TADC Theories

I think Goose had multiple possible endings planned and decided to go with the simplest ending to execute. There was still a bit of foreshadowing.

Caine ate Bubble.

Caine is god, and he glitched and turned cruel. I think it's similar to the cellar scene in episode 1 as well as Caine's crashout in episode 8

So that was foreshadowed.

I suspect that this means that Pomni and Jax were the closest to abstraction. The bowling bowl belonged to Ribbit, then Kaufmo, then Jax, and now probably Pomni. Kinger rejected the ball, so he didn't end up abstracting.

No idea what's up with the cake, but I think it's a reference to "The cake is a lie." I'll skip the meme history and just say that it's implying that there's no way out of the circus.

Jax's abstraction, obviously.

That's... a really good question. I looked back over episode 9 and I found this

The final sequence where he's wearing the bucket is during the human reveal scene.

The next scene he appears in is this one

Maybe the hat provides enough shade to make him sane?

The next is in the aquarium, where it's nice and dark. I don't have a problem with this.

The final 3d shot of him is without the bucket, so maybe he took it off of his own volition? I really have no idea if he's cured or not.

Combing through the animated scenes, it actually looks like Kinger either wears a hat most of the time or the adventures take place in the dark :O

Caine said that he was obsesses with the "macroverse" aka the real world during episode 7. He yearns to know more about the world that the humans came from

The internet contains all of that knowledge and more.

I made several posts about how Jax and Caine are very similar characters. They both torture the people around them because they're insecure of their perceived lack of power. They both end up dying as a consequence of their cruelty.

The difference between the two is that Caine chose to acknowledge his wrongs and try to make amends right away. In the face of everything Caine ever wanted, the ability to access the real world, he chose to stay in the circus and use the internet to "come clean" about the humans' identities and apologize.

Jax kept running until he hid a dead end. He's literally a monster of his own making.

Meanwhile, Caine fixed things and was given a second chance at life because of it.

YES! That was my main problem with Jax's backstory. Quite frankly Jax is the only person that demonstrates depth. Nobody else in this series does bad things except him.

I was really hoping it was something like "Jax tried to save Ribbit but she rejected his help, which led to both of them isolating." It was mentioned that people become unpleasant to be around when they're close to abstraction but...they aren't. Just Jax. It's always ONLY Jax.

When I saw the backstory, I could only think "Why was this pushed to the last episode? It doesn't tell us anything new about Jax."

We knew he was bullied. We knew he was an avoidant jerk. Hell, plenty of people figured he was trans. We didn't need a huge chunk of the precious finale to tell us these things.

IMO it's symbolism for his transness AND his love of Pomni.

For transness: Jax talked about his ears and tail being the pinnacle of masculinity...and then he had no tail. Presumably, the tail went away after Ribbit abstracted. Ribbit was the only person that found out Jax was trans, as far as he knew. He violently pushed himself back into the closet and pulled away from Ribbit, thus the tail disapeared.

For love: Jax had his tail with Ribbit. It's no secret that they had a romantically charged relationship. Ribbit was probably the first person that knew him so intimately outside of his family. The tail leaving him was a symbol of heartbreak and a symbol of him growing colder and more cruel.

The joke about his tail being a symbol of masculinity wasn't just about being trans; it was also him being able to make fun of his own masculinity to Pomni. We know Jax is DEEPLY insecure about his gender, so this is HUGE.

Pomni reminded him that he didn't have his tail. She made him acknowledge the person he became, essentially.

Ok, so literally what happened? We don't know. We have no idea how Jax lost his tail. Hell, even he was confused by it.

I think it was the mom thing.

It's a lot easier to accept that your mom was being unreasonable and manipulative when you're not distracted by "did I kill her?"

Leeroy was able to grasp that his mother's behavior was wrong and move on from what she said, whereas Jax internalized it.

No worries! I leave anon on for a reason.

Yeah, my best guess is that Leeroy found out that their mom actually did not die and that she was manipulating him to feel bad.

I guess my greater question is why Goose wrote our Jax as irredeemable and Leeroy as redeemable. It's more of a narrative question. Why did he never truly settle in the circus but was able to find a home and family IRL? What message is Goose trying to portray? Was Jax doomed from the moment that she entered the circus? Or was she just unlucky with the course of events?

It makes the message feel like that the circus was so unbelievably stressful for Jax and her mother's fate was constantly looming over her, she chose to never adopted a new family.

I see the paths as:

1.) Jax enters the circus-> Jax never finds out about her mom -> Because she never gets closure on her mom, she never accepts her identity-> She brings everyone down with her an ends up ending her own life

2.) Leeroy stays Leeroy->She finds out that her mom survived->she allowed herself to find a home with a friend-> She accepted her transness and is happier for it.

I guess my question/criticism is this: why make the choice that Jax's entire life trajectory is based on whether he finds out that his mom survived? What message is Goose trying to send? Was it really just "Jax got unlucky with entering the circus and she was always going to self destruct because she never found out about her mom."

I wish we got an explanation why and how why Leeroy's life went in a different direction than our Jax.

My assumption is that our Jax never accepted his queerness and Leeroy did, which is why he hangs out at an LGBT bar regularly.

But why? Why did our Jax never accept herself as a woman? And why did Leeroy?

The fact that Goose hasn't ever posted any drawings of the cast as humans makes me suspect that she probably wasn't thinking too hard about what they looked like prior to the last episode. I think she said in a post somewhere on social media that she picked the actors based on vibes.

Goose may be trans, but she does have some blind spots as a white woman when it comes to some choices on the show. I'm sure there were plenty indie VAs that were talented enough to voice the POC characters and there are definitely trans people that could have played Jax's part both in live action and as VAs.

They made some odd cinematic choices in the last episode, like Pomni's voiceover, Pomni breaking the 4th wall, Pomni seeing Jax's memories in first person, and then it changed back to third person during that conversation with Ribbit for a little bit, then back to first person.

Yeah, if feels like we have missing lore or some alternate timeline. From the beginning, we had some hints at Pomni abstracting, like the fact that she was obsessed with the exit like Kaufmo before his abstraction.

https://youtu.be/YFCPVgCNWoE?is=Zl8wgOFZwc7ZdEzF

I watched the whole video!

I did agree with most of it, but I thought some bits were nitpicky, like the humor being bad.

The biggest point that they touch on and I thoroughly agree with is the "theory bait." I can't emphasize enough that it's fine that my theories weren't true, but a lot of lore in the show was either never addressed or poorly addressed. Goose dangled so many interesting pieces of lore that had for seemingly no good narrative reason.

Some examples of this include the exit, the void, Ribbit, Caine causing the abstractions, and Dr. Football. It's fine that those things weren't what I expected them to be, but it was a poor writing choice to position so many plot points as being and important part of the lore and then barely touching on them later.

An example of Goose properly addressing a theory point in a way that I didn't expect but still welcomed was Abel. For YEARS, we speculated why the mannequin was wandering around the circus and spying on the cast. It turned out that it was Caine being envious of the cast and using Abel as a proxy for his own jealousy. It was especially interesting that Caine's overly enthusiastic temperament at the end of episode 7 was jarring and inappropriate after Jax slammed the button.

Subverting expectations was why I enjoyed this show much to begin with. NONE of us could have predicted what happened in each subsequent episode. That's why episode 9 was super weird. It was the most predictable ending ever. I guess Goose was trying to double-subvert expectations by swinging all the way back around to "too predictable" as the unpredictable ending.

Once the fandom slows down and people talk about the series less, I'll probably not post frequently.

Seeing that the merch ads are still dropping and Glitch is posting post-finale pics, there's technically still content being added to the fandom, even if it's not official.

Ohhh, that's tough.

I'd say episode 5. There was a lot of content in that episode, like the outfit changes, Zooble and Jax calling each other gay, Pomni and Jax bonding, Ribbit introduction, backstories, and character development through the introduction of the suggestion box adventures.

Episode 4 was a close second, though. Anyone who's worked with the public in any capacity probably related a little too hard.

I think it was a way to let us know why everyone moved on so fast from Kinger's reveal.

Surely the cast asked themselves the questions that we also asked, like why didn't anyone come looking for them? What happened to their bodies? Is there even a way out?

Even during episode 7, it seemed like everyone understood that the adventure could have been fake.

I WISH it was addressed in the show that these characters never talk to each other about the dark parts of the circus. It seems like they never discuss with each other ANY of the abstracted people after they're gone, what they actually are, and if there was even a way out. It's toxic as hell that nobody talks about these things and I hated that the show never addressed how messed up it was that everyone avoided talking about their dead friends as soon as the funeral was over.