all this talk of Welcome Home is reminding me that I actually used to be into it a while back (the only “ooh this kids show is actually dark and twisted” story I ever really cared about ngl) and I just wanna share my hc that Julie & Frank are peak lesbian-gay solidarity
I know I shouldn't be surprised after we found out Poppy owns a bong in the last update, but Frank having a gun took me out. He's going to save the neighborhood with the power of friendship and bullets.
Also the implication that Julie gave it to him. First the implied heroin use and now she's an arms dealer? Girl needs to right a tell-all book about her life. Where is she getting these things?
(WIP) the genuine connections between Frank and his relationships with Eddie and Julie compared to Noelle and her relationships between Susie and Kris really make me think
Theory: Frank, Julie, handlers, and what the black flower could actually be
Writing this in light of what we learned from the 8/23/26 Welcome Home update, spoilers ahead
CW for written discussion of the following:
Derealization
Period-typical heteronormativity and homophobia
Infant mortality
Pregnancy as body horror
Okay so, we know now that the handlers' lives and memories are overlapping and blending with those of their puppets', to such a degree that they can't tell what's real to them anymore. Eddie accidentally cuts himself with his paper cutter, and instead of stuffing, there's blood. In the hidden video of Eddie and Sally, their voices are less cartoonish and more human-sounding, just like Frank and Julie's inner thoughts, as well as Poppy's freakout about her door. We can also infer from the hidden letters that they have different names from their puppets, but because of the overlap, we are perceiving them as their characters and recognize them by their characters' names. (Example: Frank's handler is not actually named Frank Frankly, that's his character's name, but narratively speaking we recognize him as Frank Frankly.)
So with that said, I've seen other people talk about how Frank was the one to break off his relationship with Eddie, likely out of fear. He's a queer person (gay and nonbinary) working in television in the 1960s-1970s, so he likely remained closeted in order to protect himself. His relationship with Julie is, at least metaphorically, a lavender marriage. He knows he's queer, yet wants so desperately to be perceived as straight. He clearly regrets dumping Eddie and yearns to be with him again, but his fear of vulnerability and being othered outweighs his hope of being happy. He figures it's better (safer) to simply shove his feelings for Eddie aside and pretend he and Julie are a couple. After all, they already get along so well, surely he can make it work and everyone else will be none the wiser?
What I haven't seen is anyone talk about is how all this new information re-contextualizes Julie's meltdown over the unopened black flower bud from the Springtime update. Because now, we can reasonably assume that that wasn't Julie the puppet panicking over a flower bud, it was Julie the handler panicking over something else. I initially speculated that the black flower was Marlo watching the show like a hawk to ensure that it met their standards (i.e. Good Christian Values™), b/c the very tip of it looks like the bullseye in their logo. But between the Frank update, the Eddie update, and all the general vibes I get that Julie is going to die, I've begun to wonder if the flower is meant to be something else. After all, when Frank digs it up to hide it in his shed, he and Julie both treat it like they're hiding a dead body.
Julie Joyful, as we know, is associated with flowers. Flowers are often used to refer to sexual and reproductive concepts (sexual fertility, the term "deflowering", Georgia O'Keefe's famous flower paintings that look like certain reproductive organs, springtime symbolizing the birth of new life, etc.). With "Frank" adamantly trying to hide his orientation, it's entirely possible that he and "Julie" had sex at some point. And she, being a chronic people-pleaser, would likely go along with it to make him happy, even if it wasn't what she wanted for herself.
But when you can't openly discuss your sex life without stigmatization, and the birth control pill is still a recent development, how else does a man prove he's had sex with a woman?
A baby.
This is sheer speculation on my part, so for all I know I'm gonna get proven completely wrong in a future update, but like...I don't think that's a literal flower in Frank's potting shed.
I think it's possible that the unopened flower is meant to represent a dead baby.
How this hypothetical baby could've died, I can't say for sure. But I can say that pregnancy does a number on one's physical and mental health. There's always a risk that you or the baby could die, and even if you both make it, postpartum depression is still a thing. You've been carrying a living organism inside of your body for no more than nine months, and the entire time it was in there growing, it leeched nutrients from you and pressed down on your organs. You then spend several hours in labor trying to squeeze it out, and if for whatever reason you can't, then someone has to cut you open to get the baby out. Your hormones go into overdrive trying to prepare this thing for life, they don't just automatically go back to normal once the baby leaves your body; you have to readjust to how you functioned before, but now with another mouth to feed. One that may or may not have been unplanned, can't talk with words, and is entirely dependent on you (and typically, your spouse) for survival.
Like how the flowers depend on Julie Joyful to make them bloom.
Pregnancy, motherhood, and the nuclear family are often presented as these beautiful, joyous miracles that give our lives meaning, things that we all must aspire towards. That a man's life is somehow lesser without a woman, and a woman's life is somehow lesser without a man AND children.
But pregnancy is, in its own way, a form of body horror.
Julie the character has remained her usual, cheery self throughout the story so far. But Julie the handler has been staring out her window in a stupor since the Springtime update, phone off the hook so nobody can reach her, and ignoring the letters of concern from her bound-to-be.
And this emotionally-disturbed Ophelia Hamlet-coded puppeteer just gifted her bound-to-be a gun.
