I was a firm Papyrus knight truther and still have a hint of hope but I feel like so much doesn't fit from the new chapters :(
We DID get to see the ribcage of the knight and Papyrus is absent now that the knight is active— two things that help the case.
But the knight seems cold. I can't see Papyrus running away, refusing to speak, and the line on the phone— that's the knight, right? Not only is it not like his speech but Carol comes home soon after the voice says they'll arrive.
But if he's not the knight that's even more confusing??? Idk. What do you think about all this?
No the voice on the phone is definitely Carol (confirmed in snowgrave), but the phone person is not For Sure the Knight. The Knight never speaks at all (perhaps because of a notorious font). There's another thing, where "you" (Kris) don't watch Susie in chapter 4 and you get this dialog instead:
Which like. If the Knight was meant to be confirmed without a doubt to be one (or only one of two) people, then there's no need to maintain the mystery. In universe this makes sense because Kris is obviously hiding things from us, but out of universe, there is no reason for Toby to write the line like this unless the implication is that the Knight is not so obvious.
I DO think Dess has to be involved with the Knight, and I DO think Carol is also doing something shady, but I also have a new theory. So if you'll excuse me real quick-
So basically, a Holiday has to be strongly Connected to the Knight, because while I don't think the Knight's identity is so clear cut as everyone makes it out to be (ah, memories of immediately after chapter 2) I also think Toby wouldn't pull a cheap ass move like giving the Knight antlers, a baseball bat looking sword, and when they dodge, the ball they turn into vaguely resembles a baseball, and then NOT make the Knight have a strong connection to Dess somehow, or to be Dess. But that's the thing.
The Knight's appearance is fucked up and unnatural, even darkner's bodies could be easily mistaken as normal monsters, but the Knight is so much more horrifying in appearance, there is something WRONG with it. If someone saw that walking around town, they would be right to freak out and call the police. But if in the light world the Knight is Just Dess then. Well. People in town will recognize her, and freak out and call the police. Again. So in the Light World the Knight can't look anything like Dess and they can't look anything like The Knight.
I would also like to point out that if the Knight didn't have antlers do you know who people would INSTEAD say is now Totally Confirmed?
A related thing to this overarching tirade of madness is how multiple times, characters warn you not to stay in Darkworlds overnight. What happens to lightners if they stay in the dark for too long? Why is it a concern to have?
What is the danger?
It's likely that Dess got stuck in a darkworld, because I believe the person speaking to us in the code-
[Credit to autisriel on twitter]
Is Dess. The dialog in the third image especially, builds onto my theory. That there's a dark world in the bunker, but it works like Ralsei's dark world. You walk into a dark room and the door slams behind you, sending you into the darkworld when before it behaved almost like a normal room that was just impossibly dark. I think that Ralsei's world functions different from the other dark worlds, even beyond everyone from the other worlds being able to safely exist there, where the world will selectively allow lightners in. Because there's no way in hell that Toriel, Alphys, or the school custodian haven't needed to enter that closet since that fountain was made (whenever that was, and btw I don't think the Knight made Ralsei's fountain, I think he would have mentioned it).
My theory is that another force entirely (probably Gaster since this whole world seems to be some sort of project that he fucking around with with our assistance) made a fountain in the bunker and in the supply closet which is why they behave so oddly. Dess went into the bunker (maybe she ran away? This ties into a point I'll have further in) and the door slammed behind her, she was transported into a darkworld that would accept no further visitors, which is why no one ever found her.
I think the warnings against staying in the dark worlds for too long are because when you stay there, your body starts to change, you're still a lightner but you begin to become a darkner in a way. I think Dess' body dissipated/transformed/transmuted her consciousness into an object, likely one she took with her, probably baseball related, and Papyrus also entered the bunker (maybe he learned the code, maybe he was told, maybe the door mysteriously opened for him) and found that object, which he now has equipped like how you can equip Jevil and Spamton. Dess' body has been (possibly permanently) altered by being in the dark world, and her and Papyrus are working in conjunction with each other as the Knight. There is not multiple Knights, just one Knight, but the Knight is two people.
In chapter 4 I saw people discussing Kris' reaction to the end of the chapter, how they come home to find Toriel drunk and dancing with Sans (who is probably also drunk). Some people take Kris' reaction to be one that indicates that this is potentially commonplace while also mentioning how it's odd that Toriel didn't seem concerned that Kris didn't come home until late, and they most certainly would not be reachable by phone, and her lack of acknowledgement that she couldn't reach them means she didn't even try to.
I also have to point out now that in chapter 4 you don't even get to ask Sans about his mystery brother, and he doesn't voluntarily bring him up either. This is in addition to the fact that, as you said, after we see the Knight for the first time, we can't even HEAR Papyrus in his house anymore. We see Sans outside every single day and we haven't seen Papyrus once, haven't even heard his voice, and Sans brings him up less and less. This is a large contrast to UT where Sans is very focused on getting the human to befriend his brother, and talks about him a lot.
I feel like at this point there's too much evidence to deny that Sans and Papyrus Undertale are actually Sans and Papyrus Deltarune. There was a lot of implications through the total void of Papyrus' life before coming to Snowdin, and the weird shit Sans says about never being able to go back, but that was all contained to UT. Now we have the companion song for "It's Raining Somewhere Else", a companion song that sounds almost exactly the same (but it is different) named "The Place Where It Rained". Now there are connections on both sides.
My point with bringing this up, is maybe in UT Sans feels like he failed Papyrus by not trying harder for him in DR. I think we're watching this arc play out in real time. And I must once more reiterate that since it seems to be true that the skelebros are from DR, then there HAS to be a reason why that it only happens to them. Something BIG is going to happen and they're going to be at the epicenter of it, and they will face exile on the cosmic scale for it.
So Papyrus is home alone all day long, likely being tasked with unpacking everything by himself, because Sans has a Job. Sans can tell Papyrus is lonely, that's why he asks Someone to try to hang out with him, but Sans is also not putting in as much effort as he should, which is why he asked a child to hang out with his adult brother, and why he hasn't really asked to again in a follow up. Maybe Sans just doesn't know how to approach what Papyrus is dealing with.
Bringing it back around to the familial structures we look at in chapter 4, we meet Carol. Possibly Carol, still no direct confirmation I don't think? My #1 pick for an alternate name for her is Cupid because:
Irony
The heart pillows? What's up with that, that's Valentine's not Christmas
Cupid is one of Santa's reindeer so even though the connection is stronger to a different holiday there is still a connection to Christmas
Carol is very cold and hostile and I think is so OBVIOUSLY manipulating Kris, and IMO I think she's abusive to Noelle, like emotionally and verbally at the least. Normal kids with parents who are just strict but still loving don't freak the fuck out and shut down like people are going to get seriously harmed when their parent shows up back at home when they weren't expecting it. Noelle is afraid to ask her mom for the spare key to their house so she just stands outside, locked out. I think a strict but loving parent would rather be bothered at work than allow their ONLY REMAINING CHILD to just be STUCK OUTSIDE ALL DAY. The fact that Noelle prefers waiting for her mom to be done at work, which is likely late into the evening, to going to get a spare key from her, tells us that her MOM also prefers it this way. The reaction is less severe. It's Better that she stands outside the front gate of her own home and wait until it gets dark out by herself.
I would find it harder to say more straightforwardly that what Sans is doing to Papyrus is abusive. I maintain it is consistent across both games for Sans to be pretty emotionally closed off from people. He's good at reading the room, but that doesn't mean he has a magical solution to all of your social problems and it doesn't mean he wants to talk about feelings, he appears to have a very low tolerance for awkward encounters and vulnerability. And I additionally think that Toriel isn't abusive towards Kris. Kris probably is very uncomfortable with Toriel drinking, especially the way she doesn't show concern for where they were, especially how she seems to be perfectly happy being distracted by bringing a strange man into their home (this is something Kris and I have in common with our mothers while we were in high school).
I think the theme in this chapter is how Family is so important to young people, young people who are lonely like Papyrus, young people who might not have many friends like Kris up until recently, young people who don't have many people they can be completely open with, like Noelle. And it's also about how sometimes even when you Need your family, you need them to be there for you, to protect you, to look out for you, to worry about you, they fail to be enough, to be what you need.
Dess might have tried to run away, even if it was only temporary in her mind, and ends up trapped. Maybe Papyrus got fed up and needed to get out of the house for a bit. He ended up in the bunker, he meets Dess there. Dess isn't able to exist in the light world like how she used to by this point. They talk and feel like they have things in common, Dess tells Papyrus about dark worlds, possibly gaining knowledge the same way Ralsei has gotten his knowledge. And together they become the Knight.
I'm still working on this theory tbh. This is only the beginning, before I've gotten a chance to watch videos going over secrets in these last two chapters, which I need to do because my play style with DR is very sloppy, I'm just awful at finding secrets. I didn't know about ANY of the secret areas in chapter 3 before I saw one video going over them. Needless to say, the theory will improve as I learn more. So this is a rough draft.
