Red Is The Living Color
Ah! The “red” symbolism! We’ve seen red umbrellas, red balloons, red Swiss Army Knives, redheads, red scarves, red apples, red bloodstains on white casts. We’ve seen red strawberries, we’ve seen Daryl’s red rag, red Soviet flags on satellites, red doors and red chairs, to name a few.
My theory has always been that “red” is tied to “resurrection”. In one of my very first Tumblr posts I argued that the “red” resurrection symbolism we see on the show was tied to the story of Mary Magdalene telling the Emperor that Christ was risen. The Emperor mocked her and replied “he is no more risen than those eggs in your basket are red”, upon which the (normal-colored) eggs suddenly turned red. Mary Magdalene is to this day often portrayed as holding a red egg in Eastern Orthodox iconography.
It’s important to note that in order to have a “resurrection” you need to have a “death” first. So we do see the “red” symbolism around characters that die. “Death” and “resurrection” are two sides to the same story. And “resurrection” symbolism in TWD can be used when a character comes back as a walker, or it can mean coming back from a “fake death”, like Rick, or Beth.
Through the years I’ve been making notes about when and where we see the “red” symbolism, and at one point I realized it came up in relation to gates and doors an awful lot, and for lack of a better word I started referring to the theory on the “red” symbolism as “Red Controls The Gates”.
We’ve seen literal gates (Ana’s leg in 4x4 Indifference, and the red umbrella blocking the opening mechanism on the gates of Alexandria after the fight with the Saviors and the Heapsters in s8). However, I’ve also come to understand the concept of “gates” as something that tells the audience that we’re watching a character in a situation where they may or may not survive, they’re in the liminal space between the “Realm of the Living” and the “Realm of the Dead”. When we saw Rick shoot the red dynamite that caused the explosion on the bridge in 9x5, that was him crossing over to the Realm of the Dead. He’s not literally dead, because we, the audience, always knew he would survive. But as far as the other characters are concerned, he’s dead. He’s in the Death Realm. Or he was, up until Michonne discovered his boots and phone in 10x13, and realized he could be alive. That’s what I mean with “Red Controls The Gates”. The red dynamite opened the gates, Rick crossed over. Not permanently though, but the other characters don’t know that.
The interesting part of “Red Controls The Gates” for TD is that we’ve seen Beth do something similar. In 4x12 Still, Beth and Daryl sought refuge from an approaching horde by hiding inside the trunk of a car. They stayed there overnight, and the next morning we see Beth untie Daryl’s red rag that had been holding the trunk shut. She untied the red rag, the one that was holding the trunk closed, and they climb out. Red Controls The Gates. The red rag was the locking mechanism of their hiding place, it was the KEY, and Beth was the one that untied it to open “the gates”. And to circle back to the story of Mary Magdalene and the red Easter egg, when Mary arrived at the site of the tomb of Christ she discovered that the stone was already rolled to the side. The “gates” were open, and we can still see her holding a red egg in iconography, representing the red Easter egg of resurrection. In my opinion, the “gate/door” symbolism in TWD is ultimately a reference to Christ’s resurrection and Mary Magdalene discovering the empty tomb with the stone rolled to the side.
I mentioned Ana’s leg from 4x4 Indifference above. She had a compass tattoo on her leg, and TPTB really wanted us to notice it! Compasses are symbols we often see in scenes that remind us of Beth. Remember how she put the DC spoon in her back pocket in Still. The spoon represents The Little Dipper, which is the star constellation where we find the North Star, or Polaris. North Star symbolism is huge for TD, because it represents “finding your way home”, or reunion with loved ones (as explained by Carl to Judith in s5). And this is all related to compasses because compasses let you know which direction is north. It’s the red compass needle that points north. The red compass needle is the KEY.
The North Star symbolism is linked to the “red” symbolism because the needle of a compass is almost always red, and it always points to the north. So when I say “Red Controls The Gates”, it’s something we see with Ana’s leg in 4x4 Indifference. Her leg, with the compass tattoo, and the red blood from the cut, holds the gate open. Red Controls The Gates.
We also see a representation of this in 11x23 Family. Daryl leads Team Family to the train station. It’s a trap though, and they discover that the doors (“gates”) are closed with chains. When Judith gets shot, we see a desperate Daryl yelling to Ezekiel to throw the red fire extinguisher into the air. He then shoots it, which creates a fog which allows them to escape.
In this exemple we see both actual gates (doors) as well as metaphorical gates (Judith getting shot, losing a lot of blood and venturing dangerously close to the “gate” between the realms of the dead and the living). However, when we get a bird’s eye view, we find that the entire train station floor is essentially a gigantic compass rose, which symbolically makes the red fire extinguisher the red compass needle that always points north, to home, to family, to reunion. And the compass needle is red, as in the resurrection symbolism of Mary Magdalene’s red egg.
As soon as the red fire extinguisher releases its powdery fog, someone manages to cut the chains and literally open the doors (gates). Daryl carries Judith out and gets her to the hospital, where he gives her his blood. Red Controls The Gates. Judith’s chances of survival increases significantly. The red fire extinguisher is the key.
In the next episode we witness Judith waking up after receiving Daryl’s blood, which honestly strikes me as the greatest exemple of the Red Controls The Gates symbolism of the entire series. We see Daryl’s RED blood save Judith’s life, TPTB even had Tomi (the doctor, and Yumiko’s brother) comment on it, to make absolutely sure the connection between Daryl’s RED blood and Judith’s survival/awakening comes across properly. Daryl’s blood saved her life. Red Controls The Gates. Judith avoided crossing over to the Death Realm before the gates closed behind her. She was able to remain in the Realm of the Living, thanks to Daryl’s life-saving red blood. His red, life-saving blood was the key to her survival.
This is my interpretation of the red symbolism, and I’m sure there are multiple ways of interpreting it. However, there have been countless exemples of this particular constellation of symbols in TWD over the years, far too many to mention here. And while this theory developed gradually over time, there was one scene in particular from 11x24 Rest In Peace that in my opinion signaled once and for all TPTB’s true intention with this particular color and what it represents. It’s like they really wanted to get their message across in the series finale, and they put in a red Easter egg (pun intended) for the observant viewer…
A record, on a record player.
Red label. The ultimate hint about the true meaning of the “red” symbolism, hidden in plain sight in the subtitles:
Living Colour!
(Colour is the British spelling of the word “color”)
Red is the “living colo(u)r”.
RED IS THE LIVING COLOR!
We watch Princess put on the RED record, we watch the music DRAW THE DEAD AWAY, we see RED barrels of fuel, we see the RED record create a spark that sets off the mother of all bombs, which ultimately opens the “gates” to the “underworld”, which swallows up the dead and leaves them trapped in the “death realm”.
Red controls the gates!
Red is the living color.
Red is the key.
(Thanks for the screenshots @wdway 💖)
