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Thank you for coming back and searching for me. And thank you for taking away my fear of tomorrow. I thank you too for being born so that I could love you.

Much like Puen and Talay shifting back to their original universe (ou) this week, the show made a clear design shift. Before the ep, I was eagerly awaiting red - so much Red - in the clothes, in the lighting, in the set and in the props...so I felt bereft when we didn't get it. It felt strange, as though this ep didn't seem to belong in the same 'world' that the series had set up over the past 10 eps...and of course it didn't!...because we weren't in the alternate universe (au) anymore...we're now back in the ou. Of course it would be different.

But I didn't realise this at first.

At first I didn't understand. I missed the look and feel of the show that I had gotten used to over the past ten weeks. I wanted the vibrancy of the multi-coloured palettes, the saturation of single colours throughout the scenes. I was sad the show had changed and I couldn't, at first, find reasoning to it. But then I did - I realised I was basically being made to feel how Talay and Puen (and probably Pakorn and Tess) must have been feeling to have left somewhere that they had gotten to know and love. Their bereftness was also my bereftness. My sadness that I didn't get all. the. red. was their sadness to leave the lives they had lived for two years.

And what a perfect way to emphasise this change from one thing to the next - the end of one thing and the beginning of the next - than Fuse's (maybe final, if we don't see him again) t-shirt, "SUNDAY". Incidentally, the colour attributed to Sunday in Thailand is also, yes, you guessed it, RED.

Despite it being the red episode, there was actually a lot of blue and yellow (see Aou above and Pakorn below for examples). I can reason blue could be because of Talay but the yellow I'm not so sure about (I come back to this later!). The very first shot of the ep is of Pakorn in the blue and yellow windbreaker...but in the ambulance Puen has changed to the other actor's top. Now, this could just be a continuity error...but it could also be very deliberate and I want to know why. (It could I suppose have been that before going into the ambulance they changed Puen out of his wet top and put him in the dry one of his co-star...but that doesn't seem like a likely scenario in an emergency):

But back to red...and the red we did get was small and subtle - one could say 'normal' amounts of a colour that we'd expect in our everyday lives. Perhaps to show that Puen and Talay are back to their 'normal' lives in their universe (albeit changed by Tess and Pakorn). @talaypuens wrote a fabulous post looking at this understated use of red, about how the red both represents Puen (in Thai, red = "daeng" - which sounds like how Talay kept drawing out the the name 'Dang' which he used for Tun in jest - and which can translate to being 'famous' or a 'celebrity'), and also as a symbol of things preventing Talay and Puen from getting to each other - literally as a 'stop sign'.

I loved Talay's time at the beach in particular, because we not only have the cryptic blue and yellow (of the fisherman's t-shirt and Talay's shirt) in the daytime but when Talay finally gets to the island at night, he's wearing a pastel red linin shirt. Maybe because on one hand he's closer to being with Puen again, but on the other hand the pink, along with the different blues of the sky, sea, and fisherman's t-shirt, and the slightly orangey-red of the boat, make up the 'Sea palette' that Puen named in ep 7.

The same colours which are in the painting beside Talay's bed as soon as he gets home:

I won't go through all the red instances (because @talaypuens did that in their post linked above)...but I'll just point out two which weren't included. First in the cinema, with Puen's pink beside Talay, the red behind...and Gyo in a blend of their colours beside him (red+blue=purple):

And earlier with Talay's friend group (miraculously accepting him back after a two-year estrangement). Just look at all that blue and yellow!

In their post, @talaypuens points out that there's a push and pull of the universe trying to get Talay and Puen together and this is shown in the the form of green vs red - the green "nature/set is organically telling them where they will eventually end up (the glass house), but the artificial inserts of red also is STOPPING them from letting it happen". And we see as the ep goes on that more and more of the screen is taken over by the green...which I realise now is made from mixing yellow and blue...so that could be the reason those colours are more prevalent in the beginning of the ep and less so after the green itself takes over. The above friend scene is one of the last ones with yellow in it, as is the greeny-yellow jacket of the interviewer in the following scene. Blue and yellow pop back again briefly in the cinema as Talay is rushing back to try to see Puen:

And then Talay and Puen finally meet at the glass house...which is full of green...but also both are wearing dark blue, and the fairy lights bringing in the yellow. Everything adds up to green. Everything is screaming GO. Finally.

But before we get the reunion, Talay reaches out to the pinky-red plant in the cage, perhaps representing Puen or their love (pink is them remember) but whilst they've been estranged from each other they are trapped, stunted, unable to grow and develop to their full potential. Or maybe the plant represents everything from the alternate universe and how it's shut away from them, unreachable, and potentially slowly dying...as memories do when they fade away...? @grapejuicegay also made some wonderful interpretations about this here: "Puen trapped back in this universe when Talay had to struggle to make his way back, Puen trapped behind the wall of fame that is keeping them from meeting".

And so we get to the end and this below, this was the only moment I felt we were back to the 'world' of Vice Versa. In Puen's bedroom, with the pink and blue feel of the lighting (along with that pop of golden light) that the past two eps have been leaning on so strongly. I felt a comfort, a familiarity, a sense of 'this is where we belong'...very much like Talay and Puen must be feeling to finally be back within each other's orbit, no?

And so for next week...I've done a lot of theorising already about the final ep colour and right now I don't think I could guess from the preview, so I'll just keep it to what I'd like it to be -> either a blue (for Talay) or a 'sea green' (to match the ocean blue) or silver (because of the moon reference we got in the preview), or even a violet/purple for @grapejuicegay 💜

These little easter eggs (the colour-wheel clock and artwork on the wall) might also be telling us that it's a light colour...or just giving us a red herring because the show has either purposefully left it blank or used two slightly different shades so as not to spoil it...we'll soon see!

'Transparent' has also been suggested (by @demichirua), which I like because Talay has been carrying a transparent bag this ep, but also because, as @grapejuicegay said: "the barriers between the universes are sort of clearing up for them" (if they do universe-hop again as the preview is leading us to believe).

Anyway, never trust a Thai trailer/preview...so I'm hoping they are just leading us on and that they won't actually switch universes again. There's a lot to suggest that they do universe-hop - Talay doesn't have his glasses on in one cafe scene (and in the bathroom and in bed), so it could be in the au, and sometimes Puen and Talay are wearing clothes more in the style of Pakorn and Tess...

But, there's a lot to suggest they also don't universe-hop - Talay has his glasses on even in scenes where their clothes look more like from the au (they could have just bought similar clothes in the ou because they've gotten used to them) and he also has his glasses on when he has the Friend Credits folder and when it looks like he meets Aou (who could be someone else in the ou like with Joe/Pramote -> @grapejuicegay here I go with my clown Dol agenda again because what if Dol makes it back and he looks like Aou in the original universe!). Remember, similar objects/locations exist in both universes...

— sue zhao

We set up key colors for each of the characters […] For example, Jaeyoung has yellow, red, and orange; those sort of warmer colors and lighting that are incorporated in the framing of his scenes and spaces. And on the other hand, for Sangwoo, he has cold and stiff colors like white, blue, and black in his framing and spaces. So like in Sangwoo’s room, blue light is constantly coming in through his window, and we included a white desk lamp for lighting design. As for Jaeyoung, in his studio he has a pink neon light and orange stand lamps.

When the two of them have some sort of emotional exchange and fall for each other, the other person’s colors and lights will permeate into their individual framings. For example, in episode 4, the moment that Jaeyoung sees Sangwoo with wet hair, there’s a slight blue light coming in from behind him. And on the other side, there’s an orange streetlamp light coming in through the window behind Sangwoo. And in the scene where they call each other in episode 6, Jaeyoung’s taking the call in a bar; there’s blue light that casts on his face. That bar space originally had red lighting, but our lighting director changed it all to blue. On the other hand, for Sangwoo, he’s next to his window with the streetlight, and orange light casts on his face.

Emotionally, the two of them are dyeing one another [with their own colors].

— Semantic Error director Kim Soojung, on using color/lighting in scenes in order to communicate character emotion (x)

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From Bessatsu Margaret December 2021

Aoki… will you date me again?