Bethyl

You know you’re fucking starved for new content when you get emotional over a back and a braid jfc. Even so…

Okay guys, this isn’t even going to be a details post, which is what I usually do on Tuesday. Today, I just wanted to geek out about all the Beth/TF stuff I saw swirling around the episode last night. This won’t even all be from the episode itself.

***Once again, spoilers abound from 9x05. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

“You need to wake up.”

They repeated this often and that’s important. Even though we didn’t hear this around Beth, we did around Denise. This is an edit I made during S6. Remember this? And of course Denise is directly linked to Beth.

“What’s your wound?” Part 1:

So, it was Beth that was in the field of bodies near Maggie and Daryl. She was also one of the few close-ups and the only main “dead” character to get a close-up before Sasha gave her speech. Interestingly, the following close-up is of Maggie in her 7x16 flashback look. In 7x16, the music box scene with Maggie appeared four times throughout the episode. It still stands out to me as a TDer. @bethgreenewarriorprincess​ also noticed that she has blood on her right arm, which correlates to the flash. Her comment reminded me of Beth’s Terminus poster:

(If you would like to read more about the flash, please go to this tag: x.)

LOL. I decided to make this its own post because it’s probably going to be kind of long (for an Ask, anyway). The answer is that you really can’t. They’re not posted anywhere. Just discussions we were all geeking out about in our group one day.

I’m kinda sorry I mentioned this because I be getting all kinds of questions about it. I’m really not trying to tease you guys. I swear, LOL. It’s just that my excitement for this tends to filter through and I spill out little mentions of it in my posts.

But all I’m happy to let you guys know what we’re discussing in our group, so long as you understand that it’s just conjecture. We’re super excited about it, but we’re also operating on one very large assumption. If that assumption turns out to be untrue, this entire theory will be null and void. So just keep that in mind.

This really has more to do with the official AMC synopsis than actual spoilers, but I’m gonna put the rest below a Read More anyway. Just so no one gets mad at me for talking about stuff that hasn’t happened on the show yet. So, if you want to know why were excited about synopsis of 9x07, even though it’s really just our own conjecture and head canons, click the read more.

10/29/2017 (x).

So I’m going through my old messages, and @what-lies-ahead sent this to me back in November. It’s interesting that one of the main producers referenced the Bring Beth Back petition and Beth fans’ ardor. In no official capacity has AMC addressed the Bring Beth Back petition and Team Delusional, let alone our many questions including what happened to all of the missing footage and what happened to Beth’s body. They hear everything, and they keep reminding people of Beth, even though they haven’t capitalized on it. The “If Daryl dies, we riot,” mantra became official merch a long time ago. There’s barely any Beth merch. Emily keeps Beth in the present tense in her social media handles, even though she could use the space to advertise her new band or movie. These are the seeds that are being thrown out to keep Beth alive in a subconscious sense, prepping people her return.

I’m going to quote one of my favorite movies, Paul. (It’s about two classic nerds who help an alien named Paul escape from the government and reach his people’s ship.) I feel it’s appropriate to the Beth situation:

“Clive: He looks too obvious. Paul: There’s a reason for that, Clive! Over the last 60 years, the human race has been drip fed images of my face, on lunch boxes, and t-shirts and shit. In case our species do meet, you don’t have a fuckin’ spaz attack!”

Yes, that is weird, and grief takes a long time. Daryl lost the love of his life, and he didn’t even get to give her a funeral. Of course he’s still mourning, especially since he’s mired in trauma related to Beth (like Denise’s death). That stuff takes times, and Daryl isn’t the best with dealing with his emotions, so it’ll take longer for him to work through all of that stuff anyway.

It’s been several months since Coda. TPTB confirmed that some time passed between 5x01 and its after credit scene:

It confirms the theory that Morgan’s codas were flash forwards in time, evident by the greenery that surrounded the No Sanctuary sign in his first coda and then the music magazines being worn and faded in his second. Morgan didn’t arrive at Alexandria until the end of 5x16, meaning that 5b was over an extended period of time. There were full moons in 5x11, 5x12, and 5x13, and three weeks passed between 5x08 and 5x10. That’s about three months of time right there, fitting with AMC’s statement about Morgan in 5x01.

 Season 6 was probably about twoish. 6a took place over a period of about two weeks and then there was a month-long time jump between 6x09 and 6x10 (as confirmed by Abraham in 6x11). A few days then passed between 6x12 and 6x15, I believe. Season 7 took place over 19 days, as Gimple confirmed. (This is also evident that Maggie was about two months pregnant in 6b and by 7x05 her baby was significantly larger, while her stomach was still pretty flat.) And going by this article here, Hardwick confirmed that only about a week passed in season 8 on 8x15′s Talking Dead (X).

Timeline:

Season 5: ~ 3 months

Season 6: ~ 2 months

Season 7: ~ 19 days

Season 8: ~ 1 week

While writing out this timeline, I noticed that the passage of time in each season is getting smaller. It’s like a countdown – back to 0. @bethgreenewarriorprincess​ theorized long ago that Beth might return around the 7-8 month mark since Coda, to parallel the time jump between seasons 2 and 3, when Andrea was missing from the group. And Beth has long been established as the symbolical “time keeper” of the group with her 30 days sign and her journal. Well, there was also a time jump of 7-8 months between seasons 3 and 4. And in 401 Beth “reset” time with her boyfriend’s death. It will be reversed when time is reset with a life. And of course, 6x02 had a timer. This was episode that had the anti-parallel to Coda, with Jessie killing the female Wolf with a pair of scissors. 

The group has been “on borrowed time” so to speak, and once they ran out, Beth has to come back. Season 9 might be our season, as time is almost up.

Good morning! One thing I was asked to post about is an update on the music box. I’ve thought a lot about it since S8 ended. You’d think I would be somewhat depressed or hopeless about it, but actually, I’m more hopeful than ever.

I know there are certain people, mostly haters and skeptics, who get annoyed when our theories change to match the show, but the fact is that as time goes on, we learn more about where the plot is going, and our theories change naturally. It’s only logical that they would. We’ve been wrong many times about when Beth will appear, but looking at the whole, we can see the structure better than ever before.

Let’s talk about the 4-season structure (S4-S8). When Gimple took over in S4, he set the show up for a whole new chapter, as was emphasized in the S4 trailer. He knew a 4-season arc starting with Rick as a farmer and non-leader in order to save Carl. Gimple knew he would move through Rick becoming brutal, having his ups and downs, and Carl would die. The whole point (as far as Rick’s arc goes) was that Carl’s death led to him showing Negan mercy, rather than killing him. It’s what brought Rick full circle and out of his brutality mindset.

Now we come to Beth. 

“you honor the dead by going on.            even when you’re scared. you live because                   they don’t get to.”