#td 1x07

[preacherboyd]

True Detective | 1x07 After You've Gone

[phantomoftheorpheum]

School Spirits Timeline of Maddie's Murder (1x01-1x07) + Some Suspicions

I'm basically creating this to help myself think through things, but I thought I'd post it so anyone can read/comment if they have thoughts! Timeline will be below the cut to save space.

For the sake of clarity, the confirmed facts (as in, we have seen this play out on screen) will be regular text, the claims made by characters (but we haven't actually seen in a scene) will be in bold, and any conjecture or theories will be italicized. Notes on the timeline with be inside brackets [] and will not be bold/italic.

This first section is going to be about the timeline prior to Maddie's murder.

Mr. Anderson stole the fundraiser money for the band uniforms and revamped the old ones he found in the theater storage. He hid the money in his classroom wall. [We didn't actually see this happen, but we can assume it's true because of the receipt Simon found, the devil patch in Mr. Anderson's car, Claire's blackmail, the money in his wall, etc. It would fundamentally undermine pretty much everything we know if this weren't actually true.]

Claire discovered what Mr. Anderson did and blackmailed him to get As on essays she didn't actually write. [Again, we didn't actually see this in a scene, but we can assume it's true, as Claire has admitted to it, we've seen the essays, and the blackmail video shows them discussing this.]

Mr. Anderson gave Maddie his number & later helped her when her mom got into a drunk driving accident. [I'm not sure if this happened before he stole the money & Claire began blackmailing him or not, but we know for sure that it happened from Maddie's memories.]

Nicole filmed Claire & Mr. Anderson arguing about the money. She stole his number from Maddie's phone and blackmailed him for money so she could go to Chicago with Simon and Maddie. [Again, we didn't see this actually happen, but I think it's safe to assume this is true.]

Mr. Anderson and Claire mistook Nicole for Maddie because Mr. Anderson only gave Maddie his number. Claire told Mr. Anderson to pay "Maddie" off, which he did. [This is point is something I still have a couple of questions about. Since Maddie had called Mr. Anderson to help her with her mom, didn't he also have her number? Maybe he didn't save it, idk. Or maybe he thought she was using a prepaid cell or something to blackmail him. I think it's completely fair to believe that he did pay Nicole, since she admits to it, but I do question how he paid Nicole? We don't have any details of how she actually physically ended up with the money or when this exchange happened. In the first episode, Nicole tells Maddie & Simon that she had her portfolio review the night before Maddie is murdered, & if she's being honest later when she claims that they told her she wouldn't get a scholarship and that's why she blackmailed Mr. Anderson for the money, that would imply that this all happens the day Maddie died. It's a little hard to know what the exact truth is, though, since Nicole did lie to Maddie & Simon about the review going well, so she may have lied about the timing of it, too.]

Some details we don't know about- when did Claire's dad start donating to the Sheriff's re-election campaign? When did Xavier & Claire start their affair? When, exactly, did Nicole get the blackmail money & how? Does any of this matter? Maybe not.

The second section is going to be the timeline the day of Maddie's murder.

Maddie is seen at school with Xavier, being watched by Claire. [We know this is true, but I don't think it matters.]

Maddie is in school with Simon & Nicole. Nicole lies about how her portfolio review went. Maddie and Simon go to Mr. Anderson's class [homeroom?], but Maddie sees Xavier leaving the school & goes to talk to him.

Xavier is planning to meet up with Claire at this time & Maddie's sudden appearance freaks him out. They make plans to meet up during study hall [7th?]. [Again, at this point, I think we can feel pretty sure this is all true. Maddie sees Claire in the hallway as she's headed back into the school.]

Xavier texts Maddie, but her phone dies before she can read the text. This text is meant for Claire, not Maddie, which causes Xavier to freak out. [pretty safe to assume all of this is true, too, I think.]

Sometime between Xavier's text/Maddie's phone dying and 8th period, Claire steals Maddie's phone. Claire takes the phone and swaps it with a blank one in order to try to delete the video of her and Mr. Anderson. [It's a little unclear exactly when/how Claire stole Maddie's phone, but she claims to have done it, and assuming she stole it off of Maddie and not Xavier, she must have done it during this time.]

During study hall [7th?] Xavier cancels his evening plans with Maddie and then steals Maddie's phone, but it has already been swapped out with a blank one by Claire, and Maddie's mom shows up to the school drunk. Maddie leaves study hall to go find her. [I'm still not entirely clear on the details of the phone swaps, but this is what makes the most sense to me.]

During 8th period, Xavier skips class to try to break into Maddie's phone and delete the text. He is unable to get into her phone. He is seen in the boy's bathroom by Mr. South, who is fixing a window. [We only have Xavier's word about any of this. We have not seen his alibi confirmed by the police or by Mr. South. Any of this could be a lie.]

Presumably during 7th or 8th period, Maddie gets into an argument with her mother. Maddie's mom may have taken her necklace at this point. [Maddie only remembers a little of this moment, so we don't know exactly when/where this took place. She yells something like "that belongs to me!" at her mother, which I suspect is about her necklace, but that is conjecture on my part.]

Maddie is killed [technically there is some debate about this, I suppose, but it's literally been weeks now & no one has found her, so I think it's pretty safe to assume she's genuinely dead] in the boiler room. Someone either removes her from the premises or hides her body within the school, as she hasn't been found. [I think it's most likely they moved her, since the school has been searched & there's a convenient tunnel out of there, but technically we haven't seen it happen.]

Maddie remembers "waking up" as a ghost before school lets out for the day. She sees Xavier, Claire, and Ms. Fields in the hallway as school is letting out. [We know that this means that whatever happened to Maddie did so by 3 pm.]

Some details to keep in mind- the alibi Mr. Anderson gives Claire doesn't seem to cover 8th period, which is weird. The Sheriff says he has a solid alibi, but that feels strange. Xavier's alibi has not been confirmed by anyone else. Simon mentions Xavier skipped 8th, so presumably Simon was in 8th to notice?

The third section is going to address some oddities, suspicions regarding events, claims by various characters, evidence, etc. I wrote some pretty extensive posts covering the timeline through 1x06 and so that feels redundant to put here, but there's a bit of new info from 1x07 that I'm still puzzling out.

Nicole took credit for a lot of things. To sum up, she confessed that she- filmed the video of Mr. Anderson and Claire arguing about the money, stole Mr. Anderson's number from Maddie's phone and used it to blackmail him (not knowing he didn't give out his number), somehow got the blackmail money from Mr. Anderson (unclear how/when), planted the boot prints & ticket evidence in the woods and then "found it," presumably sent the video of Claire & Mr. Anderson arguing about the money to Simon & Xavier (but she doesn't specifically take credit for this, so we don't know for sure. If she didn't, then who else knows about this?), buried the money in a hole in the woods (where it has apparently been stolen), and deleted the video off of a school computer.

Notably, Nicole does not confess to, and seems unlikely to have- planted Maddie's backpack in the abandoned house (presumably only the killer would have access to the backpack), been the person Xavier saw in the abandoned house, planted or abandoned the "murder weapon" (I put that in quotes because I'm not sure if it's the real murder weapon, or if it has been planted specifically to try to frame Mr. South, or if it is both), liked her own social media post from Maddie's account.

We know Nicole can't have been the mysterious figure in the woods at the end of 1x07, as she is also present. We know Nicole can't have been who Mrs. Nears heard in the house in 1x06, as she was at the dance. If someone did break into Mrs. Nears house, this is unlikely to have been Nicole either.

The boot prints. This point bothers me. Nicole confesses that she planted this evidence. Simon later claims that this evidence was excluded from the police file when he saw it & he becomes suspicious of it because he recognizes that the prints are not from Maddie's boots. The file Simon was shown did include the photo of the ticket that Nicole "found" in the woods, but no photos of the additional prints she claims Xavier told her about the police finding later (which were also presumably planted by her). This is weird because Nicole tells Simon about the police finding more prints of "Maddie's" before he is brought in by the police, and the police then claim that they believe the evidence points to Maddie running away, but they don't include those prints (which would support their theory) in the file. In theory, only Nicole and Maddie's murderer should have known (at this point) that those boot prints were not relevant to the investigation. But they would also have known the ticket didn't matter, so why include one and not the other? This wouldn't bother me so much, except for they specifically have Simon mention it was left out of the file when he saw it before. Maybe this is all just there because if Simon had seen it earlier, he would have known to call out the boot prints & the show wasn't ready for the audience to have that info yet? Idk.

Maddie's backpack , or one that looks like it, is in evidence at the police station. I just think it's nice to have some level of confirmation about this. Since I am suspicious of the Sheriff, and we haven't actually seen her backpack since her death, it's good to know that it is there. But we don't know for sure how it ended up there or if it is her real backpack. I think it is, but we only have Xavier's visual confirmation.

I know I said it in my last post, but I think Maddie's mom has the necklace & took it when they argued at the school, but I'm not convinced she killed Maddie.

[duncneys]

We did it! We made it through the whole day!

[marvelsdefenders]

[fadedtoblue]

Do you think netflix!Elektra was close to her adoptive family (father) like she was in the comics? Do you think she lets herself relaxed a bit and got attached while waiting for Stick? or she did like she told Stick she would and she never considered them as a family but more like a mission?

This is all very speculative and veers hard into headcanon territory since the show doesn’t give us much to work with…

I’ve always gotten the impression that Netflix!Elektra would have kept the Natchios family at arm’s length, so no, probably not very close to Hugo, not like the comics. She’s clearly thrown her lot back in with Stick + the Chaste full-time as an adult and seems to have maintained that father-daughter vibe with him (see the flashback scene in TD 1x07), so I imagine that she spends much of the adoptive daughter years biding her time until she is re-connected with Stick, which means not letting herself get too comfortable where she’s at. 

That being said, she’s still a kid, and I think every so often she allows herself to relax and get swept up in the fantasy of the life she’s living. Studying the arts, music, and dance – proper skills for someone of this family’s stature – are the trade off for private martial arts lessons with the best teachers money could buy. Her adoptive parents don’t understand her proclivity for such violent sport, but they allow it because she’s shown she’s a deft learner at almost anything that gets thrown her way. And while Elektra doesn’t see any use in cultivating soft skills like painting or piano, she feels funny – warm – when Hugo and Christina sit in the front row and raucously applaud her after a particularly spectacular dance recital, or when they earnestly show off her latest paintings at another one of their famous parties they’re hosting at the Natchios estate. The feeling is a double edged sword – she knows they’re being genuine in their affection, but she is keenly aware that it’s being given because she’s putting on a good face, a good show for these people. If they only knew what she was really like…would they really want her for a daughter? That is the constant thought that sends her plummeting back into reality. So she allows herself to enjoy the perks of the life to a point, but she never lets go of the cold, hard truth of why she’s really there. 

Then one ordinary day, while she’s in her first year of university overseas, that old bastard Stick reappears, casually attacking her at the edges of the dark quad, partly to make sure she’s been maintaining her training, partly because he’s just an ass like that. Elektra is stunned, then angry, but the way her blood boils feels good, because she hasn’t been challenged like this, not in a good long while. Stick, in typical Stick fashion, cuts her off before she can start demanding explanations, cocking his head toward her while saying, “We got work to do, Ellie. You ready?” 

And just like that, all the questions that seemed so important moments ago dissolve from her lips, and she offers up a steely, “Yes.” 

So she’s a little sad that the facade with the Natchios seems to finally be heading toward a clear expiration date, but it also feels like she’s able to let out the breath she’s been holding inside for all of those years. That things might finally feel right again. 

(And it’s not until she meets Matt Murdock a year later that she realizes what right actually feels like, and she quietly mourns that loss for the next 10 years.)

[preacherboyd]

True Detective | 1x07 After You've Gone

[preacherboyd]

True Detective | 1x07 After You've Gone

[phantomoftheorpheum]

Just finished 1x07 of School Spirits, here are my (currently disorganized) thoughts-

*as usual, thoughts below a cut to avoid a massively long post.

Okay, well, first of all, glad that the Nicole stuff has come out now. It's pretty much exactly like I expected, though she has really muddled up the evidence (for the audience) by actively planting Maddie's bootprints. Is she behind any of the other "evidence?" I don't think so, but I'm going to have to consider that for a minute. I know that she and Simon were focused on the money, but it would have been nice if they'd talked at all about the fact that someone liked Nicole's social media post & since Nicole now also believes that Maddie is dead, they should be on the same page that it wasn't her.

It was immediately a red flag when Mr. Martin said his line about enjoying power & control. Obviously he's become actively more threatening throughout the episode. He's also in the fallout shelter when Dawn crosses over, so is he the one who died there? I have some somewhat vague theories about Mr. Martin, but I'll save those for the end.

Xavier called out that his own alibi relies on Mr. South, which does make him less suspicious to me again. Though I did think it was weird that he mentioned Mr. South whistling "the Titanic song" the whole time because he doesn't mention that he actually saw Mr. South the whole time. While Mr. South does feel like a red herring kind of character, I can't help but wonder if that will come back around in some way. Maybe it's something as simple as when we see what happened to Maddie, we hear him whistling that when she walks past the boy's bathroom, or something?

I know we needed to have various characters look suspicious and so Claire had a role to play throughout most of the season, but I really enjoyed her this ep & I wish we could have had more of this version of her throughout the season. I guess here's hoping for season 2!

I don't love that it seems like Claire & Mr. Anderson assumed the blackmail was coming from Maddie just because he hadn't given his number to any other students. It seems weird. Why would they even assume it's a student? What did Nicole say? But I think that's just the way it is, because I don't see how another twist fits in there well. It was a really bad and poorly supported assumption on Mr. Anderson & Claire's part, but okay.

Don't think I've forgotten that Mr. Anderson's alibi makes no sense, still. At least the alibi he told Claire. He said he spent the night with his father, Maddie was killed during the day & Xavier's alibi is for 8th period. Why would Mr. Anderson not be at school for 8th? That's never been mentioned/explained. The Sheriff claims he has a good alibi, but what is it?

Dawn mentions that people can be possessed by spirits. She is the perfect character to use to give the audience important information without them necessarily taking it too seriously. Plus, we later see that she's a lot "more" than anyone thought, and being taken seriously and appreciated seems to be what she needed to cross over. I think we need to take her concerns of possession pretty seriously.

Okay, I guess now is the time to talk about the fact that it seems like Janet didn't actually cross over & Mr. Martin clearly has something to do with that/is lying about it. I have about 12 different half-baked theories with this whole situation, so I don't even know which way to turn. Is Janet still around, or can he somehow absorb the energy of other ghosts and has basically killed her? Maybe through hypnosis? Perhaps hypnosis (or maybe any mentally altered state) on a living person leaves them vulnerable to possession, but on a ghost leaves them vulnerable to being absorbed or controlled? Does he have the ability to impact the real world? Is it possible that he can influence the actions of the living? Maybe not fully control them, but heighten emotion/anger etc.? Could he have had a hand in Maddie's death? Either by being powerful enough to hurt her, or by being powerful enough to influence someone else to hurt her? Maybe he can't make someone do something completely out of character, but he can push them past their normal limits? He was down in the fallout shelter and that may be his reset point, so it doesn't seem out of the question that he was nearby when Maddie died. Or maybe he didn't have anything to do with what happened to Maddie & he's just being set up as a season 2 antagonist. See what I mean about all the theories/thoughts?

So. Maddie's mom. I'm glad we're finally starting to address what she was doing at the school on the day of Maddie's death. I've said before in a post that if she killed Maddie, it would have been a crime of passion, imo (could she have been influenced by Mr. Martin? Is she more susceptible to ghosts because of being under the influence?) But I'm not sure she's capable of this level of coverup, and I'm immediately suspicious of any "revelations" that happen before the final episode, since mysteries like to leave an element of surprise for the finale. At this point, I think it's likely she and Maddie argued & that she has Maddie's necklace, but she didn't kill her. I think the necklace is likely what's in the envelope that she's keeping in Maddie's dresser. In Maddie's flashback with her mom she yells either "that belongs to me" or "that belonged to me" which I'm guessing is about the necklace.

Which brings me to- The Sheriff. He's a loose thread. He could have followed Nicole from Maddie's house and dug up the money. The last we saw, she was there with Maddie's mom and the police. We were reminded, yet again, about his re-election campaign and money. He would have the ability to plant evidence pretty easily (the backpack, the "murder weapon," etc.). And he can steer the investigation. Simon mentions that when he was shown Maddie's file it didn't have the ticket with the boot print. Why would that be left out, unless the cops know that was faked and that he might realize that? And how could anyone know it was faked unless they knew Maddie's shoes, or they killed her & know she couldn't have left the prints? Did someone maybe call the police when Maddie's mom showed up drunk at the school, giving the Sheriff reason to be there? Did he encounter Maddie after her argument with her mom? The question is, what exactly would be his motive to kill Maddie? He's an asshole, and they made sure to show us how much in the scene with Xavier, but why would he want Maddie dead? He does seem motivated by money/re-election, but Maddie didn't actually have any money & how would be know anything about that situation?

Could Mr. Anderson and the Sheriff have been working together to steal money from Claire's stepdad? I feel like I'm missing a piece here in this theory, because Claire's stepdad was donating to the Sheriff's campaign, so I don't know why he would need to steal money, but- is it possible the Sheriff was in on Mr. Anderson's plan, so he knew that Mr. Anderson thought Maddie was blackmailing him & had been given some of the money? The police told Simon there was no money in Mr. Anderson's wall when they searched, but maybe it was there & the Sheriff was trying to protect him/the stolen money. At that point, there was no proof. Once Simon produces the proof that Mr. Anderson stole the money, the Sheriff can no longer pretend & Ms. Fields tells Maddie's mom that Mr. Anderson turned the money over, but maybe the Sheriff already had it & was just now forced to acknowledge this. Mr. Anderson's supposed alibi doesn't line up with the timeline, but the Sheriff says he has a good one. Did Anderson kill Maddie (maybe he was told to get the money back by the Sheriff, but ended up killing Maddie when he became frustrated that she was denying having it) and the Sheriff is helping cover it up? So many options.

Is the hooded figure that we saw in the house the same person as the hooded figure we saw at the end of 1x07? Seems likely, but we have no proof, so we can't rule out anyone whose location we don't know during both of those two events (so, anyone, really).

Okay, those are my immediate thoughts. I'm in the process of constructing a timeline with some added conjecture/theories, but I'm going to post it separately, since this is already so long. Speaking of, do you think we'll get to go through events chronologically (like watch Maddie's last day play out) in the final episode. That could be interesting! Not as the entire episode, since obviously we want to see progress with the characters in the current timeline, but I'd like to see some of the events we've already seen put into the context of the new information.

[duncneys]

Hey, it’s okay if you can’t do it.

[duncneys]

[duncneys]

[duncneys]

[duncneys]

[marvelsdefenders]

[fadedtoblue]

I was wondering how Elektra would react if her and Matt's positions were reversed and if he were the Black Sky resurrected. My first thought was she would go on a deadly rampage to get him back, leaving a bloody swathe of people behind who got in her way... but then I thought: that is the M.O of the Elektra we know now - so how much of her actions, particularly the violence, is this 'deadly weapon' inside her and how much is truly Elektra Natchios? Are they even seperable in that sense?

Oooh, what an interesting question! (Btw, there’s an excellent fic based on this premise on AO3 if you’re into that kind of thing, but I digress.)

Yes, I absolutely think that if their positions were reversed, Elektra would stop at NOTHING to get Matthew back. Her goal is to protect him, and she would have zero qualms about doing whatever it takes to achieve that, even if it means leaving a high body count in her wake. 

I think what makes your question both interesting and tricky is that by this point in Elektra’s story, it IS almost impossible to separate the “deadly weapon” from the “real” Elektra. If you think about it, the formative years of her childhood – the way she was treated, the way she was trained – hinged upon the fact that Stick ultimately knew she was the Black Sky and tried to subvert that “darkness” within her into a weapon for the Chaste. So if Stick believes she’s destined for violence, trains her to be violent, makes her feel both proud and ashamed to be good at violence, can you blame her for growing up to become a person who doesn’t care when she has to resort to violence?

That being said, I don’t actually feel like Elektra’s natural propensity towards using violence as a way to get what she wants, within this fictional universe, is necessarily a negative character trait. A big part of Elektra’s true personality is that she usually doesn’t give AF about what other people (except Matthew :p) may perceive to be her shortcomings. She’ll call you out on your bullshit. She owns her fighting ability. She acknowledges her methods aren’t always ideal but they get the job done. She doesn’t kill or act out in violence indiscriminately or for sport, though you wouldn’t think that based on how people go on about her – I think that old subplot / subtext about Elektra getting off on the violence is mostly just the consequence of poor writing – “hey, let’s throw in some stuff to show how BAD she can be!” (and now we also have that additional flashback scene between Stick and Elektra in TD 1x07 giving super valuable context to the Roscoe Sweeney situation that we didn’t have in DDS2, like we need some more meta discussing THAT!!). Anyway, she switches into killing/violence mode when she has a purpose for it, and every time we’ve seen her do it, it’s typically been for the purpose of fighting her war or for the purpose of protecting Matthew. So THAT, to me, is the real Elektra, all the way through. And it might not be what people perceive as being “good” but Elektra is who she is and I support her continuing to be that.

I realize this turned into an extended Elektra ramble and am not sure if I actually answered your question at all lol. But hopefully it kind of did :).