.wilhelmine

SPOILERS FOR: Guilty Gear Xrd, Guilty Gear Strive

At the risk of sounding too nerdy, I have some predictions not just about Romeo (alias Bedman)'s current state of affairs after his death in Xrd and his young sister taking his place, but also for his potential return as his own character separate from the Bedman identity in either future Strive DLC or a post-Strive installment of Guilty Gear.

Based primarily on what I have been able to gather from Xrd and Strive's story modes, as well as the arcade mode for Happy Chaos in Strive, it is very strongly implied that Romeo is not in fact dead as it's presented on its face.

In his conversation with Axl, Romeo had mentioned that his sister was lost to the dream world long ago, meaning that she didn't even have so much as a physical body in the material world. In his final scene in Xrd Revelator we see his body straight up turn to stone and crumble to pieces. On its face, he would appear to be dead, right?

[COMICALLY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]

You would be wrong! In Guilty Gear Strive's arcade mode while playing as Happy Chaos, if you beat I-no on stage 7 without dropping a round, Happy Chaos discusses demi-humans and their ontological implications with I-no. In doing so, he offhandedly mentions Romeo. Specifically he says, and I quote:

"Did you know there was a guy named Bedman who managed to delete his own ID and became a multi-dimensional being?"

Entities in the Guilty Gear world who lack IDs (usually vampires or werewolves, i.e. demi-humans) exist in all parallel universes at once, and Romeo is a rare example of a multi-dimensional being who is (barring his unusual psychic powers) an ordinary human. While Happy Chaos does talk about him in past tense here, all other multidimensional beings we know of (e.g. Slayer, Nagoriyuki) are functionally immortal and I see no reason as to why Romeo would be an exception to this rule.

Now, what do I think happened? I figure that Romeo saved Delilah's life by switching places with her in the dream world, which as is confirmed in his conversation with Axl and his arcade mode in Xrd, is connected to the Backyard. Much like her, he lost his physical form and now exists as a disembodied consciousness who at most has remote control over his mechanised bed. It would also fit in with some of the lyrics in Bedman?'s Strive theme.

"Pitch black, pure white, all the same!" could be interpreted as meaning that where Romeo expected to find death, he found yet another dream. This is corroborated by how in Xrd his dreams are mostly represented as being a white void, as well as a common interpretation of death being nothing but empty darkness going on forever.

"But I can't find you with access to the back of my eyelids." implies that he still has some source of agency and isn't actually dead, but that he's in some kind of sleep, also tying into the idea that he's trapped in a dream with no body to wake up in rather than just full-on dead.

While the circle that's mentioned throughout the song can very clearly be referring to the cycle of death and rebirth known as saṃsāra, songs don't just have one intended meaning and the same symbolism can refer to multiple things at once. For example the circle could also be a way to refer to the physical world that Guilty Gear takes place in, in contrast to the Backyard which is a plane of abstract data. When he says he's on the border of the circle, it could in fact mean that he exists trapped in the Backyard, on the border of the physical world.

Now, how can he come back? If he's trapped in the Backyard, there are only really two people with the power to bring him back as of right now: Asuka R. Kreutz and The Original/Happy Chaos. Asuka would be able to as he's the one in possession of the Tome of Origin, which is the Backyard's physical manifestation in reality. He can glean all information from it, and thus if Romeo tried to call for help, Asuka could very plausibly find him. In addition, Asuka has made physical vessels for people in the past. He created Jack-O' Valentine as a vessel for Aria Hale's soul, and the planned Happy Chaos unit was a vessel to be made to house I-no's soul so she could live a normal life (though it was never finished). Nothing I know about Guilty Gear's lore precludes Asuka from making a physical vessel for Romeo's consciousness to inhabit to save him from the Backyard. As for now though, it seems Romeo's only connection to the physical world left is his old bed, where he silently watches over Delilah while he can say nothing to comfort her or reassure her that he's actually there.