#wall theory

Buck makes a comment about "Knocking this wall down" now that Eddie's house belongs to him. Except Eddie is on the opposite side of that wall, and his instant reaction is "Keep walking Buckley."

Buck wants to see what's right in front of him, but he can't knock down the wall without Eddie's agreement. And Eddie is leaving. Buck wants to see what's beyond the wall, wants to reach for Eddie, because he's already pulling away. Eddie refuses, commanding that they continue to ignore the feelings between the two of them.

Cut to, the end of s8. Eddie is home to stay, and he waits for Buck in the archway cutting through the wall. At first, he was in the hidden room, looking towards leaving for Chris. Now, he's in between the wall, not quite accepting anything specific, but choosing to look towards Buck.

Eddie fixes the picture on the wall before showing the house because it has to look perfect and present this front that he’s putting on, that he’s this put together guy that has everything figured out. Kinda like how he’s going back to Texas, to his family who has the same expectations about him. He’s putting himself in the box of “perfect man/son” that he thinks he has to be in, putting up a (literal) wall between his true self and he who thinks he needs to be.

Then Buck shows up. And tells Eddie he’s taking over the lease, and we get the sad puppy eyes and the “you really did that for me??” from Eddie.

And then Buck says “hey what do you think about knocking out this wall?”

Because Buck has recently started living more authentically, he discovered his bisexuality, he’s 2 seconds away from figuring out he’s in love with his best friend. He knocked down some walls in his own life, and now he’s gonna help Eddie knock down some walls in his (AKA Eddie’s gonna realize he’s gay for his best friend 🙂‍↕️)

Also don’t think about knocking down walls and what that means for this lol:

The walls aren’t in Switzerland, they’re on pages of a manga. :P

(They’re based on walls in Germany, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually in Germany, after all. When it comes to exactly where the manga/anime takes place, there are plenty of theories floating around. There are no definitive answers.)

As for Bern, Switzerland in particular: The buildings (especially the rooftops and scenery) do look a lot like the anime. My guess is they used pictures from there as references for the animation’s scenery/world, since the anime gets to flesh it out a little more than the manga.