Hey, sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I am notoriously bad at actually checking my inbox. The short answer to your question is that it most likely is Esme. I mean it makes logical sense: she’s the only person in the series that he is shown having a stable, long term relationship with, by this point we know that she literally was the only person who tried to prevent the Baudelaire parents from murdering his parents, and he says this only a few days after he leaves Esme, so it would make sense for him to regret his decision at that point.
That being said, I don’t think it’s perfectly cut and dry, and I think that’s intentional. Much of that entire scene with Olaf and Kit and the Baudelaires is about unveiling a lot of surprising information about Olaf and basically changing the orphans’ perception of him entirely, and showing that they don’t actually know everything they thought they did about the man. I think it’s intentional that we don’t know for sure who Olaf is referring to when he talks about his true love, because it shows that we so rarely do know everything about a person and we are so often surprised by them.
It could be Kit, possibly. I mean he does clearly care about her an awful lot, literally continuing to live and not letting the mushrooms kill him solely for the purpose of helping her to safety. I mean the change he experiences in that moment is monumental, and he never showed that level of caring about anyone else in the series, including Esme. There’s also reason to doubt that it is Esme because of the place he puts his true love in the list of things he’s lost: his parents, his henchfolk, the money, the boat – all these things he lost sequentially, but he puts his true love as being lost before his henchfolk, and he left Esme after his henchfolk, so unless I’m reading too much into the order in which he lists things, he either chose to list Esme out of order for a reason that I do not know (although knowing Handler there’s a reason for almost everything he does) or he’s referring to someone else that he lost before the henchmen, meaning it could be Kit, or Georgina, or really anyone for that matter.
This is one of those things that I struggle to be objective about, because I am very pro Olaf/Kit relationship and I think that Olaf is the father of Kit’s baby, and over all I’m much more sympathetic to Olaf than I think I ought to be (NPH playing him in the tv series really doesn’t help with that problem), so it could be that I am looking far too much into this, but ultimately I think that confusion and self-doubting and second-guessing is what Handler wanted us to do with that little tidbit he threw in. It was supposed to surprise us and be inconclusive and I think to say definitively that it was Esme would be incorrect and presumptive, and to say that it is definitively Kit would be the same. The point of that line, from my interpretation is that, just like Olaf says a couple lines down, “You don’t know anything”. Because at that point, both we and the Baudelaire children realize that we really don’t know anything about Count Olaf, and the world rarely ever has simple cut and dry answers, so we likely will never know who Olaf’s true love really was.
not just public cemeteries, but eating the fallen CCG Investigators too!
This really highlights Urie’s feelings over Shirazu’s death
ALL of the CCG have been mourning empty graves.
this whole time, Akira and Amon have most likely been talking to Mado’s empty grave.
Honestly, I feel like THIS over everything is what is gonna turn the CCG towards changing the way of the world rather than an empty promise of an alliance with ghouls. Not being able to mourn their loved ones properly is something they can sympathise with ghouls over.
this scene broke my heart…. the emptiness in their eyes, the way they’re unfocused and cross eyed…..
even though Koma and Irimi are husks of themselves, being turned into living quinques… yet they’re still exchanging banter as if you’ve pulled the string on an old talking doll that’s glitching and repeating itself. Irimi chastising Koma as per usual, Koma wanting to get coffee, expressing that same desire as Irimi back in the Anteiku Raid
to have one last taste of Anteiku
they really did follow Yoshimura to the end
*LIES ON FLOOR*
Ooh I like this idea of a doll repeating itself, because it fits so well to what thing used to control them means. Spieldose means music box in German.
I think there are versions of music boxes where you just have to turn the handle/key, and it will then play a song automatically that has been put into the music box.
So Koma`s and Irimi`s bodies are like creepy music boxes. Kaiko turned the “gear” which activated the inner “mechanism”, and like the song that plays automatically, Koma and Irimi move and speak in a predetermined, automatic fashion, possibly repeating things that they have already said, like the music box following it`s music sheet.
That’s so cool! They really are like music boxes then- wind the handle and watch the ballerina twirl and dance on it’s own
nah it seems that we really were meant to take Miza saying “let him sleep” at face value!
I’m not sure that Eto was ever dead either. V clearly picked her up in Cochlea and have been keeping her since. They have Nico who can heal so its possible he kept her going when she was meant to die
When Amon attacked Donato, Owl lost power telling us it was Donato remote controlling Eto via the Cross in her neck
after Donato died, the Cross melted away and she regenerated
So rather than remote controlling her entire body like Koma and Irimi, they had cut off her head to remove her own conscious thought. In it’s place was the kagune cross doing the “thinking” for Owl via Donato and preventing her regenerating. Once that was gone “POP”. If Eto were truly dead there probably wouldn’t have been a need to remove her head ya know?
So yeah, I think there are a few distinctions between whats happening with these characters being “””resurrected””
Due to the aftermath of Dragon, there are 8 more oviducts that have made their way across Tokyo. In order for each oviduct to remain in a functional state however, it has to have a nucleus host inside to keep it active as a sort of symbiotic battery. As seen with Kaneki, the host is presumably given a surplus of RC cells which in return keep them alive longer and reverse their telomere to halt or reverse aging effects.
Similar to Kaneki’s relationship with Dragon, there are likely other people inside of the oviducts that are spread throughout the wards as well to keep them stable for an indefinite interval of time as Kimi stated earlier.
Thanks to this, it’s been speculated that a few characters will be revived in a zombie fashion during this final arc of :re to haunt and judge many of the current cast members so they can grow away from their past and make better decisions in the future. This also correlates with the themes of the 20th tarot card in the Major Arcana, Judgement.
“The Judgement card suggests that you have had a recent epiphany or an ‘awakening’ where you have come to a realization that you need to live your life in a different way and you need to be true to yourself and your needs. You have opened yourself up to a new possibility – to lead a fulfilling life that serves your higher needs and that offers inspiration and hope to others. You feel as though you have had a ‘calling’ in life, and you are getting much closer to the point where you need to take action. Something that was lying dormant within you, some unconscious knowledge or truth is finally being awakened and brought into the light.”
The character I’ll be discussing though is of course, Karren/Kanae Von Rosewald, whom we know died earlier on in the manga. The relationship between her serving Mirumo and Tsukiyama Family subtly foils that of Kaneki and his Aunt.
Instead of being welcomed into her new surrogate family at the Tsukiyama’s and shown proper empathy for her loss, she lived under the identity of a male in accordance to her father’s wishes for a heir to carry on the family line since he brothers died protecting her. Thus she sealed off her identity, relinquished her agency to become a servant, and couldn’t embrace who she truly was in her newfound household despite simply wanting to be loved and praised.
While it’s not painted in the same light, this is identical in nature to the time Kaneki started living with his Aunt but couldn’t be himself since she would verbally abuse him to the point where there was no comfort to him living there, and he ended up feeling lonelier than ever when he only wanted to be in a family that accepted him.
The foil between Karren and Urie is prevalent here since the two lost relatives and were moved to new families, Tsukiyama’s for Karren, and the Quinx for Urie, and embraced their professions instead of speaking up about their true feelings.
This is something Karren successfully tore away from towards the end of her arc when she broke free of the stitching that bound her lips and symbolically regained her agency during the dying moments where she pronounced her love for Shuu while saving him so he could live on, and was accepted for who she truly was.
Whereas Urie sadly still struggles to abandon his work ethic at the CCG which comes into conflict with him being able to properly speak up and express his emotions and thoughts to Mutsuki. Because of this he has yet to properly support him and discover each other’s pasts, which gets in the way of them growing closer to one another and forming a relationship.
Instead of Shuu living on for the sake of the Tsukiyama Family like Karren had died to achieve however, he is abruptly saved by Touka and Yomo, and greets his father who actually broke out of prison to survive the the raid so he could see Shuu. As a result he treats everything that happened as water under the bridge and goes back to following Kaneki once more while completely avoiding confronting him about everything that took place.
After flying from the Lunatic Eclipse Building with her body perfectly intact, she was likely scooped up by the CCG to be made into a quinque. Around that same time period though, Aogiri swooped in and attacked the CCG transport trucks that were also holding onto the deceased Shirazu and countless other bodies.
Since we know his body was moved to Kanou’s lab for experimentation, it’s entirely possible that her body was also taken in the process as well and is likely being used as a host to keep one of the eight oviducts functioning currently.
With that out of the way, guess who made his reappearance in this final arc after being missing since the earlier half of :re during his prime relevance? Mirumo.
So to make a wild prediction for how her revival sequence will play out.. Karren will lash out and kill Mirumo in the process of the fight since father figures and mentors typically die for their sons or other characters to grow in their absence, which will then result in Shuu being forced to put her to rest.
In the aftermath Shuu will replace him and adopt the mantle as the head of the Tsukiyama family since he previously resolved to live on for their sake during the climax of the Rose arc, and also mourn Karren’s death and erect something to remember her by in return.
This will lead him to grow away from viewing Kaneki as a master whom he has to serve and dedicate himself to as his sword, but more along the lines of a friend and ally. He also needs to confront him about being responsible for the death of Karren as well as his family associates since he was an active member of the Tsukiyama Family Extermination, and never said sorry or made proper amends for what transpired.
Something else worth mentioning is, during the middle of the Rose arc after Kanae clashes with Urie, she states “That damn triangle eyed bastard… next time I meet him… I’ll kill him… for sure!” but never faces him again after that instance because of her death.
So perhaps Urie will be present alongside Shuu to aid him against a revived Karren, since he as well lost a family member that he promised to honor but forgot about after the events of said arc. This will hopefully allow him to take ques from her, and develop the ability to express his feelings properly.
Her brothers Nathanael and Arunolt, who died while defending her during their escape from the CCG’s grasp bear an uncanny resemblance to both Urie and Shuu, two characters who can be coded as knights symbolically in the manga. This is ironic since in fairy tales, knights are typically sent on quests to slay the dragon so they can unite with the princess, and the two of them will have their own personal “dragons” to defeat later this arc.
Credits to @hamliet for pointing this bit out, but another nice detail worth bringing up is that Karren’s mask after being “Noro’d” via Eto’s Kagune, shares resemblance to Dragon.
Well considering everything we’ve learned about zombie quinques today I would not be shocked at all and I’m gonna cry.
If the Real Ciel Mastermind Theory turns out to be canon and if Ciel intentionally planned for his parents to be killed on their birthday, it makes the situation even more sinister to think that Ciel might have considered it as sort of a ‘birthday present’ to OC in that he’d be getting rid of the people (his parents, etc) who were standing in the way of them “always being together.”
Sen: It was a tight battle for that number one spot but you’ve all voted for your beloved minor characters and now the results are under this cut. Our sincerest apologies for the lateness of the results. Thank you everyone who voted for this and boosted this!
midnight-in-town 