never kill off. Perhaps that was always a tease and a foreshadow. No way to tell yet if they’ll handle it like they did Beth’s arc and the audience will think they’re dead too, or if they’ll do it like with Andy where the audience knows they’re alive, but TF doesn’t.

Despite all this, I’m not convinced it will be Carol rather than Ezekiel who gets the death fake out. Carol and Daryl are very similar, which they’ve confirmed over and over again. And ever since Ezekiel appeared in S7, we instantly saw parallels between him and Beth, because they’re very similar. 

Ezekiel and Beth are the positive ones that have a lot of faith, where Carol and Daryl have a tendency toward isolation and self-destruction. Overall, it makes more sense for it to be Ezekiel who gets the fake out. Carol may have taken the rosary in 6x13 simply to foreshadow the arc. Ezekiel wasn’t in the show then, so it had to be her who took it. Anyway, just some stray thoughts.

That's most of what I wanted to say concerning this. Back when the prisoner exchange happened, we had the symbol, we had Carol on an obvious collision course with Alpha, and we had the Alpha/Omega symbolism which immediately made me think of S6.

For me, this all came together as a complete picture of what they've been planning for Carol for a long time. And it points to Beth's return as well.

I’ve said both these things before but 1) Beth’s line in Still that mentions herself, Michonne, Carol, and Maggie foreshadow these four death fake out arcs. And then there’s the pickle story which foreshadows that three of the apparent deaths will be resurrected. We know Glenn is dead for real, so that means the other three—Rick, Beth, Ezekiel—will turn out to be alive. We can already confirm Rick is, so we’re just waiting for confirmation on the others.

In closing, let me give a short reiteration on the highwaymen. If the leader, Ozzy (Wizard of Oz reference, btw) represents Santa Clause/St. Nick, and St. Nick brings Beth back to Daryl, and St. Nick resurrects the three people in the pickle story, then it kind of suggests the highway men will in some way will bring these three characters that TF believe are dead back to them. Well, now these highwaymen have entered the story, and it was their sign we saw, which may be part of the A theme.

If the A's have pointed to Alpha all along, perhaps it shows that we’ll see the resurrections during this arc. Meanwhile, spoilers tell us we will see snow in the S9 finale, so we already know we’ll have a Christmas theme. See how this is all coming together?

Beth may or may not show up in the finale (I really hope she will) but if she doesn't, this arc is still very on track to bring her back. And we’ve said before, S10 will have a lot of important events in it. 

I'm thinking that's when Ezekiel's death fake out will happen, there's only X symbolism, and that's when Michonne will leave (which means she must know Rick is alive and therefore the resurrections have begun). 

And can I just say, I think Rick and Beth's resurrection must happen either concurrently, or else Beth’s will happen first. Either way, we’re coming up on it pretty quick here, whether she arrives this season or not. Thoughts?

[twdmusicboxmystery]

4x11: Analysis

Once again, wow! We again had lots of interesting symbolism in this episode of Fear. I don't think I enjoyed it quite as much as last week’s, but I'm very excited for where the story line is going. I'll reiterate what I said before: Morgan will eventually make it back to Rick and TF. It might take him the rest of the season or longer to get there. If they wanted to, they could keep him going back and forth across the country for a few seasons. I don't think they'll do that, but he's obviously not to make it back to Alexandria next episode, either. So let's get going on symbolism.

***As always, spoilers abound for Fear 4x11 in this post. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

We saw the peanut butter protein bars again. I mean, seriously? What are the chances that everywhere Morgan goes, he just happens to stumble across the same kind of food? It’s obviously symbolic. And remember that Beth ate peanut butter in Alone, and Daryl ate it just before escaping the Sanctuary.

I will say that I thought the whole Morgan-falling-sleep-and-not-realizing-he’d-been-driven-several-hundred-miles thing was weird. Falling asleep is one thing, but how would he not wake up when he felt the truck moving. It’s pretty unrealistic. So I think one of two things are going on here. Either the protein bar was laced with something, and he was essentially drugged. Or this is highly symbolic of something. Not sure which yet.

First, we had some definite Bridge symbolism going on here. We saw a total of 3 bridges in this episode (rule of 3s).

1) Morgan first decided to head back to Texas to pick up the Fear crew. He stopped on the bridge and decided not to go back to Texas. Later, he said it was because he was a coward. 

2) The second bridge is the one where Wendell and Sarah decided to stop and unload the truck. The interesting thing here is that Jim accidentally knocked Morgan off the bridge and he fell down the embankment. That was interesting to me for two reasons. A) As I've talked about another bridge metas, we often see things were people falling off the bridge. Daryl and Carol off one in Consumed; a walker fell off one with Abraham in 6x06; a walker fell off one and almost hit Dwight in 7x03, etc. B) More than that, this reminded me a lot of what TF did in 5x10, Them. The walkers went tumbling off a very similar bridge in a very similar way. Could something about that sequence have foreshadowed Morgan in some way? Not sure yet.

3) The third bridge is when Morgan met them the last time and they finally agreed to take him back to Texas to pick up Team Fear Family before going on to Virginia. A plan is officially in place for Morgan to return to Alexandria. (Yea!)

There was a lot of beer in this episode. When Morgan gets to the truck stop, he turns on the lights and there are lots of signs for beer. Later in the episode, he meets Jim (who actually kinda looks like Jim from S1, if you ask me) who brews beer for living. There's a lot of talk about beer, about brewing beer, we see beer bottles, we see ingredients and equipment to brew beer. It just goes on and on. Moonshine, by definition, is home brewed beer. Now were looking at a guy who wants to go to Alexandria to brew beer for the people there. Are we seeing some connections?

Let's talk about the broadcast. Morgan spoke to someone on the radio when he got to the truck stop in Mississippi. It had kind of a sinister feel to it, very much like Terminus. Then, when we found out that Sandy and Wendell weren’t who they said they were, it seemed that perhaps whoever was broadcasting were the “good people” after all. But at the end of the episode, we see a very sinister-looking woman who sounds a lot like the one Morgan talked to on the radio. So, chances are whoever was broadcasting, assuming it was her, is not going to be a good thing for Morgan and his group. Note to TWD survivors: never trust the voices on the other end of a random radio broadcast.

Wendell is in the wheelchair. This could possibly be a fulfillment of something in the Governor’s S4 episodes.

Let me just say I'm thinking more and more that Beth could show up in fear. Obviously, I don't know for certain, but it's feeling more and more plausible to me. If that's true, and if something about Wendell leads to her, then what I'm about to say will be true. If not, then it might be.

Remember back in 4x06, after the Gov met Tara and Lily, he went upstairs to get the backgammon game for Tara's father. While there, he went into the bathroom and found a wheelchair. This reminded me a lot of that for a couple of reasons. 1) In both cases they were in a bathroom. 2) In both cases there was a wheelchair, and by extension somebody who couldn't walk.

We’ve also had a bathroom motif in Beth symbolism during past seasons. It wasn't anything quite this obvious (Morgan on the toilet), but we especially saw it in 4b (of regular TWD).

In the pudding house, a walker came out of the bathroom and almost got Carl. He shot in the head, exactly in the spot where Beth was shot, and the walker jumped up and was not killed by that shot.

Later, when Rick is trying to escape the Claimers, he goes out through the bathroom (holding scissors, btw). I know there were other times we saw the bathroom motif, but can’t think of them off the top of my head.

I'm won’t go too much into this right now because I haven't posted my theory about it yet. In our group, we talked about how there's been a motif for cooling devices on the show. You can trace it back to season five, such as when Glenn found three silencers stashed in a mini fridge. Or even Still because while looking through the golf club, Beth and Daryl are in a walk-in refrigerator at one point. But we've seen it a lot, including around Morgan. He and Henry talked about the HVAC cooling system in S7. Anyway, we saw more of it here. I also noticed a refrigerator in the opening sequence, which isn’t always there.  More on that to come.

There were at least two bear references in this episode (Bear Symbolism). The woman broadcasting to very truck stop called for someone named “Polar Bear.” Obviously she wasn’t referring to Morgan, and we don't know who Polar Bear is, but I thought that was interesting. Especially because of the Polaris/North Star connection.

Later in the episode, on bridge #2, a group of walkers showed up and Wendell says, “Bear in the Bushes.” So yeah, interesting bear references.  

Let’s go into some details.

The broadcasting voice also said, “Sweet syrup on a short stack.” It reminded me of all the Bisquik references we've seen, including one at Grady. And of course Abraham’s famous line about Bisquick and pancakes.  

While on the toilet, Morgan looks at a dog magazine. (Toy Dog, dog with sunglasses, even a hotdog on the back. True story.) Now, remember the Sirius/dog symbolism is all about a return. So, does this mean Morgan will eventually return…to the toilet? Maybe. (Just kidding.) It really could be about him returning to TF, though. I could see the symbolism of applying to him. There was no obvious reason for it to be applied to Alicia in 4x10, especially as it used specifically Rottweilers. So, it’s still suspicious that we’re seeing dog symbolism so much in Fear this season.

 When he first meets Wendell and Sarah, they start explaining about the trucks and we see a shot of three open trailers with boxes in them. First, there’s three (rule of threes; we saw lots of threes in this episode actually). It also reminded me a whole lot of the Wolf trailers in 5x16. Think, “How the Harvest Gets Home.”

I also noticed several possible references to orange soda. Wendell said they’d been hauling the truck since the "soda was flowing." What he said was a lie, but still, soda reference. Later, with when Morgan met Jim, Morgan could smell the alcohol on him. He said it was “particularly floral IDA with hints of citrus.” Again, just reminded me of orange and then combined with soda reference made me think of Denise, who was a Beth proxy. (And because of Jim, we can also throw in the alcohol reference.)

Morgan saw a walker stuck in a mud bog. Nothing came of it this episode, but I had some thoughts. We saw something similar in 4x07 with the Governor: walkers in a bog blocking the road. I also noticed that in the trailer for next week, we see something similar. So, not sure what this walker is leading to, but I'm sure it's foreshadowing of some kind.

We saw Morgan with a grocery cart. I wondered if it was a callback to 7x13 and the grocery carts there. Remember, Richard use them to block the road and take the melon which led to Benjamin's death. It makes sense for callback like that to be in this episode because Morgan still running from his grief over Benjamin's death.

Let's talk about the mile markers. We saw a lot of different numbers and mile markers in this episode. I doubt I got them all written down. The interesting thing is that most of them add up to either 9 or 10. More often 10. For example, Sarah tells Morgan to meet them on route 91 (9+1 = 10), mile marker 64 (6+4=10). When Morgan tells them gives them fake directions to Alexandria, he tells them to get on I 81 (8+1=9) exit 77 (okay, that doesn't work so well) and then to go 10 miles.

I could go on, but I wonder if this points to S9 and/or S10. It could mean that Morgan will return to TF in S9/S10. Given that he is trying to get back to Virginia, that would make sense.

Oh, and at one point they mentioned the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway. I figured such a specific reference must be important, so I looked it up. Yes, it’s a real highway that goes from California on the west coast to Florida on the East. (I’m not super familiar with it because it’s a ways south of where I live, so I never drive on it.) Anyway, guess what route this highway is? That’s right: Route 10. Just saying.

It is also interesting that the boxes are only left at mile markers that end in four. S4, perhaps?

When Jim and Morgan talk in the back of the truck, he said, "I get it." So we have a guy that brews his own beer (kind of like moonshine) and says, "I get it." Hmm. Who could I possibly be thinking of? ;D (He also says he grew stuff up on his rooftop, kinda like at Grady.)

Jim also says, "We’ve turned back time here, Mister. History is built on beer." Time references. A history of alcohol. Sounds like Beth references to me. He also mentioned bunch of civilizations that had alcohol, including Egyptian, Sumerians, Babylonians, and a few others. did he say Romans? It caught my ear because a lot of the symbolism in the show comes from these civilizations. For example, the Sirius/Dog Star has major ties to ancient Egypt, the Nile, and how it flooded and Egyptian beliefs about that.

Morgan being on the top of the car, under a bridge, next to a river really caught my attention. Think about it: he fell off a bridge near some water and found himself stuck in/on a car and surrounded by walkers. Sounds a whole lot like what we think happened with Beth. Oh, and he gets left behind there by his group. Just saying. I also had the thought that the car he is trapped on top of looked a whole lot like the car Enid was and when her parents died. Don’t know if that's thing. Just a stray thought.

At one point, Morgan even loses his shoe.

Morgan says, “You can come back,” to Wendell and Sarah. They do come back, though only because Morgan lied about how to get to Alexandria. Still, they did the right thing by coming back to get him and now Morgan is going to do the right thing by going to get the other members of Team Fear Family

When he escaped the walkers, there's more interesting symbolism. He uses the mile marker signed to fight them. (A whole lot like Maggie in Alone, one of our red-letter Beth episodes.) 

When he looks over at the box that was left of the mile marker, check out the shot:

There’s a water bottle (Beth carried water bottle), a truck that looks a whole lot like the Wolf truck and the one Morgan is now traveling in, as well as a knife. It isn't particularly like Beth's knife, but Morgan uses it to escape. (In other words, he saves himself.) Just interesting.

After that, we see his feet as he walks back toward Texas. I thought this was really interesting in terms of Morgan’s story line. Remember that back in 4x01 when Morgan left Alexandria, we saw his feet running as he headed toward Texas. It showed the same thing here—his feet constantly moving toward Texas—but it’s the opposite. Before, he was running away from his problems. Now he's walking toward Texas to help with the people there. He’s actually trying to get back to Alexandria, but he's going to do the right thing and go get his friends in Texas first. He’ll bring them back to Rick's group where he believes they'll have the best chance rebuild the world and survive. So his motivations are the opposite here.

I almost think this is the end of an arc. Remember, the end always mirrors the beginning. This is the end of Morgan's running away arc and from now on he’ll be moving forward, toward Alexandria (even if is going back to Texas first) in a positive way. So I’m very interested see what happens next in the show.

Overall, I really did enjoy this episode. I think some exciting things are happening with Morgan and there still a very good chance he could run into Beth on his way back to Alexandria.

This next part is as much head canon as anything else, but I've been thinking about a lot this week and the more I think about it, the more sense that scenario makes.

1)    Remember that Morgan/Lennie James was seen at the cabin where Emily filmed in S5, which is part of the missing scenes. Just the fact that Morgan was there is super significant to me. Well gotta keep an eye out for that cabin and see if it shows up in Fear.

2)    Morgan bringing her back to Alexandria would fit well with the D.S. al coda structure and what happened when Daryl and Aaron met Morgan and brought him back to Alexandria in 5B.

3)    Earlier in the season, we saw Morgan looking into cars for survivors and trying to help people he found. Between that and all the other symbolism we've seen in Fear the season, it just makes sense that maybe that’s where it's going.

I’ll say again that there were a lot of tens in this episode. If Morgan doesn't return to TF until S10, there's a chance Beth may not either. But of course that's even assuming I'm right. If I'm totally wrong about this and she shows up some other way in TWD S9, this will all be a moot point. This is just what I'm seeing and why it’s making me excited.

Okay, I'll shut up now. How would everyone else like 4×11 of fear?