Hi! Daryl's 6 years in the woods - do you think they developed a story for what happened to the wing on his vest or is it just meaning some struggle happened and we will never know exactly what? As in the action isn't as important as the result - Daryl losing part of his identity (wing). Do you think there is any other footage from Find Me they will show us, mainly to clarify her hair colour at the time. And still I wonder why her place looked so messy and such if she left of her own accord.
Hey!! Ah I love all questions and theories about "Find Me." Thank you ^_^
You know I never really developed a solid theory about Daryl's wing. But I have thought about it a lot. I don't know if the writers developed a story for the wing. Somebody else might though. I do definitely see it as a symbol of his degraded sense of self, and where he belongs. I could come at it from a couple different angles.
I do think that the wing is largely symbolic. I remember when I first saw "Find Me," I felt strongly that the eroded wing was related to Daryl's eroded sense of self, and a generally eroded grasp on reality and slow descent into madness. I think that much of "Find Me" is about madness. Daryl's psychology is shockingly fragile. I remember the storm being a major tip-off for me. I think the storm happened, but I don't actually think he lost his map. I think he hallucinated that and he then went on to have a full on psychotic break. The jump cuts in the preceding scene when he's stomping on the boat walker's head are a major tip-off that his perceptions are changing. He is not well in these flashbacks, or memories, or whatever they are. The whole episode in and of itself feels like a metaphor in this way. The woods and the river are just these endless mazes of trauma and loneliness with Leah at the center, like a witch, a black hole, a bad memory, a wound. For a long time I didn't think Leah actually existed. I remember theorizing with @wdway and @twdmusicboxmystery that she was a full on hallucination. Of course, we were wrong, but I think that much of Daryl's time with Leah is either misremembered or forgotten entirely.
I agree with you, too, that the eroding wing is definitely related to some sort of loss of his identity, specifically, I think, after Rick, because Daryl was really Rick's "wingman." Shane even calls him as much in 2.12 "Better Angels."
After Merle dies, Rick basically becomes Daryl's surrogate older brother and his leader, and Daryl follows in his shadow for many years. It's important that the first time Daryl is ready strike out on his own and to be the hero of his own story is in "Alone" when he chooses to stay in the funeral home with Beth, and to possibly settle down there. After losing Beth, Daryl goes right back to Rick and to being his brother, and Rick even calls him as much after the confrontation with the Claimers in "A" and I don't know if anyone can really understand what this must have meant to him at the time. But the schism with Rick seems to start after "Coda" and this is not something that is ever explained or even explored. Daryl full breaks from Rick in "Warning Signs" and openly in "The Obliged," and we can see that Daryl is starting to feel stifled by the role as "wingman," even if it's just instinctively, but when Rick "dies," it's too soon and Daryl hasn't actually had the chance to process what this means yet. He's not ready to be on his own, without Rick, with the anchor to the past. He's like a ship lost at sea. So the erosion of the wing is, I think, also related to this, for sure.
I'm not sure how much more footage there might be of "Find Me." I know it was shot during COVID, so everything was very spare and as-needed. I do know that the writers intended a longer arc for Leah and for the Reapers and while I don't think there is anymore "footage" per se, I do think that there might be more story to be told there. For example, where they came from, why they're after Maggie, who they work for, why Lance knows who Leah is and how to find her, and whether they might have some sort of connection to the CRM. Like I have theorized they may have been contracted by Major General Beale or Jadis, basically as bounty hunters, hunting down "threats" like Georgie and Maggie and other self-sustaining communities (ie: Knoxville, which Maggie will not talk about) and eliminating them. I have even theorized that they may have been the ones who eliminated Grady, as Carver at one point mentions a "hospital in Rockville" that they had previously destroyed. If they're willing to destroy and pillage one hospital, well...
Not enough is known about the Reapers, and Pope's monologue in "Rendition" about "politicians," and how, in their final war, "they were coming for us," is certainly a reference to Operation Cobalt and it reminds me of the Radiowaves episode "Conspiracy Theory" in which a crazed man on the radio mentions a US Military protocol called N.O.A.H., which he speculates is a reference to an escape strategy for the President and other high ranking members of the US Government. Pope's story as a military vet of the Korangal Valley in Afghanistan (aka "the Valley of Death") clearly lays out the story of soldiers who feel abandoned by their government.
With rumors circulating that we might encounter the US President, or that a "renewal" of the flagship show may involve a major skirmish between the CRM, The Commonwealth, and the US military, I am once again reminded of Pope's references to "one last war," and how it involves the US government coming for the people. If the president DOES indeed make an appearance, it really makes me wonder where the heck he has been for the past 10-15 years or however long it's been. If he has been in hiding or maybe even imprisoned by the CRM? If this is true, then it stands to reason that Rick might erroneously free him, starting yet another fire with his goodness that he cannot extinguish alone, possibly even giving way to a replay of the Governor's return.
It might be that we never get more information about the Reapers, but I think their story will end up having major ramifications for what's to come. Gimple is a major proponent of Chekov's Gun, and he will always use everything he can use. Everything in his story has a job to do. Now on the note of Leah's hair color and what happened to her place, these are more reasons I initially theorized she was a pure hallucination. There are other things in "Find Me" that make no sense, like why Leah's story inexplicably mirror's Beth's and why she frequently repeats Carol's dialogue, making her feel like a fantasy. I still think that her red hair is an invention of Daryl's memory, that it basically rewired itself as a way of protecting him from the trauma of losing another pretty blond girl in the woods. I think the fact that Leah's hair is basically the same color as Dog's and the very first shot we get of her in which her face and Dog's face are both obscured and conflated could be evidence for this, ie: His memory is just blurring the two.
On the other hand, it could be that the blond hair is the hallucination. We don't actually know. Not a single character comments on Leah's hair at any point. But Daryl does look entirely shocked to see her when she takes her mask off in "Rendition." Like, stunned. And of course we all were, too, because she looks exactly like Beth. Whatever it is, I think it's in Daryl's head, and it is undoubtedly related to Beth and his linger ing trauma over what happened to Beth, because like, Leah looks like Beth.
And yeah I agree it's also really weird how messy and empty Leah's place is. I even remember other fans, not TD-related, questioning how the hell she managed to find a U-Haul truck to come and move out all her furniture and dishes during the apocalypse lol. I mean, the place was EMPTIED. This is another thing that just literally makes no sense, and it's yet another reason I thought she just... wasn't real! But we know now that she WAS real, so, now I just wonder how much of what we see in "Find Me" is real. If they actually lived in that cabin. Or if something else happened entirely. Daryl gets that nasty cut over his eye, for example. We never learn what happened there but it's a scar that he still has! It must be important. Did he and Leah do something together? Something bad? Idk.
There's also this really weird line by Pope in "Rendition," during the POV scene with Leah. Now this is one of a couple scenes that are from Leah's POV, which I think point to foreshadowing about Beth's life and Beth's "hidden" story that we don't yet have. Anyway, Pope says to Leah something about "losing a day of tracking our enemy because you... you had to go on a fishing expedition with an old boyfriend."
Because like, an old boyfriend? What is he talking about? He's clearly talking about Daryl. But what fishing expedition? Is this a metaphor? Is it just purposely vague? Leah was not recently on a "fishing expedition" with Daryl. At this point, I think I calculated it had been like 1-2 years since Daryl and Leah had last seen each other. Everything about this is confusing, because it makes it sound like Daryl was Leah's boyfriend BEFORE he met her in the woods that day in "Find Me." It was actually with this line that I started to lightly theorize that Leah was actually Beth! And that Beth had already come back, and Daryl had simply repressed it, and he couldn't see her. He was hallucinating somebody else. Honestly, I quietly kept up with this theory until the very moment Daryl shot Leah dead. Because up until then, there isn't really a definitive moment in which it becomes clear that she can't be Beth. Even when Maggie refers to her at one point, she doesn't say Leah's name. She just says her. And there are MULTIPLE moments in "Rendition" when we see Leah's face obscured by burlap, or from a distance, or in half-darkness, and in these shots it could just as easily be Emily Kinney as Lynn Collins.
Obviously I was very wrong lol. But like?? As you say there are so many unanswered questions and so many mysteries surrounding Leah and the Reapers. I do hope we get more information about them at some point, maybe even just in an easter egg or something...?
Anyway as usual I went on for too long lol. I hope you enjoyed my Ted Talk. Thoughts?
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