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Oh My God It’s a Yellow Flower

I wouldn’t be too surprised if your first thought upon reading the title of this post was, “no shit, we’ve got Asgore and yellow flowers all over the place. That’s Undertale as hell.” I can’t deny that the reveal of the Omega Flowey attack in the trailer was what spurred me to put this post into writing instead of letting it remain in my mind.

It’s also very likely that Asriel may be coming back to town for the festival, and he’s a huge Undertale character that’s yet to appear.

However, whispers of Flowey are not the only reason why I think we may be returning to Undertale for Deltarune’s fifth chapter. So, let’s move on from this for now and talk about

The Festival!

As has been teased since the very beginning of Deltarune, Chapter 5 will contain the festival that’s coming to town! In addition to what we saw in the trailer, this GoNintendo article features an additional snapshot of Chapter 5, showing Kris, Susie, and Noelle walking around town.

As we can see, this street (and likely the entire town) has been taken over by confetti, flowers, and even some Nice Cream. I mean ice cream’s.

One semi-popular theory I’ve seen from multiple sources is that, while Chapter 5’s dark fountain will obviously contain Flower King, it’ll actually be a festival-themed dark fountain that takes over the entire town. Personally, I have always disagreed with this theory; I think that an entire-town dark fountain would be saved for Chapter 7, where we can use the opportunity to get in a last hurrah for every darkner we’ve met thus far, including difficult-to-reach ones like Tenna (if you give him over to Mettaton) or possibly Gerson.

That being said, the theory I’m presenting in this post is very similar. It’s a bit of a wild claim that I hope to support in the text below after getting the thesis out of the way. I think that Chapter 5 may contain dark fountains in multiple locations, of which Flower King is only one.

Here’s my vision for the chapter: Kris and Susie want to take advantage of the fact that everyone is out and about during the festival to continue their investigations into the bunker code. So, they plan for some breaking and entering into places like Asgore’s basement or the mayor’s office. (Alternatively, Kris and Susie could be tasked to, like, deliver flowers or something across town, taking them to multiple venues.) However, Team Roaring is taking advantage of the same thing, opening multiple dark fountains across town that the Fun Gang has to chase down and close one after the other.

From a gameplay perspective, I think this would allow for a really natural progression of events during the festival. There are multiple subplots that seem to be coming to a head here (mostly romantic, funnily enough), such as the Susie/Noelle/Berdly love triangle, Pizzapants and Blue Bunny’s catfishing arc, and Bratty and Catty’s rivalry. If we could intersperse these escalating scenes between different dark worlds, it would allow for more frequent check-ins while forcing the viewership of said scenes to happen in a particular order. Multiple dark fountains in one chapter would also allow the opportunity for other double doors spotted around town, such as Ice-E’s or the hospital, to become dark fountains before the end of the game. And having the last “normal chapter” feature more than one dark world could be a good way to ramp up the stakes while avoiding big-ticket items like heading to the shelter dark fountain.

From a game development/newsletter perspective, I feel like this would also perfectly explain why Toby has been so cagey about showing stuff from this chapter. It strikes me as somewhat odd that he’s been so secretive about what’s coming while also being incredibly upfront that this is a flower-themed chapter that’s almost certainly occurring in Asgore’s flower shop. If we’re in for multiple dark fountains this chapter, however, and Toby were trying to conceal the surprise, it would leave him both with a ton of stuff that he absolutely could not show us, as well as a limit on the number of viable Flower King designs that could be shown.

Lord of the Hammer and the Flower Man

As I started gearing up to write this post, I felt a flash of fear as I realized that this idea may have already been deconfirmed by either Gerson or the Chapter 5-related prophecy panels. However, looking back at it, I don’t believe this is the case.

What Gerson says doesn’t disprove this idea at all– in fact, it actually might support it. A “vast” garden could be contained in one dark world, sure, but it could also be a subtle clue that the range of this chapter will span farther than ever before, all across Hometown.

Meanwhile, the “Boss3” prophecy panel definitely implies that Asgore will be relevant to the chapter, but (in my opinion, at least) doesn’t bar the possibility that other non-Flower King dark worlds may be involved.

Speaking of this prophecy panel, however, I want to investigate what exactly “trapped in asylum” means. According to Merriam Webster, “asylum” can be defined in any of the five following ways: 

An inviolable place of refuge and protection giving shelter to criminals and debtors; sanctuary

A place of retreat and security; shelter

The protection or security afforded by an asylum; refuge

Protection from arrest and extradition given especially to political refugees by a nation or by an embassy or other agency enjoying freedom from what is required by law for most people

An institution providing care and protection to needy individuals, such as the infirm, destitute, or especially the mentally ill

In simplified terms, this means:

A place where criminals can hide/be protected

A place where you can hide and be safe

The protection provided by a place where you can be safe

Political or religious protection from things you could usually be arrested for

A place intended to help people struggling with poverty or poor mental or physical health

For Asgore, I think there are a couple of different ways this could play out. The definition involving “shelter” initially caught my eye because, well, it’s the shelter. That’s the official name given to what was colloquially called “the bunker” pre-Chapter 3+4; the mysterious building at the south end of town where Undyne’s being held captive.

If “trapped in asylum” means “trapped in the shelter,” we may be seeing Asgore get trapped in the shelter alongside Undyne. I can imagine a situation where Carol and the Knight decide that he’s too much of a liability as part of the team, and store him in the bunker so that he can’t mess up their plans. In that case, maybe the chapter could follow Kris and Susie’s efforts to find Asgore, encountering dark fountains along the way.

However, the option that I find more likely is that “trapped in asylum” is a fancy way of saying “trapped in security and comfort,” i.e. that Asgore is frozen in his desires to revert everything back to the way things used to be, and is blind to the harm that he’s causing in trying to pretend that everything is okay. That would put Asgore in a much more prominent role this chapter, which matches better with his role as a “boss” in the prophecy, as well as my overall vibe that this will be a big character development chapter for the former King of Monsters.

Running with that definition, my theory continues: the multiple dark fountains this chapter will all be opened by Asgore, possibly under Carol’s supervision, in an attempt to right history and put his life back on track. In this case, I think it’s very possible that the flower theming will continue throughout all of the dark fountains in this chapter, which would also explain the extreme focus on them in all of the chapter’s marketing. I’ll get back to my thoughts on the fountains’ theming in a moment, but for now, let’s get back to the meat of the argument.

So Where Does Undertale Come Into This?

This is another aspect that I think ties into the decision making sense from a game developer perspective. I’m gonna pull a pro theorist move and invoke the name that everyone cites when they’re trying to sound profound:

~W. D. Gaster~

So, like. We all agree that Gaster is gonna be mega important to Deltarune, right? If you’ve made it this far into this post, I imagine you also agree that Gaster is almost certainly the guy in the Goner Maker sequence, the guy who’s interstitially taken over the Deltarune twitter account, and the guy rambling about “My Deltarune” at the end of Chapter 4.

Most people also seem to agree that the Gaster that we’re being haunted by isn’t Deltarune’s version of Gaster (should he exist), but instead, Undertale’s version of Gaster. After all, he’s the one that fell into the CORE, shattering himself across time and space. If both of these things are true, that Gaster is both from Undertale and going to be important, then, at some point, shouldn’t the story tell us a little bit about what Undertale is?

One thing I’ve been increasingly impressed by throughout Deltarune is Toby’s foresight in leaving hints and explanations within Deltarune for future fans of the game who won’t have been plugged in to the UTDR social media landscape. Hypothetical players in 2066 probably won’t have seen the Twitter threads discovering the weird route, or the Reddit posts providing a step-by-step guide to find each of the eggs. Therefore, Toby has left stumble-in points that players can find by accident, get hooked, and then embark on the quest to unscramble the cryptic clues.

For instance, players who are simply good enough gamers will access the S-rank room in Chapter 3 and, if they explore around, they’ll encounter the Sword Route, which lowkey gives them instructions on how to execute the Weird Route. It might even land them in Knight fight territory if they beat ERAM and equip the Shadow Mantle. Similarly, the slow-moving spotlight that leads you on the Chapter 3 egg quest isn’t that difficult to encounter, and if you manage to decipher the instructions, the Egg Man will give you hints about every egg location in Chapters 1-5.

Though baffling to me, there are already Deltarune players who have not played Undertale, and possibly never will. Hence, if certain pieces of Undertale lore are actually story-critical, I expect that Deltarune will recap the important pieces for us in-text.

But, which pieces of lore are story-critical? Well, it depends. If “Gaster’s Deltarune” is intended to be a “good ending” or retelling of Undertale in any way, then it might be a lot. If Chara is the voice that discarded the vessel in Chapter 1, we might need Chara’s significance explained to us. If there are any relationships that Toby needs to have hit with their full weight, such as Ralsei’s parallels to Flowey or Alphys’ romance with Undyne, we might need those explained too.

We also know from Sans’ secret basement in Undertale that he has a photo of the Fun Gang— or, should I say, three people with the phrase “don’t forget” written next to them— as well as a mysterious device with instructions that may be written in wingdings. The phrase “Sans Undertale is actually Sans Deltarune” has been thrown around so often in the theory community that I think most people just take it as a given at this point. It’s a further connection to Undertale that may need a direct followup in order to make sense, and therefore, make exploring the skeleton brothers a priority in Deltarune’s main plot.

To be clear, I’m not saying that Deltarune is going to directly recap Undertale for us. I don’t expect nor want to wind up in a situation where Susie is straight up saying anything along the lines of, “so this human flipped the switch and turned the robot into… a different robot?” I think it could happen in a more subtle or artistic way, such as using flower symbolism, or using another fake story (like Lord of the Hammer) to draw parallels.

However, my main idea is that the multiple dark fountains would be used to focus upon the different areas and major characters of Undertale. Perhaps the dark world actually located in Flower King would focus on Asgore, Toriel, and Flowey/Asriel, while a dark world set in Ice-E’s would fill us in about Sans and Papyrus. For Undyne and Alphys, it could be… I don’t know, Undyne’s house, wherever that is? At any rate, I think that the Alphys and Undyne-related dark world could be the one that’s bringing all of the Japanese theming, and possibly the marsh as well. The various enemies in these sub-darkworlds could be very reminiscent of important Undertale characters, maybe even in a way that leaves the Fun Gang scratching their heads over a sense of deja vu.

Again, I think that this premise makes for a good thematic matchup with what we know is coming. Toby said in the newsletter that this was going to be one last fun, classic-style adventure before things truly start to get dark. The Fun Gang may be busy pretending that nothing is wrong, but they’ll still be needing something to do while focusing on their relationships and character arcs. Sprinkling in some lightweight lore for those who haven’t caught up on the Undertale text might be just what the chapter needs. And besides, what’s more fun than a romp down memory lane?

The timing might also match up well should Asriel be returning home at the end of this chapter. For a casual, Deltarune-only player, I don’t know how much they would even remember that Asriel exists. Reminding/teaching everyone of Asriel’s importance and personality right before his big entrance could be a great way to build up hype, and better put the player in Kris’ shoes when it comes to their emotional connection with him.

Further Multi-Dark World Thoughts

Y’know how Kris is alone in the Omega Flowey-like attack? That’s led some people to speculate about whether we’re witnessing another secret boss fight. Prior to the trailer, I had thought that Chapter 5 might be time for a Ralsei-only secret boss, since we’d already seen Kris with Spamton NEO and Susie with Gerson. However, if there are multiple dark worlds this chapter… what if we get a solo fight for all three members of the trio?

In this case, I don’t think these would be secret bosses, per se. I’m imagining a situation where each dark world ends in a miniboss fight of sorts, which culminates in fighting probably Asgore as The Big Boss at the end. The main reason why I make this distinction is that Seam, in Chapter 4, said that they only need two more shadow crystals in order to make whatever special item they’re planning for us. We already got one more shadow crystal from Gerson since that exchange, which means that there probably should only be one more to go. 

Although I don’t think we would get shadow crystals from any of these minibosses, I do think they could be used to fill out our repository of strong weapon and armor choices heading into the end times. Thus far, we’ve been able to obtain:

Chapter 1: either JEVILSTAIL (armor for anyone) or DEVILSKNIFE (weapon for Susie) Chapter 2: either DEALMAKER (armor for anyone) or PUPPETSCARF (weapon for Ralsei) Chapter 3: BLACKSHARD (weapon for Kris (or Noelle, apparently)) Chapter 4: JUSTICEAXE (weapon for Susie)

So, maybe each of these individual fights could give each character a them-specific armor item, since we haven’t had any of those so far? Or maybe Kris and Ralsei could get further weapon options, while Susie could get a third armor item to complete the trifecta for pacifists. (I kinda doubt that the BlackShard would be replaced as Kris’ best weapon with so little fanfare, though.) This would also be a good way to provide non-secret boss players with some good items in the main story so that they won’t be completely rolled by Titan-tier enemies moving forward.

But, if none of these minibosses are dropping the shadow crystal, then who is? Who’s the Chapter 5 secret boss?

Well, for me, these would actually be two different answers. I think that Asgore himself (as the main boss) might give us the final shadow crystal, as foreshadowed by him talking about the beautiful black shard in the optional Holiday mansion scene. I know that the shadow crystals and the black shard are two different things, but I think it’s reasonable that Asgore, if uninformed, could call the dark piece of glass in his pocket “a black shard.” And that’s not even accounting for the possibility that this interaction could be used to reveal that the two are the same or related items! Asgore possessing a shadow crystal would also be an excellent way to explain why his fight here would be much harder than it was in Undertale, despite the fact that, in that game, he was the King of Monsters, and in this game, he’s a failing flower salesman.

Returning to the idea of Toby creating paths to teach newbie players about secret mechanics in Deltarune, giving the player one unavoidable shadow crystal in the main story would be a great bridge to bring up the subject and lay a trail. Perhaps after defeating Asgore, players with no shadow crystals could go back to Seam, who would tell them, “oh wow, if only you had four more of these things, I could do something really cool. But to do that, you’d have to beat some of the strongest and most secretive darkners out there…”

If you have all five shadow crystals, then, well. I think that Seam might become the secret boss of Chapter 5.

This part of the theory was partially inspired by Goldpro’s videos on Predicting the Chapter 5 Secret Boss and speculating What the Shadow Crystals Make, which I highly recommend if you haven’t seen them! Goldpro never directly states that he thinks Seam will be a secret boss, but it was while watching his videos that I started to believe that they might anyways. If we’re looking for someone who could provide a purple soul fight, I think that Seam, as a purple-colored character themed around buttons and strings, would be a natural fit. Although Seam is likely the cat that will purify the crystals, their doomer attitude plus firsthand experience fighting and seeing the downfall of secret bosses like Jevil could lead to them withholding the PureCrystal out of fear or pessimism. Or, they might want to test the Fun Gang’s skills themself to further prove that they do have the skills required to take down the difficult enemies ahead. Plus, Seam has been closely intertwined with the shadow crystal quest the whole way through, and quite frankly, has insane secret boss energy, so the time may be right to put all of these cards on the table.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this is the vague roadmap for my proposed Chapter 5:

Town segment + opportunity to visit Castle Town

Meetup with Noelle; festival intro to reestablish Hometown subplots

Kris and Susie break off from Noelle to visit dark fountain #1: ??? location, Undyne and Alphys/Japanese theming, Susie solo fight

Town interstitial to progress subplots; no Castle Town

Dark fountain #2: Ice-E’s location, Sans and Papyrus/??? theming, Ralsei(?) solo fight

Town interstitial to climax subplots; no Castle Town

Dark fountain #3: Flower King(?) location, Dreemurr family/fantasy (beanstalk?) theming, Kris(?) solo fight

Town interstitial to show resolution/fallout of subplots; no Castle Town

Dark fountain #4: Hospital(???) location, More Asgore(?)/True Lab(???) theming, Asgore boss fight w/ shadow crystal

Festival is over; visit Castle Town for Seam secret boss

??? (Asriel comes home? Carol confrontation? The Roaring happens???)

As you can see, there are still a lot of details I’m not sure about. Apologies that the hospital sort of came out of nowhere; I couldn’t find a good place to bring it up elsewhere in the post. Given Asgore’s connection to Rudy, if anything is going to happen to Rudy this chapter (for example: him dying), it could make sense if it’s in a hospital dark world. It would really make the most sense, I think, if the final fight with Asgore happened in Flower King. But, if the Hospital IS a dark world, it probably has something to do with Rudy’s health, and therefore would almost certainly have to be the finale. So, you could also potentially swap the order of those two.

(I also think it’s possible that a hospital dark fountain could be a weird route exclusive. This would also create the opportunity tfor a zombie Berdly fight as a reminder of your past sins. I think it would be cool. In that case, I don’t know where the extra dark fountain would be in a normal playthrough— Mayor’s office? Asgore shadow crystal in fountain #3, Seam secret boss in the middle, and then Carol fight at the end???)

Thank you so much if you actually read this entire theory. To be honest, I’m not sure how much I believe it’ll actually be true myself. I think what I’ve laid out would be a really fun chapter to play, but the idea lacks solid evidence to back it up, and also admittedly feels really wish-fulfillment-y at times. I don’t want myself or anyone else to go into the chapter disappointed if we “only” get one dark world/theme.

I had formerly told myself that I was never going to write any Deltarune theories. The game and the community are so huge that I was worried that I’d get something wrong, or repeat something obvious that someone else had already said. But, in the excitement after the trailer dropped, I was so full of ideas and love for the game that I was simply compelled to write this post. Even if I’m completely off my rocker, I hope that that love and excitement was conveyed. And if I’m completely right… then, what can I say, I’m the smartest and best UTDR fan in the entire world :P (/j)