#magdalai

OK, so the past few updates confirm a lot about Odin and his family that we already suspected, but also allude to other things we’ve been suspecting for a while.

TO RECAP WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW...

The decor and architecture of the Arrow family home practically scream luxury and excess à la French Renaissance; Merita uses titles to when she speaks to Crow and Raven on page 1976 and when she refers to Olai on page 1800; baby Odin is wearing a crown in his painting (page 1799). It’s safe to say the Arrows were/are nobility.

But then the fire nation attacked.

In the course of the cataclysm that destroyed their sun and the resulting devastation, the Arrow parents probably died. Odin always speaks about his parents in the past tense (never the present); that, coupled with the state of the Arrow home and the tyrannical family rule imposed by Olai, indicate that Mama and Papa Arrow are out of the picture.

Various bits of dialogue from Odin and his sisters already clued us into the fact that Odin is not well-loved by Crow, Raven, or Olai, and the fact that someone (probably Olai) has been using Odin’s portrait for target practice (pages 1791, 1792) takes this several steps further. Olai, Crow, and Raven hate him, and while we can’t be certain, they probably blame him for some combination of the cataclysm, their parent’s probable death, and Magpie’s disappearance. Odin, at least, clearly feels responsible for the safety of his planet’s people and his family, Magpie in particular, and implicitly acknowledges and accepts whatever is his siblings’ reasoning for their lack of faith in him (page 1447).

Of course, we can infer that Odin’s home life isn’t all doom and gloom, or at least it wasn’t always. For one thing, Odin seems to have been incredibly close to his mother; he talks about her fondly and she kept a painting of him in her study. Odin also seems to care deeply for Magpie (page 1445), who went missing two or three years ago (page 2196, page 2173).

We gain more insight into Magpie and Odin’s relationship from the note on page 1547 (a translation of which can be found here on the AD forum). That note is written in the same runic alphabet that we’ve seen Odin speak in and which spells out his name at the bottom of his portrait, and it looks like it was written on the same paper found in Odin’s journal.

If there’s any lingering confusion about who wrote that diary entry, I’d say these last couple of updates clear it up. Odin wrote it, and I’m betting that the ‘her’ he mentions is Magpie.

The glimpse we received of Odin post-cataclysm (page 2182) shows that his pupils are still black at that point in time, meaning Pedri was not yet with him. So we know that some time between the cataclysm and the beginning of the comic, Odin had a fatal experience.

We still don’t know exactly how Odin died, but we do have a few clues:

Michelle has told us that Odin is aquaphobic.

Then there’s this art Michelle has done of him.

We know the aliens’ ghosts can only attach to a life as it’s being born (as in Ava’s case) or if the newly-minted host is being “reborn” (as in Gil’s case when he survived a near-death experience).

All of this suggests that Odin drowned at some point after the cataclysm, and that he and Pedri ended up together after that. Whenever and however it happened, we can be sure Pedri didn’t die until at least 10 years (page 2178) after Wrathia, as we know he can’t have died shortly after Wrathia and had another host before Odin, because Wrathia said at the beginning of the comic (on page 144) that each rebirth lands the alien ghosts in an entirely new universe.

This, of course, begs the question: What the hell was Pedri doing all those years? For that matter, how much of that time does he even remember? Nevy and — albiet less obviously — Tuls (page 877) have both displayed memory loss, so we can’t be sure about how much Pedri remembers.

Meanwhile, we finally have it confirmed that the Arrow family uses stolen and modified Silent Scavenger technology, and that the Scavengers and TITAN are connected (page 2214), two things which have already been heavily hinted at.

And that relationship makes sense. The actions of the Scavengers do benefit TITAN in some ways. For one thing, the Scavengers inspire fear and wreak havoc, allowing TITAN to play the hero by swooping in and saving the day. Maybe TITAN even uses the populations which are displaced and the resources which are abandoned in the wake of Scavenger attacks to sustain his workforce and EMPIRE OF DOOM. TITAN could also use the Scavengers to get rid of undesirable populations. At the start of the comic, the Scavengers obliterate what is essentially the Ava’s Demon universe equivalent of an overcrowded school in a low-income neighborhood. Is it genocidal gentrification? Because that’s kind of what it seems like. Such a relationship also lines right up with the general dystopian, trust-no-one, nothing-is-as-it-seems vibe of Ava’s Demon.

And, speaking of that incident on Ava and Maggie’s schooling planet, I think Odin lied about how he knew it was about to be attacked. When he tells them on page 100 that his brother gave him a head’s up, his stutter disappears, which Michelle has told us means he’s lying. If Olai didn’t tell him, then how DID Odin know the scavengers were coming? Of course, that moment may have just been an editing oversight on Michelle’s part, but I am quickly becoming less and less inclined to think Michelle does anything by accident.

And speaking of Olai...we still don’t have an answer to perhaps the biggest question: Why did he send Odin to track down other hosts in the first place?

I think TITAN is holding Magpie hostage, possibly even possessing her (she has TITAN-blue pupils and is crying Georgina-from-Get-Out-(2017)-style on page 2198, speaking of which Magpie probably drew those creepy-as-fuck drawings on pages 1275, 1276, and 1277 from the goddamn sunken place), and is blackmailing Olai into rounding up Wrathia, Pedri, Tuls, Nevy, the other key hosts — and potentially even the egg — to ensure Magpie’s safe return home. Heck, maybe TITAN is also withholding support from the Arrows’ planet to increase the pressure on Olai to cooperate (page 2191).

- We need to talk, Odin.