#TeamDelusional Account, Beth Greene is coming! Daycare worker by day and fulltime TWD Fangirl by night! This is a place for all my thoughts/feelings about TWD, with a heavy emphasis on Beth's return. To learn more, click on my Theory and Edit Index below to get started. I recommend starting with the Basics! Theory and Edit Index
Doing a quick re-watch of 510 made me once again stop and look at the blond walker in the trunk.
I’m sure it’s been mentioned before, but the walker has ballet slippers next to her feet.
Linking to the post pictured below that I did so long ago on the Seahorse sounds studio and Emily’s song Fifteenth Minutes.
Also, this post related to Emily’s song fifteen minutes.
The very next thing we see after this shot with the blonde ballerina walker and Maggie & Glenn is this…
A grasshopper skin. A grasshoppers sculpture aka shed skin.
After the grasshopper, we see Daryl fall to his knees when he finds a dead deer.
Years ago, @twdmusicboxmystery posted about how there is a pattern in TWD, and that pattern is that when a deer died a human lives.
A human lives = deer dies, a human dies = deer lives.
I noticed this pattern in quite a few other shows as well. This confirmed it for me, and i personally attribute it to a blood covering like the sacrifice of Jesus.
So this dead deer that’s shown, right after the grasshopper, which is super significant to Beth X.
As well as the Ballerina blond Seahorse sound studio walker is proof Beth’s alive.
To me, the heart of this symbolism is the biblical symbolism for deer, which represents God taking care of his children.
It’s a blood covering or protection from God, you could say.
When someone is protected or covered by God, the deer dies in their place.
This is symbolic of Jesus and his blood sacrifice covering.
In parts one and two of this series, I have gone through Daryl’s character evolution during his time with Beth, and in the wake of her absence, via the changing color and quality of his arrows. So far, I’ve looked at how his arrows have evolved from green/white (Beth arrows) to faded red/white (“inverted” Beth arrows), and when I left off my previous post, he had just had his crossbow stolen by Dwight, leaving him in a major period of limbo and with his faith in the goodness of people and his spiritual connection to Beth and her protective force in his life greatly diminished.
This post was originally supposed to cover much more information; however, there is more to cover here than I realized!! Thank you for your patience.
“The Next World”: Eclipse
In 6.10 “The Next World,” Daryl is notably without his crossbow. Losing the crossbow for Daryl is a bit like losing a limb. From the audience perspective, we have a hard time envisioning him without it. That said, do keep in mind that in the current moment, Daryl is also WITHOUT his crossbow (in France). I will get to this, but to do that, we need to look at what happens, and what it means when Daryl DOESN’T have his arrows, particularly when they’ve been taken from him.
In “The Next World,” Daryl’s first major episode post-“Always Accountable,” we begin to see many important changes in Daryl and, perhaps most significantly, how Daryl will soon serve as a mirror for Rick, who is on a dark course, albeit completely unaware. It’s notable that in “The Next World,” Daryl and Rick are frequently placed parallel to one another in the shot, re: the shot above, and these below:
These shots communicate a sort of “eclipse.” Daryl and Rick are dynamically opposed to one another quite often post-“Coda.” Up until now, Daryl has been an attenuating force for Rick, but not anymore. Now, he’s right on Rick’s level. He holds little trust in strangers and seems disinterested in looking for new people to bring back to ASZ, a direct reversal of his attitude in “Conquer” and “Always Accountable.” For us, as we were with him during the events of “Always Accountable,” this change may not come as a surprise, but for Rick, who hasn’t been out on the road with Daryl for a while, the change is new, and it seems to stop him in his tracks.
It’s funny, and this is excellent characterization, because Rick is perhaps not able to see how he, himself, has changed, until he begins to see the same change manifesting in his lonely and recently distant best friend. Especially as Rick gets closer to consummating his relationship with Michonne, he notices Daryl distancing himself even more completely, and in “The Next World,” we can see how he’s trying to correct that. He wants Daryl to be how he used to be, and he wants them to be like they were.
“The Next World”: Beth Proxies
Daryl’s motivations in the episode are mostly on auto-pilot, in terms of how they relate to Rick’s. The one thing that does seem to motivate him personally has nothing to do with Rick. It’s an errand for Denise.
“The Next World,” much like “Still,” begins with a quest. Denise asks Daryl if, while he’s on his run, he could keep his eye out for a drink: orange soda. The soda is for Tara. Denise becomes flustered when asking Daryl for help, and Daryl plays it down comically. This little moment between them, and how she regards him with embarrassment, and the fact that she asks him specifically, even though she is clearly nervous about it, and how he meets her babbling concern with a kind of casual confusion, communicates the beginning of their little bond, a bond that will prove very meaningful for Daryl in episodes to come, and which provides some small amount of purpose for him that day.
Denise, with whom Daryl shares a special friendship in season 6, serves as our next Beth proxy. The one thing about Denise that is extremely pertinent given Daryl’s current circumstances in France is the way in which tptb use characterizing factors to defuse any romantic inclination from the relationship. Denise is a lesbian, in a relationship with Tara. In a similar dynamic, Isabelle, Daryl’s Beth proxy in France, is a nun. Both women are unavailable to Daryl and this neuters romantic potential in the eyes of the audience (or, I mean, it’s supposed to) and foils the fact that Beth, who was neither a lesbian nor a nun and who was perhaps the most romantically available female on the show at the time, was his first and perhaps only romantic interest of ANY significance. And after she’s gone, every single meaningful relationship he has (barring Connie, who I’ll talk about later, and who holds other parallels to Beth) is a blond woman with a ponytail. Weird!
Of course, Jesus is another major Beth proxy who shows up in “The Next World.” Aside from his name, when we first meet Jesus, he is wearing a face mask, in a moment that will later be echoed by Daryl’s jarring encounter with a very blond Leah in “Rendition.”
I will discuss more on these Beth proxies in the future, but for now, let’s finish discussing “The Next World.”
“The Next World”: Confrontation
In some ways, the title of this episode “The Next World” is indicative of a major change taking place. Dialogue with Jesus implies that they already live in “the next world,” ie: they have already descended into unknown territory, they just don’t know it. Jesus also serves as the catalyst of much of the plot to come.
In this episode, the main tension between Daryl and Rick, who are constantly paralleled visually with one another, revolves around Daryl’s recent, growing indifference toward human life, and Rick’s rapid noticing of such and desire to correct it. In this episode, we see some major development with Rick and his sense of self-awareness as he begins to realize that perhaps he hasn’t been there for Daryl as much as he should have, and in this, Daryl has begun to slip from his grasp. It’s possible Rick has only just now begun to realize how much damage Beth’s loss has caused for Daryl, and also how much his actions actually affect those around him, particularly Daryl, his second in command, who codes strongly as his younger brother, and for whom Rick was once arguably a role model.
Just after the climax of the episode, while Rick and Daryl watch their bounty sink to the bottom of the river, Jesus lie unconscious in the grass, and Daryl is prepared to just leave him there for walker bait. But Rick challenges him. Daryl softens somewhat, but ultimately remains unconvinced that he should care.
Later, in the car on the way home, Rick address the issue further in a conversation that is not well discussed. Here, Rick openly acknowledges that Daryl, along with Michonne and Glenn, did attenuate his flippancy toward human life when they first arrived at Alexandria. Now, Rick is trying to do the same thing for Daryl.
The conversation in the car, which is, at first, filmed through the windshield, which is reflective, obscuring some amount of the shot, is greatly oblique, meaning, it’s not on the nose. It comes to the point in a way that is indirect and even off-topic. This is a product of Daryl and Rick’s communication style, which is surly. It’s a beautiful scene, which finishes later on in the episode just as they arrive back at the ASZ. Daryl tells Rick that he thinks what he said before, after what happened with Reg and Pete, that they shouldn’t be going out to bring in new people anymore, that he was right. But Rick disagrees now. He says, “No, I was wrong. You were right.”
Ultimately, I believe this scene does make a difference for Daryl, if only because it communicates to him that Rick sees him, that he agrees with him, and that he actually isn’t alone, no matter how alone he feels; however, it’s unclear at this point if Rick is too late, or if Rick’s influence is simply no longer as important to Daryl as it used to be. Remember that Daryl’s only moments of intentional motivation in the episode, beyond simply going along for the ride, are related to Denise. Remember, too, that Daryl gave up his search for Rick in “Alone,” to be with Beth. This was a clean break, and just because she went away, that doesn’t mean the feelings that caused him to make that choice went away. These are the beginnings of Daryl becoming his own man, and the protagonist of his own story, coming out of Rick’s shadow and casting his own. Of course, getting there is going to be a long, violent, and lonely road.
In the end, whatever effect this exchange with Rick might impart on Daryl is latent or else it never comes to fruition, because Rick is, unfortunately, and in all of his hubris, about to step into a trap of epic proportion, and Daryl, who is floating without an anchor, and whose loyalty may have been temporarily boosted during this trip, follows him right to it. We can already see how the nature of Daryl’s choices has changed since the events of “Always Accountable,” and how they are much more pessimistic and lacking in trust in people and the outside world. Daryl is about to undergo an enormous test of faith.
“The Next World”: Carl
Something that’s super interesting, too, in this episode, is the B story, which involves an undercurrent of familial tension and backstory, revolving around Carl. While out in the woods, Carl and Enid discover Deana’s walker, but for reasons that Enid doesn’t understand, Carl refuses to kill her. Instead, he lures Deana closer to the walls where her son Spencer waits, so that he can put her to rest. Later in the night, Carl has an argument with Michonne, who saw him out there and misunderstood his intentions. Michonne asks Carl why he didn’t just kill Deana, and Carl tells her that he couldn’t kill Deana, because it should be someone who loved her to do it. He says that Michonne wouldn’t understand, referencing his final moments with Lori. Carl also says that would do it for Michonne, which affects her deeply.
During the entire conversation, Carl is holding Judith in a visual callback to Beth, and I believe that Carl’s arc in this episode is informed by the missing 17 days, and the fact that Beth never received a burial, and that most of them believe her walker still to be out there, somewhere. I believe that much of the psychology running through seasons 5 and 6 are related to Beth’s loss and the clearly traumatic events of the missing 17 days, which we still have never seen or learned about. This is an important time as well to remember that in this episode, re: main thesis of this post, Daryl does NOT have his crossbow, and he doesn’t have it now either, in France. I believe that Daryl is undergoing a similar, albeit more direct, even dramatic test of faith in Daryl Dixon, in which he is once again, a fish out of water, a ship lost at sea.
I want to point out, too, that immediately after cutting away from Daryl and Rick in the car is this little moment with Carl showing Judith how to find the North Star.
If you remember from my last post, I discussed Daryl without Beth as a ship without an anchor. Another way to discuss Daryl’s current state is to call him a wanderer who has lost sight of the North Star. In this little scene we get a beautiful glimpse at how Carl, the bearer of the “resurrection” music box in “Them” is carrying Beth’s torch and lighting the way in her absence. Taking care of Judith, helping people reunite with their loved ones, arguing for what he believes in, even when others disagree. This is important, because later, after Daryl has made the full scope of his descent, it will be Carl’s death that brings him back into the light. That is for a future post, but in this episode we can see how Carl’s character, along with Beth, informs the character Laurent in the spin-off.
Beth’s Knife
I want to point out that even though Daryl doesn’t have his crossbow or his arrows during this liminal stretch of season 6, that doesn’t mean that he has lost his connection with Beth completely. Daryl continues to carry Beth’s knife, given to him by Carol in “Them,” on his left hip, all through “The Next World,” as well as during the next episode “Knots Untie,” which is the episode when they visit Hilltop. He doesn’t take it off until the episode “Not Tomorrow Yet,” which is the episode in which he and Rick lead a team to ambush the Saviors at the Satellite Station. Though Norman has informed fans casually that Daryl still has it, we have not seen Beth’s knife since “Knots Untie.” Why does he take it off?
If you’ll recall, it’s actually Daryl who offers to take out the Saviors at Hilltop, in exchange for food and supplies. He kicks into gear after Jesus tells them about how Negan, in an effort of intimidation, killed a sixteen-year-old boy. Once again: Why do innocent people always have to die? Here, Daryl thinks he sees a way to finally right this wrong. Episodes 6.10-6.14, during which Daryl does not have his crossbow, are filled with seminole choices that Daryl makes, all of which inform the man he will become in seasons 7-9. He keeps making the wrong choices, but as an audience, it’s easy to feel mislead, as most of the rest of the characters are right there with him. Even Glenn goes on the Satellite Station mission. This is enough to make it seem like what they’re doing is right thing. Of course, it’s not, but it communicates the mass psychological damage with which the team is currently coping.
At this point in the story, after what happened at the prison and the fallout with Beth, they are all desperate to establish a home with food security and safe walls, and they are willing to do almost anything to make that a reality. Maggie’s pregnancy, referenced in “Knots Untie,” which ends with the group passing around her sonogram in the RV, is also a motivating factor. I also believe that the Saviors are, at this point, a scapegoat, for the enemy they couldn’t kill back at the prison, ie: someone they CAN kill as a way of dealing with Beth’s senseless loss as well as the losses of Hershel and the prison, and the grisly deaths of Tyreese and Noah that followed almost immediately after. Going after the Saviors is especially meaningful for Daryl, as he is still harboring vengeful feelings toward Dwight, who took his crossbow, and with it, his faith in the goodness of people.
When Daryl takes off Beth’s knife in “Not Tomorrow Yet,” I believe we can interpret this two ways: First, he takes it off because he doesn’t want her memory to be mixed up in deeds he knows for certain would disappoint her. For the same reason, he sometimes wears his hair like a mask, Daryl, well-aware of what’s going on, is hiding from her disapproval. Of course, this shows that, even as his actions speak volumes, Daryl has not forgotten about Beth. But he knows he may need to repress her for a while, and this is something we will deal with directly in the season 7 episode “New Best Friends.”
Second, Beth’s knife, given to him by Carol in “Them,” is a Browning Hunter knife with a fixed blade and a handle made from the antler of a stag.
A stag, or a buck, is a male deer, and I would like to now consider the powerful ramifications of this, as, not long after Carol returns this knife to Daryl, he encounters a dead doe, or female deer, in the woods. We have a lone stag (Daryl), and his dead doe (Beth). The fact that Beth carried the stag knife at all is, in my estimation, given Daryl’s visual devastation in this scene, crushingly romantic. The antler provides him with further protection in the wake of his missing crossbow, similar to the symbolic function of his white arrows.
The knife stays behind to protect him for much of his period without the crossbow in season 6, like a last line of defense; however, when he takes it off, this foreshadows grave trials, which he will have to undergo while greatly exposed to pain and suffering, with no weapons or spiritual protection at all.
I think it’s important that all of Daryl’s weapons have been touched and wielded by Beth at some point. His main knife, which he used in “Still,” her stag knife, and also his crossbow. This is very important as there is not another character for whom this is true, and because it sets her up as his spiritual protector very early on. Further, as a warrior, Daryl’s weapons are greatly important to his functioning in the world, and as I said before, his crossbow is almost like a fifth limb. Beth’s possession of his weapons during their time together communicates her claim or possession over him. This is foiled by his encounter with the Claimers who seem to point out to Daryl that there is nothing in this world worth anything anymore that hasn’t already been claimed.
You will see, too, in my next post, how this period also comes with the absence of not just Beth’s knife and the crossbow, but Daryl’s angel vest as well. All of this inventory is a part of Daryl and his blessed disposition, per Beth’s “Still” prophecy that he’s going to be the Last Man Standing, and which we first see fully examined in “Consumed.” Without it, he struggles, fallen from her grace.
None of these things is stated overtly in the text. All of it is oblique, subtle, and noticeable only to fans who are watching closely. And who watches more closely than TD?
In my next post, I will discuss Denise’s death and the effects of Daryl’s incarceration at the Sanctuary. I will also look at what happens when, after finding safe haven at the Kingdom, Daryl is gifted ANOTHER crossbow (pictured above), by Richard, introducing an entirely new era for Daryl’s arrows and foiling Daryl’s mercenary, ruthless outlook on the coming war.
Love it! One thing you mentioned that had never really registered with me before is the fact that the dead deer he saw in Them was a doe. I mean, it obviously is, and I used that scene heavily to formulate the Deer Theory, but I just never thought to relate the deer’s gender to Beth. That’s beautiful and even more heart breaking. Can’t wait to read more!
This brought up some other interesting connections for me. In my post about B or C for effort, I talk about the pool of Bethesda. Which is the pool of healing in Israel where Jesus performed miracles of healing.
Just recently, I started watching Fallout ⚡️ (I saw Satan fall like lightning Luke 10.18)
A third (33%) of the angels fell with him. Nat mentioned 33% just before Michonne finds Rick.
Jesus was also 33 when he was crucified.
Fallout is a show on Amazon Prime and a video game about nuclear WAR.
It’s made by Bethesda game studio.
The very first episode (the beginning) is called THE END.
And it has the same cowboy images that ‘The curse of the blackened eye’ has…
Curse of the blackened eye…👆👇
Fallout…👇
It made me think of the “frontier” that Daryl mentioned at the end of season 11.
Also, in 710, when war is just starting with the Saviours, Daryl at the “frontier” truck protects Carol by saying if she gets struck by lightning anything, I’ll kill you to Richard.
This is war. The end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end.
Bulletproof Picasso = mortal head wound that is healed.
Some really interesting and yes weird, walking dead connections here.
510
Rick Grimes in the barn “Everyday he told himself, RIP. Now get up and go to WAR. And then, after a few years of pretending he was dead, he made it out alive.”
The next morning, the “Good News” music box plays…
Ephesians 6.12
For our fight (war) is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
💕
Great connections! Thanks! It’s crazy that there are so many of them! 👀
