#bird harrow

[knuffi516]

What if when Bird!Harrow is the father of the Starcrow chicks?

[amozon28]

People acting like the bird harrow theory was a joke when i have been entirely serious about it for 6 years. Get on my level

[lyyychen560]

small pip!harrow rant

tdp spoilers

okay, suppose the trio DO find pip!harrow (which they will because of that awful ending). what then? harrows body is long buried so what are they gonna do with him? make a new body for him out of dark magic or have a fucking bird as their king? and also the fact that harrow!pip squawked when he was shot implies that pip can talk now (maybe not but that's so funny to me)

"oi Soren, corvus I'm over here by the river who is this green hippie elf"

[blubberingblobmonster]

BIRD HARROW IS REAL! I REPEAT, BIRD HARROW IS REAL THAT THEORY IS CANON AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHSJKLSDFNSLOBGSIBKSFJS

[winterstorm032802]

People are legit mad that the writers didn't confirm the Harrow bird theory when asked...

Like... yeah?

Why would they tell us a spoiler?

Why must you think they pulled this idea out of their ass cause they don't know how to write, and season 7 is horrible writing?

DO YOU WANT THE WHOLE FUCKING SHOW TO BE SPOILED?! IT'S CALLED A THEORY FOR A REASON!

A THEORY!

Let me... I'm clanging on the steel bars here! Why are people negative?! CAN'T YOU LET US ENJOY SOMETHING!?

[fandom-susceptible]

So Harrow's In The Bird

So. I'm not here to argue with anybody. If anyone really dislikes this plotline, that's your prerogative, and if you want to use this post as a jumping off point to talk about it, that's your business. This is not a promise of interaction. This fandom has always been a comfort/safe space for me and I'm not changing that, but I did want to share some more . . . nuanced analysis of why I'm okay with this development.

The theory that Viren switched King Harrow's soul out with the bird has been a thing since 2018. I personally was one of the ones who really liked it, though I don't know if I ever bothered posting about it. The creators of the show claimed it wasn't true at SDCC 2019, but even if this was the plan, they sort of had to or it would have ruined their own plot twist. There was definitely something going on with Pip in the show, they made too much of a point of showing us the bird behaving oddly, so I don't think this was actually a last minute out of the blue choice. They've been genuinely planning this since the early seasons.

Now, part of the reason I was also okay with Harrow just being dead is that it does add to the impact of the story. Both old kings are dead, killed by each other's legacies, while their sons work together to bring about a new beginning. There's a certain symbolism in that.

However, Harrow's character is more than just the King of Katolis or Ezran's dad. He's also Callum's stepdad, which I think is more important for this particular plot line. Like Runaan, he had unfinished business. Not only did he leave behind both of his children, he never got the closure of having an openly stated father-son relationship with Callum. The same way Rayla still refers to Runaan and Ethari by name, Callum always called him King Harrow or Your Majesty, and Harrow never heard him say Dad instead.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that there were three Quasar diamonds, and Callum and Rayla only used one, with Claudia using the other. There's still a third out there that hasn't been used yet. Once again, I'm convinced they had this planned all along; it's not just a last minute hail mary to spare Runaan some sort of guilt or disgrace.

It's going to be messy when he comes back, if we get Arc 3, and I genuinely hope we do. It will be interesting to find out if he eventually agreed to Viren's plan or if Viren forced it on him knowing he could leave Harrow in the bird to watch and suffer as Viren usurped his sons and took control of Katolis. I genuinely look forward to the confrontation between Harrow and Runaan, Harrow facing down the man who killed him (also his son's father-in-law) and Runaan facing someone he killed (also his daughter's father-in-law).

The thing is, I really don't think Harrow being alive spares Runaan anything. He's a professional assassin and has been for over a decade (Rayla mentions he has 20 years more experience than she does, which may or may not include either of their training years). Harrow is not the first life he's taken, and having to face not just the outer consequences but actually look someone in the face and listen to them after killing them would be a mindfuck at best. Harrow being returned doesn't excuse what he did, and I really don't think Runaan will see it that way either. We see him struggling with guilt for almost killing Rayla, and his entire arc in season 7 was realizing how fucked up his worldview (which, admittedly, is highly driven by Moonshadow culture as a whole) is. One singular life being returned isn't going to backslide that entire mental breakdown, no matter how important that particular life is to everyone else. Runaan didn't have a personal tie to Harrow. It was just a job.

Now though, he does have a personal tie to Harrow, through their children, and I think that's going to play a role in how things develop in the next arc. I expected Callum and Rayla's romantic arc from the very first episode where they met, and I think this was all planned to fall into place this way.

So, Harrow kills the dragon king to avenge his wife, restarting a war that had somewhat cooled with time. His sons aren't involved with this decision, but they have to live with the aftermath.

Runaan kills Harrow to avenge the Dragon King, and brings Rayla in order to counter the shame of her parents' fleeing (which they later discover didn't happen, but while it's better culturally, it's not much better in the long run).

Harrow's sons and Runaan's daughter work together to rescue Zym. One of Harrow's sons carries the political plot by going home and taking the throne. The other continues with Rayla to return the dragon prince, and along the way, the two begin a romantic relationship.

Callum's father was killed by Rayla's. Rayla's father dies in Callum's father's dungeon.

Skipping forward, we discover that neither of their fathers were actually killed, but they were both cursed by Dark Magic. Importantly, they were both cursed by the same man, who was manipulating them both (Harrow personally, Runaan as part of a whole) in order to orchestrate his own ascension to the throne and an eventual war and attempted genocide.

They find out about Rayla's parents first, and Rayla looks at recovering them as a personal quest, but Callum looks at it as both personal and a way to undermine Viren's legacy. They only manage to obtain two Quasar diamonds, which means Rayla has to make choices about which parents to rescue, and this drives her personal arc of making peace with her abandonment issues (a plot which runs parallel to Claudia's abandonment issues) and cultural shame connected to Tiadrin and Lain. The father she recovers is the one who stayed with her growing up, and took her with him when he left for his duty.

He is also the one who is ultimately the most helpful as the plot develops. He doesn't run from the consequences of his assassination; Rayla's the one who breaks him out and urges him to go home despite his arrest, and he just doesn't argue with her (I have a whole other post about the confrontation between Ezran, Callum, and Rayla where I go into Runaan's response and why I think he behaved the way he did in season 7). And when greater forces are threatening the world, he doesn't hesitate to work with Callum. In the early seasons I was prepared for him to end up being as racist as Viren in the opposite direction, and I found myself pleasantly surprised by how he just treats Callum as another person.

I think Callum makes his peace with Runaan as a person due to his experiences with dark magic, actually. He understands being so driven by his need to protect someone that he'll do very dark things because he doesn't see an alternative. He's chosen to step beyond that, but I think he understands Runaan's worldview in a way that Ezran simply doesn't until he has the epiphany with Aaravos and the Nova Blade late in season 7. So he's able to look past it, especially since this is Rayla's father.

Then in the very end, we discover that Viren cursed Harrow too. So neither Callum nor Rayla's fathers are dead, but they were both cursed by the same man to be no better than dead and left that way. And Viren died before revealing it to anyone, so Runaan, the man who came to kill him, ends up also being the one whose story saves him.

So now, a killer from the previous generation, who contributed to the cycle of violence, has been returned not only to help end it but to save another and reverse a little bit of the damage he's done.

More specifically, Rayla and Callum both lost their adoptive fathers to Viren. Now, they will be the ones to rescue those adoptive fathers and finally get the closure of claiming them as such.

Plus, the impersonal angle of Harrow's assassination is now disrupted because there's a personal connection through their children now, which will further drive Runaan's cultural deconstruction and likely some mental dissonance for Harrow as well.

All in all, I hope they greenlight Arc 3, because I look forward to seeing how that develops Callum and Rayla's relationships with each other and their respective fathers, and how it changes Runaan and Harrow both as people. Runaan's development didn't really get the focus it deserved in season 7, which I really honestly think was because it was intended to take place over a longer period of time and the writers just didn't have it because Netflix refused to promise them seasons 8-10. So it'll be interesting to see how that goes once he and Harrow are both around to be having their midlife crises at the same time.

[unknownentry404]

No one:

Absolutely no one:

Me: So there is one Quazar diamond left, meaning we can re-create exactly ONE more persons body, meaning BIRD HARROW IS STILL, STILL ON THE DOCKET BABY-!

Me shouting at the Heavans: HARROW, GET YOUR SCRAWNY BIRD ASS DOWN HERE!! RIGHT NOW! 🦅

[echo-of-the-eye]

(Not tagging as tdp critical cause I genuinely want to see other people’s perspectives on this)

Am I the only one who doesn’t like that they made bird harrow canon?? Everyone I’ve seen seems to just be happy that the theory turned out true, which I get, but it’s such a bad story move?? Like. Surely I can’t be the only one who sees that? It undercuts how devastating a loss harrow was and bringing him back would be?!? So weird.

I think my main problem is how they did it. Like they treated it as a joke. And it was a funny fan theory, but the more you think about it the implications of it are quite horrific. Especially the betrayal by Viren. Like. If they treated it more as a horrific revelation and preferably showed us the scene of Viren doing the spell I MIGHT have been ok with it. But I’m still not sure where they’re gonna go with this.

I just. Don’t understand. Why.