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twdmusicboxmystery · 6 years

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9x12: Guardians - Details

Okay, let's get down to details. This is gonna be long, so settle in.

***As always, spoilers abound for 9x12 in this post. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

Michonne/Negan/Alexandria:

I thought it was interesting that Father Gabriel, the Sirius character because of his eye, is the one pushing for the relay. I mentioned this at the beginning of the arc when he and Rosita were putting the relay together, but here we heard more talk about finding new people and how they shouldn't cut themselves off from the world. Again, it wouldn't say that if it weren't a foreshadow of them finding new people on the outside.

A big thing that was brought across to me in this episode is that Michonne is acting a lot like Rick used to. Not in a good way. She's being too protective and close minded and not willing to help other people. We saw Rick acting like that a lot in the past, and it was usually Michonne and Carl who convinced him that wasn't the right way to be. Now Michonne is being that way.

Siddique says, "Carol wouldn't ask for help a second time if it wasn't serious." Not only is that a serious/Sirius reference, but even the "the second time" bit plays into it. Sirius always returns for a second time, right? And it occurs to me that this is probably more about Carol than Michonne, but I think something about the fair will lead to Carol losing Ezekiel in the whole death fake out thing I talked about before. And hopefully that will lead to Beth as well. ;D

Something I think it's important to point out: A lot of people are really frustrated with Michonne and her attitude right now, but I thought it was important that she said she was willing to let the Kingdomers come live at Alexandria if they needed to. She said she’d open the doors to them, the same as they did to their friends at the Sanctuary. So, her only real hang-up is making the journey on the roads. She says the roads are broken and full of walkers. Honestly, I do understand her point of view. It’s still flawed of course. The communities really ought to be working together to clear those roads and make safe trade routes. But I don't think Michonne’s point of view is quite as closed-minded as many in the fandom are making it out to be.

Later on, Michonne talks to Negan. He wants to help her with her leadership. We had callbacks to the "merciful Rick Grimes," which to me just points toward Carl's vision of the future. The last episode of S8 was called Mercy, after all.

I thought it was interesting that the Negan was referred to as a dog several times. He referred to himself that way and Michonne did as well. I'm not really sure what to make of this. I mean, obviously it's another Sirius reference, but I don't think Negan is going to leave and come back. I could be wrong about that, but I've never felt like that's where they're going with his arc.

Remember that a few weeks ago, smack in the middle of some heavy Still parallels, we saw dogs around him. So this could simply be yet another way of entangling him with Beth’s arc. Dogs = Sirius = Beth, and we’re seeing them around Negan because he’ll be involved in her return somehow.

Michonne realizes Judith is listening and confronts her about it later on. Judith once again gets in a decent verbal sucker punch by saying, "He listens to me. Not everyone does." Guilt trip much?

And then, again, we see how much Michonne has become like negative Rick. She says people don't really change, and then Judith says, "You did."

Talking about change can be a callback to Still and Beth talking about how she wishes she could just change. But in truth, this is been a show-wide theme for a while now. Back at the prison, Rick gave the speech about how he knew, “We can all change.” But then everything went wrong, Herschel died, and Rick didn't believe that for really long time. Michonne and Carl were the ones who always tried to get him to be more positive and have more faith.

Now, Michonne has sort of taken on Rick's pessimistic role, and Judith has taken on Carl's role of trying to convert her back to believing in people and having faith in the future. Kind of an interesting turning of the tables.

Later Michonne tells Aaron she won’t veto the Council’s vote. At this part, Aaron says, "I hope we don't regret this." Michonnee answers, "yeah. Me too." That’s a callback to S5 when TF first came to Alexandria. Michonne talked to Rick about how she thought they'd found a good place and Rick said, "I hope you're right about this." Michonne answered, "yeah. Me too."

We see the Alexandrians loading up wagons with things they are presumably taking to the fair. We saw lots of familiar symbols here, including pigs. Remember Beth and Daryl talked about pigs feet Alone. I don't know if I've actually posted about this, but @frangipanilove has an entire theory about how the pigs feet are actually part of the Sirius/Dog Star theme. That’s why I always point them out.

Rosita/FG/Siddiq/Eugene:

in this episode, Father Gabriel already knows about the baby. As I told my group Sunday night, I'm impressed with Rosita. To be honest, she's never been my favorite character. I certainly don't hate her or anything, but she's never struck me as the most emotionally mature person on the show. But I have to say, the way she's handling this whole baby quadrangle situation is very mature and I'm very impressed with her growth.

And I think that growth is legit because there was a part where she said to FG, “Me and Siddiq will figure out our shit…” That’s a direct callback to when Denise yelled at Rosita and Daryl about just before her death about figuring out their shit. So I think this is evidence that Rosita has grown a lot since then.

We had that funny scene where Eugene "helps" FG. This was obviously meant to be humorous with all of Eugene's technical charts and such, but we did see some interesting thematic things here as well. Eugene brought across the theme that all we have is time and love and the whole point of life is trying to bring about happiness. I thought it was interesting, given how often we lose characters in the show. We need to love people in the time that we have, because tomorrow is not promised. Eugene was very sweet in this episode.

In this scene, we also saw a callback to Grady in the form of some scissors.

He also said the line about how "even with bad peepers you saw things I didn’t.” Because he's lost an eye, just like the dog in Alone, FG is the physical embodiment of the Sirius character. So referencing bad peepers (eyes) is kind of a blindness reference, but he also means seeing things with your heart, or in other ways than with your eyes. I'm not sure how or if that will pertain to Beth at all, but I thought it was an interesting theme.

This is kind of off-topic topic, but I also want to say how impressed I am with the way the show is handling this love quadrangle. I’ve wished before that they would do more jealousy story lines. Nothing huge that would be conflicts between main characters. Not even anything like the Rick/Shane/Lori situation. I just think it would be fun if every once in a while, some random new character came into Alexandria and thought Michonne was hot or something. Not that she would return it at all, but would be nice to see Rick punch someone in the face for that reason. I think most of us have had head canons about things like that with Beth and Daryl. And I've always thought the reason they didn't do this on the show is because that can very easily degrade into daytime soap opera level drama. TWD just isn’t that kind of show. It's about survival and much deeper and more transcendent themes than that.

Here, they’re doing not even just a triangle, but a quadrangle. But the way they’re handling it is really great. It doesn't feel way campy or like high school drama. I’m actually really enjoying this story line.

At the end, Rosita, Father Gabriel, and Siddique, all seem to be ready to sit down and figure out what they're going to do moving forward. Eugene watches with a smile. Poor Eugene. He needs a nice girl.

Daryl and Connie:

Okay, let's first appreciate the fact that the time for the romance to happen between the two of them has mostly passed. Yeah, they could end up alone in the woods at some point in the future. Maybe they will. They really weren’t together very long, though, and now Henry and Lydia are with them, which means they're no longer alone and the opportunity for the two of them to bond has largely passed. Did you see all that romance blooming in the woods?

I mean, even I thought we would see more parallels to Beth between the two of them. We may see more next episode, but if we do, it won't be with the two of them being alone together.

When I saw this scene with them tracking in the woods, the first thing I thought of was Inmates. Part of it was just that visually it looked like Inmates, but Bethyl was tracking people from the prison in Inmates, and here, Daryl and Connie are tracking the Whisperers.

We have a shot of Connie looking in the dirt.

She sees footprints, and again, that's like Inmates. I was also vaguely reminded of the dry riverbed in Them. I don't know but if that's what they were going for, especially because we don't see any Xs or dead frogs right here but it reminded me of the way they showed Sasha looking at the dry riverbed.

I couldn't help but be struck by how quickly Daryl can bond with someone. It doesn't happen very often because it's hard for him, but when it does happen, it happens quickly. So, here’s an exhaustive guide on how to bond with Daryl:

1) Establish personal communication. Connie signaled that he needed to look at her when he talked so she could read his lips. That alone for Daryl establishes her weakness, how she overcomes it, and how he can help her overcome it. Instant bond.

2) Showcase your walker-killing awesomeness. Connie uses her sling. Daryl was impressed. Instant bond.

3) Yeah, that's it. Daryl now think cares what you think. You could tell he was a little embarrassed about the arrow breaking by the way he looked up self-consciously. He obviously cares what Connie thinks.

Honestly, I thought this was adorable. Connie laughed and it felt very much like when Denise offered him the oat cake and kind of laughed about his surliness. This feels very brotherly/sisterly to me. I really like the Connie/Daryl duo. But it's obviously platonic.

I originally thought that the arrow breaking was a callback to Still. Remember Daryl shot at a squirrel, but he missed and the arrow broke. I suppose we could still see it as that, but we also know that it wasn't intentional. Norman posted on his IG that the arrow breaking was actually a mess up, but he and Connie stayed in character and Angela thought it was cute so they kept it in. I’d like to think it’s the parallel they didn’t mean to include. Maybe Angela realized how well it worked as a Still callback and left it in.

Even without the arrow breaking, I still see something important here. It occurred to me that the arrow hit the walker in the head, and the dog retrieved it. So, even if the scene played out the way they meant to, we still have Dog (Sirius reference) retrieving an arrow from a head wound.

I also noticed the walker Daryl shot was missing an arm. I thought that was important, especially given the stuff we’ve seen with Daryl's arm. The S7, he wore the coat that had only one sleeve made out of flannel, which drew attention to his arm. Similarly, this season, the sleeve of that same arm is shorter than the other sleeve, again drawing attention to it. When I saw the armless walker, I thought, okay, the walker represents Daryl.

And THAT’S when it hit me that the two walkers that came toward Connie and Daryl were a male walker and female walker. Guys, this was an instance of the Bethyl side-by-side walker theme. Now, we didn't see an actual shot of the two walkers laying side-by-side after they got killed. It was subtler than that. But we had a male and female walker that were killed and would've been lying side-by-side on the ground.

I'm not sure exactly what this points to. Sure, it could foreshadow Connie's death, but even if she dies, I don't think that was the point of this. This has always been a Beth thing, and she hasn't been present most of the times they've used the symbol. It's just obvious from Inmates (so yet another Inmates reference here) and Always Accountable that it pertains to her. So, this could be a foreshadow of Beth showing up, but it could also be as simple as a way to show us that Connie and Daryl are being paralleled with Beth and Daryl here. Still, I was happy to see another instance of this theme.

And I can’t help but be reminded of an instance we saw of this in 5b. We saw the side by side theme with Ws in the walkers’ heads, just before the wolves showed up. So I feel like this is also a way to show similarities between the Wolves and the Whisperers.

One thing I alluded to in my First Thoughts post was actually pointed out by @thegloriouscollectorlady. While we can see a parallel to Beth and Daryl in this Connie and Daryl situation, we could equally see a parallel to Daryl and Carol in S5 going to look for Beth. When that episode aired, a certain ship insisted that Caryl would happen and this was when they were going to hook up. Nothing of the sort happened. Now we have everyone talking about Daryl and Connie. I don’t think that will happen either.

So, it occurred to me that they had kind of a funny incident with the dog, which reminded me of Daryl and Carol looking at picture and Daryl suggesting it looked like a dog had sat in paint and wiped his ass all over the canvas. I think that dog reference in Consumed was a foreshadow of the fact Beth is about to disappear. So, what does this dog reference foreshadow? I don't know, but I don't think either Connie or Daryl is going to disappear. It could be an Ezekiel thing again, or it could be a Beth thing. Just no way to know. But I will say that, as we have heavy Beth parallels here, and no Carol or Ezekiel anywhere around this, I kind think it’s more likely to be a Beth callback.

Last thing is that Connie already knows how to track. We saw a lot of tracking going on in this episode. It struck me that unlike Beth, Daryl doesn't really have to teach Connie anything. So again, maybe more like Carol in that way. Connie knows how to survive. She's figured out her slingshot and she really doesn't need any lessons from Daryl in tracking or killing walkers.

So it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, this is a foreshadow of what Beth and Daryl’s relationship will be like when Beth returns. At that point, she’ll already know how to track, she’ll already know how to survive, and Daryl will be impressed with her. Just a thought.

Alpha/Henry/Lydia/Whisperers:

Let’s get to the heavy stuff. We learned a lot about Alpha, both by her actions and by her dialogue. We talked in my group about how we were mildly offended on Daryl's behalf that Alpha suggested he might have done something sexual to Lydia. I suppose it's a normal enough question for a parent to ask, given that Lydia was in the clutches of someone she didn't know for time. But we already know Alpha isn't terribly parental to Lydia to begin with.

I think this really shows Alpha’s mindset. She wanted specifically to know why Daryl was willing to fight to keep Lydia and then suggested that he had touched her. So, that association tells us she thinks the only reason someone would be willing to fight to keep Lydia is if there was a sexual element involved. She can’t imagine someone would want to keep a teenager safe out of basic goodness and decency.

She asked if there were any signs of trade, and Lydia said no. So she didn't tell her mom about the Kingdom or the other places that Henry mentioned.

I paid close attention to all of Alpha’s dialogue and something else struck me. Lydia asked, "Is that the only reason you came to get me? For information?" Alpha replies, "What a stupid question."

It reminded me of when Beth used the word stupid. She said of her own past optimism, "that's how incredibly stupid I am." Daryl assured her that she wasn't stupid. She was just normal and that's the way things were supposed to be. Maybe I'm reaching, but it just goes to show the difference between Alpha and Daryl. Alpha goes out of her way to make Lydia feel stupid rather than loved, where Daryl went out of his way to comfort Beth and let her know she was not stupid.

The yoyo. This was one of my favorite things in this episode. Why? Because it’s a significant symbol, but we haven't seen it very much. The less we see a symbol, the more significant it is when we do see it. The only other place I remember seeing the symbol was in 5x05 when Tara found the yoyo hidden in the backpack by the side of the river. It was when Glenn and Rosita were trying to filter water for everyone when the fire trucks broke down. You know, kinda on the way to Grady?

Here, we had almost the exact same scenario. Lydia randomly found a yoyo (hidden being a theme about Beth’s arc), and the Whisperers had stopped by the side of a river. This is a direct call back to 5x05. A yoyo, by definition, goes down and then comes back up, so I do think it's a resurrection symbol. All I could ever conclude about that yo-yo was that it foreshadowed Beth’s coming “death.” The yoyo suggested she would pop back up again somewhere.

Guys, we really haven't seen a yo-yo on the show that I'm aware of since then. So yeah, obviously I can talk about Beth symbolism all day and we've seen plenty of symbols throughout the seasons (6-8) that I've said pointed to her return, and we still haven’t seen her. But we literally haven't seen symbol since right before Coda. That makes me more hopeful than ever. They wouldn’t show it here for no reason. And just like in S5, the yoyo had absolutely no bearing on the plot. It's not like Lydia used it to get away or something. It was just random and has to be symbolic of something just around the corner.

I think it might also be important that it's blue. The yo-yo Tara found was yellow. That signified Beth apparent death, but her escape (think yellow polo shirt). The blue signifies something else. I'm not sure what, but @wdway also noticed a lot of characters in this episode wore dark blue. We batted ideas around about what the blue stands for, and haven’t really come to any concrete conclusions, but it's an interesting pattern to note.

*After double checking this I have to correct myself. Sorta. Michonne did find a yoyo in the van in 9x06. It was in the box with the little sheriff and some other things. She also grabbed some toilet paper right there. I don’t think that counts as it’s own instance, per se, because I think that, being the first episode of the new arc without Rick, it foreshadowed this yoyo with Lydia. But that just means something about this yoyo was important enough to foreshadow at the beginning of the arc. And given what else was in that box Michonne found, I think it’s safe to say this is associated with the emergence of the New Sheriff. Just saying. ;D*

Henry is captured by the whispers and it's obvious that Alpha knows Lydia is lying.

Let's talk about the Apple/Snow White reference. I sort of felt the same way about this as I did about the yo-yo. Obviously, we’ve seen plenty of apple references since Coda, so it's not the apple itself that makes me suspicious. It's the way they used it. Having Aaron talk about applesauce or Maggie eat apple pie are just very vague references to the apple theme. But those things in and of themselves don't illustrate the Snow White theme. So, what did? Beth's arm falling in the hallway of Grady, which is exactly what we see after Snow White ate the poisoned apple.

In this episode, Alpha gave Lydia an apple. The way she offered it to, looking as though trying to entice her to eat it, was pretty much a parody of the wicked queen/witch in Snow White trying to get her to eat the apple. Even the way Alpha watches Lydia take a bite...I had to laugh because it was so obviously an evil queen reference. Like they were trying to emulate the cartoon.

So again, I know this isn’t the only apple reference by far, but it’s the first direct Snow White reference I’ve noticed since Coda. I think we can draw a straight line between Beth's arm falling and this reference.

Lots of interesting symbols in the walker camp. I won't go into many of them because you already know what they mean. We saw a dead goat, which could be an extension of the ram symbol in 5B. Also a dead deer. Like with the Kingdom last episode, it's unclear hat this deer is tied to, but it's there. We also saw pigs on spits. It's also worth noting that they were drying skins. The question was posed in my group, how can they wear these skins without getting sick, given that they're coming off decomposing corpses? But they obviously use tannery to make them leathery and wearable for the long term.

When I watched Beta skin the walker (seriously disgusting) it occurred to me that this walker was female (pretty natural as he was looking for a new skin for Lydia), but also that it was tied to a tree.

And that made me realize that Henry was also tied to a tree.

I think we can “tie” (see what I did there? ;D) this to the walker Aaron and Daryl found in 5x15. Why is that important? It's not just the Beth reference. It's that they gave us a foreshadow with that walker in 5x15 with the WOLVES and now here, with the Whisperers, the foreshadow might be fulfilled.

I've also talked briefly about how we see parallels between the Wolves and the Whispers. We’ve considered that maybe they’re part of the same group, or maybe they are the same group. But it's also possible we’re being too literal. The parallels might be only in the symbolism. Perhaps the wolves simply foreshadowed the Whisperers. Again, if that's the case, we had the wolves tying people to trees, including a blonde that looked like Beth. We haven't seen that exact thing with the Whisperers, but we've seen that they tie people to trees and they do it to walkers in order to take their faces. It feels like a direct fulfillment of that girl walker on the tree in 5x15 is coming.

We had the part where a male and female Whisperer challenge Alpha and she kills them. Yeah, AMC is obviously not skimping on gore this season.

We learn a lot about Alpha from this encounter. How ruthless she is, how gleefully she kills her own people, and a big part of why no one challenges her. It's not just her, but Beta they'll have to deal with. It’s happened before, as evidenced by her later telling Beta that it’s been years since anyone challenged her. Obviously, she killed them and remained the leader.

Here’s the thing: It occurred to me there must be a very specific reason they showed us this challenge to Alpha’s authority. They never did this, specifically, with Negan. We saw people disobey his rules and be punished for it, but we never actually saw anyone try to usurp his place as leader.

There must be a reason they're showing us this with Alpha. I think a lot of it is to establish her ruthlessness and the way she rules for people, but one line in particular jumped out at me. When the guy challenged her, she laughed at him and said, "and you think you are the one to replace me? To become the new Alpha?" The new alpha. That feels very significant to me. As though it's a thing and at some point, someone might become the new alpha. I’ll return to that in a minute.

On the subject of her brutality, I didn't catch the first time that the cord she used to decapitate a woman is actually worn around her wrist as a bracelet. So Alpha actually carries around a decapitation wire as though it's a piece of jewelry. Doesn’t she just seem sweet?

She gives the woman's head to the boyfriend and makes him hold it. Yeah, you really don't get any more sadistic than that. Just before stabbing him, she says something really interesting. She says, "Crying is weak."

We could relate that back to Beth, who also thought crying was weak. One of her signature lines was, "I don't cry anymore, Daryl." I always felt like she learned through the course of her arc that crying was not actually weak. That was a flawed way of thinking.

Now we have Alpha saying the same thing and killing people when they cry. I think this is more than just a parallel or anti-parallel. I think it’s a direct foreshadow of something.

Let’s skip ahead to when Alpha tells Beta the story about Lydia almost suffocating when she was three years old. First of all, it's obvious Alpha was a psycho even before the turn. She says she actually stood there and watched her daughter turn blue from not being able to breathe. Seriously? Yeah, awesome parenting skills. Afterward, she hit Lydia hard so she’d remember not to accidentally die again.

Something struck me as Alpha and Beta stood there talking. Here comes the super crazy theory.

It occurred to me that Alpha and Beta, especially with Alpha’s blonde walker skin, almost seem like a super-brutal version of Beth and Daryl. I suppose it's the way Beta is her right-hand guy and protects her. We’ve said before that if Beth were leading as the new sheriff, Daryl would be right there by her side. He’d kind of be her enforcer and other half. That’s a lot how Alpha and Beta's relationship is too, except obviously they’re way eviller and more sadistic than Beth and Daryl would be. And that's what sort of clinched some other thoughts I'd been having about this.

1. Beta has been set up as a Daryl foil. I called him a foil instead of anti-parallel because I’m making just a little bit of a differentiation here. Dwight was set up as a Daryl anti-parallel, but I feel like that situation was little bit different than Beta. Although Dwight was an obvious anti-parallel—he actually wore Daryl's clothes and drove Daryl's bike—but by the end of that arc, Dwight was pretty much a good guy. I don't think that will ever be the case with Beta. I don't see him and Alpha becoming part of TF in the way Dwight and Negan seem to be.

No, the last time I remember seeing something like this was in S4. I talked about it HERE in detail, but I felt like one of the Gov’s men, Mitch, had been sent to set up as an foil to Daryl.

With the Gov being pitted against Rick, as his opposite, Mitch became Daryl's. He was the right-hand man, a super-tough survivor, and he didn't have sleeves. Hehe. So, while Rick and the Gov tussled at the prison, Daryl and Mitch came face-to-face, and Daryl killed Mitch.

I think something very similar is happening here. Beta and Daryl are being set up as foils. So, it's fitting that they’ll tussle in the next episode. And I feel like, when Beta dies, even if it's many seasons from now, it will probably be Daryl that kills him.

2. By extension, if Beta = Daryl, then Alpha must = Beth. And here's where things get complicated. I've already said that Alpha was a lot like Dawn, especially during the prisoner exchange. Then she says the thing about the “new Alpha.” As soon as I visualized that phrase in my head, I knew Beth has to be the New Alpha. It couldn't be anyone else. First of all, we had that cryptic line from Gorman at Grady about someday someone else being in charge who isn’t Dawn. We’ve always seen that as a foreshadow of Beth’s future leadership. Now Alpha is talking about a “new Alpha.”

The reason I'm saying it's complicated is because we also have the Carol aspect. I’ll talk about this in more detail later this week. It's one of those theories I wanted to get to last week and didn't. We have a very strong Carol/Beth entanglement thing going on here.

It's hard to say exactly what it means or how it will play out, but all three elements are present. Now, I do very strongly believe that were going to have a Carol/Alpha showdown. It will have everything to do with Henry and Lydia, and the differences in how they treat their children. I think that's going to be an awesome smack down and I’m excited for it. But I also don't really see Carol becoming the “new Alpha,” whatever that means. She barely wants to be queen and lead by Ezekiel’s side. She certainly wouldn't be volunteering to be a leader anywhere else.

And there's the Alpha/Beta dynamic, who I believe are foils to Beth and Daryl, so again it just makes sense that it would be Beth who’s the new alpha.

So, think about everything else I said. Alpha said crying is weak. Beth said crying was weak. The difference is that when Daryl cried, Beth hugged him, and when this guy cried over his dead girlfriend, Alpha stabbed him. Similarly, Beth said she was stupid, and Daryl assured her she wasn't. In this case, Alpha actually called Lydia stupid and was very derogatory to her about it. Are we seeing the anti-parallels?

We had Beta saying that if Lydia felt something for Henry or Hilltop, they needed to know about it. They’re obviously against genuine emotion is because they see it as a weakness. Conversely, Beth tried to draw the emotion out of Daryl and yelling at him for pretending he didn't feel anything.

We can see further parallels in how they dispose of their dead. The most obvious difference between the Whisperers and TF is that TF always bury their dead and treat them with a great deal of reverence and respect. On the other hand, the Whisperers feed their dead to the walkers. They have no respect for those they've lost, and no emotion for the people that cared about.

We can also relate this to Beth. In Alone, we learned had great reverence for the dead and was a big proponent of funerals. Alpha, on the other hand, doesn't bother to bury anybody. She merely casts the dead away and lets them be walker chow.

One more super obvious evidence that Alpha/Beta = Beth/Daryl? Check this out. My group noticed this from trailer even before the episode aired.

Beta is wearing black and white ties, just like the ones we saw on Daryl in 5B.

Can I just say, I'm loving the Beta/Daryl match up. My man Norman and my man Ryan. Just totally loving it.

Let's talk briefly about Henry and Lydia. It took me a minute to figure out what Lydia's necklace was. It's the coin she found in the drunk shack. It has an H on it for Hilltop.

She's obviously hanging on to that in a way that shows she's romantic or nostalgic about it. Henry smiles and obviously sees this is a good thing. Remember that finding that coin was a lot like Beth finding the spoon in S5, so the fact that Lydia is hanging onto it feels like a Beth parallel.

I also can't help but wonder if when we see Beth, we’ll see that she kept the spoon. I think we can also parallel it to Beth's heart necklace, which she wore the entire time she was with Daryl. It disappeared when she went to Grady and we never found out what happened to it.

Alpha tells Lydia to kill Henry and she obviously doesn't want to. She’s saved by the bell when walkers show up, keeping her from having to go through with it.

Alpha said to Lydia, "You weren't gone long. Maybe long enough." I think it was the “gone” that grabbed my attention. Beth is “just gone.” And it becomes an anti-parallel because Lydia wasn't gone long, but Beth has been.

I also liked that Lydia kind of stood up to her mother here. It wasn’t a massive stand or anything, but she said of her father, "Yeah, I know what happened to him, mother."

So maybe we could see that as a parallel to Beth finally standing up to Dawn after realizing what was really going on.

Beth: “You let this happen, you’re letting it happen.”

Connie and Daryl showed up to get them, wearing walker masks.

Then Henry refused to leave without Lydia saying, "I'm not leaving you. I won't."

Obviously a direct parallel to Beth saying the same thing to Daryl.

It’s actually another anti-parallel (action-wise anyway) because Beth said she wouldn't leave Daryl and then they separated. Obviously that was a mistake. Here, Henry said that and, at least so far, he and Lydia haven’t separated. We’ll have to wait and see if they do in coming episodes.

One last word about theme. We saw a lot of people trying to survive rather than to live. Rather than doing the right thing, they're doing the thing that helps them to survive, and obviously that's a mistake. This mindset usually ends in disaster and the characters are going to have to learn to live again, rather than just surviving. So, a theme we’ve seen before, but still worth mentioning.

Okay, did I cramp your brain enough for today? Thoughts?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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