#hallucination!ed

[suchgotham]

Riddler singing “Won’t say I’m in love” but with hallucination!Ed being the part of the muses

BADLY DRAWN GOTHAM FANARTS AT YOUR SERVICE!

[mymycorrhizae]

what do you mean by it couldn't be more clear when you're talking about snapchat Ed, did i miss smth? I haven't watched the episode yet but I think I know what happened?

Hello! I will answer this assuming you don’t mind spoilers. This is what happens in that scene:

As you can see, it’s very different from when Ed hallucinated Oswald in 3x15. I think the hallucination!Oswald scenes left a lot of room for interpretation. Ed chose to hallucinate Oswald voluntarily. The hallucination said things like “I know what you’re thinking. Even the things you’re trying not to think” (im paraphrasing lol). Then of course there was the seductive musical number. So ya, with hallucination!Oswald, there was a lotttt you could read as being of a romantic nature. 

The hallucination!Ed scene is completely different. I think the parallel between the two ends at the fact that they’re both hallucinations. When I say “It couldn’t be more clear”, what I mean is that this scene clearly shows us that Oswald’s greatest fear is Ed escaping and coming to kill him again. He literally sees Ed as a monster coming to hurt him. As others have pointed out, it looks like Oswald is looking up at him from underwater. And unless I’m mistaken, in the top right corner of the second gif, you see what looks like a shark (or fish?)’s tail. So obviously Oswald is being reminded of when he was shot and drowning. I know that since Oswald came back at the end of 3x15, he has been acting tough about the entire ordeal but we shouldn’t let that fool us about how traumatic that experience was for him. I think it makes total sense that this is his worst fear. 

I guess what I’m really trying to say is, let’s not try to interpret this scene under a romantic light. That would totally contradict the purpose of the fear toxin, which is literally to show you what you are most afraid of. If there’s any scene in 4x01 that we can look to for proof of Oswald’s lingering feelings, it should be when he was talking to frozen!Ed and claimed that he banished his feelings but then immediately followed that up with tearfully asking which of them was really frozen. 

Anyway, since we know that Ed will be escaping for real in a few episodes, I think it would be worth keeping this hallucination scene in mind. If Oswald starts behaving really erratically when Ed escapes, let’s remember how scared he was in this scene. 

[mymycorrhizae]

Okay side note but this is what I expected hallucination!Oswald to look like. I mean I thought he would be terrifying and vengeful. But instead he was like wet and sassy. I expected him to scare the shit out of Ed, not serenade him with Amy Winehouse. So I’m kind of excited that hallucination!Ed will actually be creepy and scary (yes I admit the CGI is a bit lame in this screenshot but still).