#dont understand

Q1. Rayla is stubborn, self sacrificial, and a little bit stupid, which, when combined with her low self esteem and sense of honour, makes for a dangerous combination indeed. The reason she leaves in the first place is to protect Callum:

We make sacrifices so that the ones we love don’t have to. It’s part of protecting them—part of protecting you. Taking on hard choices and going to dark places is an act of love. It’s a gift. So, please let me give you this gift, Callum. Stay safe, and stay in the light. Don’t follow me, and don’t look for me. I don’t think you’ll find me, anyway.

We know at this point that she can't have fulfilled her goal of killing Viren, so if he's still at large, why is she back at all? Rayla's doesn't seem the type to come back empty handed, and she has to know that this wrecked him. She, essentially, left him a break up text on his birthday, and as much as we joke that they're ridiculous teenagers, he jumped off a mountain after her in 3x09 because he was going to save her or he was willing to die trying.

This is a love for the ages, and after her parents "ran away" and her need to "pay the price that they should have", it doesn't feel right that she would come back empty handed. She has, in the past, abandoned missions, but only at Callum's behest.

She doesn't have Callum this time. Callum is, rather consistently, the only person who breaks her cycles, and it would take one hell of a therapist to help her realise that she has the power to break them on her own. But to come to that conclusion by herself? Off screen? Without intervention from the people she loves most when this behaviour has been her way of life since birth? Seems fake.

Q2. It's only a 9 episode season and boy do they have some ground to cover. This theory banks a lot on the Cube Hostage Exchange Theory (CHET) (@raayllum, 2020) bc it feels like that's where things are going. In a nut shell:

Callum has a cube called the Key of Aaravos that was literally found in a box of keys

Aaravos is the obvious big bad and needs to be released

Callum known to abandon his own morals in the past if it means saving Rayla

@raayllum has this pretty much covered and there are too many allusions to something like this for it to be nothing. They're too deliberate. Too consistent. Rayla keeps running into danger and Callum keeps running after her, and CHET would be the thing to break her out of that cycle.

Rayla left at the end of TTM and is running headfirst towards Aaravos

Callum hands over the cube and the fate of the world in exchange for Rayla's safety

Again, 9 episodes. Doesn't feel like a lot of time. Rayla's absence has to be felt. They need to explain where she's been. If she comes back, she has to be back for long enough for her presence to be felt, because for CHET to work, Callum has to lose her again—and as if he could let that happen after he's already lost her once.

How do you fit that into 9 episodes? How do you make her absence, and then her presence, and then her absence again feel meaningful in so little time? Other stuff has to be happening too, how do you fit it all in?

I'm certainly not saying they can't—I'm wondering how.

The answer to both Q1 and Q2?

Aaravos.

The Temptation Theory (Me, 2022) posits that Aaravos has been observing Callum through the mirror for the 2 years he's had it, so he knows that Callum has his cube. Callum also has a picture of Rayla over his desk, and I imagine he's had plenty of breakdowns in his office, so Aaravos would know of his broken heart too. Furthermore, Aaravos is a Startouch elf, and he seems to be able to divine enough to know when things are coming and what's happening in the outside world.

Callum has been known to vehemently reject dark magic—except for the one time he did it to rescue Rayla. He's a primal mage now, so he has no need for it, and yet we have this:

Why? What's changed? What's got him desperate enough to perform magic he's so morally against?

Once again, the answer is Aaravos, the bringer of magic to humans, a prisoner who knows that Callum has his key. How does he convince Callum to bring it to him?

By offering him the chance to find the thing that matters most: Rayla.

And of course, Callum doesn't believe him. Callum's not tempted by his offers of power, unless it's power to protect the people he loves—or perhaps to find someone he's lost. And Callum needs to have this interaction with him BC CHET hits hardest when he knows the world is at stake, but he chooses Rayla anyway.

See also:

In most circumstances, the cube only glows when it's directly adjacent to something of a primal source, unless there's a particularly strong source of power nearby, a la the Moon Nexus. Here, there's no Star thing in sight. It can be argued that it's reacting to Stella being nearby, but Stella's nowhere to be seen either.

What you can see is the mirror.

TLDR, the Rayla in Callum's office is a vision used by Aaravos to gain his trust and as this season's Call to Adventure. Callum's stayed in Katolis this long, why leave now? Because he has a lead—a lead in the form of Aaravos: We can Help each other. Bring me the key and I will help you find the love of your life. It may or may not be with the use of dark magic.

And of course, Callum hesitates bc he has no reason to trust Aaravos, and he doesn't do dark magic, Thank You Very Much, but he's done dumber things for Rayla before. This is the first solid lead he's had in years. He dons his scarf. He goes out on his adventure. He finds her swords abandoned, and she would never willingly be separated from them so he must be too late, and something terrible must have happened.

But he's come this far. It's just a question of how much further he's willing to go.