This post is a partial #TeamLogic response to a Team Delusional member’s recent post, which serves as a compilation of “evidence” for why Beth will return in Season 6B or later. The post can be found here.
On the episode title, “Start to Finish”
The title of the episode was never intended to represent Beth, nor was it intended to represent the structure of the episode, which was notoriously left open-ended. It referenced Deanna’s words, “It’s my life, start to finish” when she rejected Michonne’s offer to take her own life. The words reflected on a courageous moment for Deanna, paying homage to the character, who would ultimately die in the final minutes. There is no indication that these words represent Beth Greene.
On the use of “Tiptoe through the Tulips” in the opening scene, plus other “eggs” in Sam Anderson’s room
The song does not directly reference Beth. We can only speculate as to why TPTB chose this particular song, but in recent years, this song has begun take on a new life in horror genres. Perhaps the first example of this was when Tiny Tim’s version of the song played in the film “Insidious”, where it often indicated that something bad was about to happen. The song widely being regarded as “creepy” in recent years may have influenced their decision to choose this song.
The assertion that the line “they’re coming to take me away” is a direct reference to Beth is reaching – it may not have any significance at all. If it does have significance, it is more likely to refer to Sam being moments from being taken out of the world of isolation he has created for himself in his bedroom, when the chaos quickly makes its way into the Andersons’ home as the song plays. Beth is also not the only character in the series who has been “taken”/abducted. Other characters who have experienced this include Glenn, Andrea, Michonne, Hershel, Carol, and Daryl.
Sam’s crayon drawing is more likely a depiction of himself than a callback to a character who has been deceased for over a year. The drawn character does not appear to be portrayed as feminine, as is often obvious in a child’s drawings, and its haircut more resembles Sam’s than it does Beth’s. Sam also has a blonde shade of hair, albeit dirty blonde. It also intuitively makes sense that Sam would be drawing himself after Carol described this exact nightmarish scenario to him when he witnessed her stealing from the armory.
The OP’s explanations as to why the toys/objects in Sam’s room represent Beth are reaching at best, and nonsensical at worst. Lone shoes have been seen several times in the story, but at no point were they linked more to Beth than they were Carl or Spencer. The legend of the lone shoe was actually far more significant for Carl and Spencer, who both lost a single shoe instead of their lives. A fire truck toy is one that is common for children, and cannot directly link to Beth other than the reaching explanation that fire trucks are associated with hospitals, and Beth was once associated with a hospital. The post gives no explanation as to how a green bat serves as both a Negan and a Beth reference. I would assume that they are referring to Negan’s infamous “Lucille” baseball bat and the fact that the color green is phonetically the same as Beth’s last name, Greene.
On Gimple’s Talking Dead Note
The fact that Gimple went out of his way to write a note addressing Glenn’s “death” should present a crippling roadblock to Team Delusional’s ongoing theorizing, but instead, the OP surmises that it is an indication of something special related to Beth to come. Many audience members found that the letter signified that The Walking Dead wanted to create as much ambiguity, speculation, and hype surrounding the Glenn scene as possible. None of this was true for Beth, whose death followed all of the the canon “rules” of prior deaths in the series (headshot = no chance of return, character celebrated on in-memoriam, actor/actress invited onto the after-show, etc.). Another key difference between Glenn’s fake death scene and Beth’s actual death scene is that a fatal injury was never shown to befall Glenn on screen. The camera deliberately shot above his abdomen, where we were led to believe the walkers were devouring him, whereas Beth’s death scene displayed a fatal bullet both entering and exiting her skull.
On the midseason premiere falling on Valentine’s Day
The post proceeds to argue that the Valentine’s Day mid-season premiere date is an indication of Beth/Bethyl due to keys, flowers, and notes being both inherently “Bethyl” and Valentines Day-related. Minimal evidence of this is provided, and it is not acknowledged that other characters had even more significant scenes involving such objects (T-Dog dropping the key in Season 1, Carol and Daryl’s Cherokee rose, David’s letter to Betsy that Michonne gave back to him and Glenn later found, etc.) Despite this, it’s likely that the premiere date relates to none of these things. Since 2012, every single midseason premiere has fallen on the second Sunday in February. The second Sunday in February has not been on the fourteenth day of the month since the year 2010. Therefore, we can conclude that this is a meaningless coincidence, and simply a happy accident of the Gregorian calendar. This point essentially renders the remainder of OP’s assertions about keys and flowers meaningless as well.
On Jessie being a “Beth proxy”
Jessie’s comic counterpart was introduced in May of 2010, months before The Walking Dead television series aired on AMC. Beth was not introduced until 2011, and was a very minor character at the time. Jessie the TV character displays a few deviations from her comic counterpart, but her character is clearly intended to represent that of the comic storyline. There is also no indication that Jessie represents Beth, other than the fact that the two women share the same hair color, and the fact that Jessie will likely be “gutted” by walkers, and Beth on a single occasion used this same verbiage.
