I said I’d make this post soon….fast forward 9 hours later….
This is vaguely an analysis but more an opportunity for me to yap about that Leafy & One scene
We’ve been led to believe that One is practically omniscient. She knows the past of every character, she understands their motivations, and she uses her knowledge to manipulate and threaten them. This episode shows her research process, and for the most part, it’s very sound. She observes the characters in the present, but then she learns about the show.
In addition to episode 1, we see One watching episode 5 and a few clips from episode 19. From these scenes it’s definitely implied she watched the whole show; and the framing of the shots suggests to me that One thought could use Leafy in a similar vein to how she used Pencil.
One’s line here is so, SO important, because it reveals how little she actually knows. If you’re new here, there are full story arcs on Leafy being alone and friendless, and how this is symptomatic of her larger obsession with “niceness.” The first of these arcs started in the finale of the first season, and continued through most of season 2 and season 4 both pre and post split. I’d argue Leafy’s loneliness is a critical cornerstone of her character, and has been explored loads in fanwork and touched upon in the actual show. One missed this. And Leafy’s line is an acknowledgement of that. It’s just a little to pointer to ‘well, you’re not as all powerful as I thought.’
While the scene shifts to a comedic tone, I do think there’s a lot we can gather here. Namely, the parallels between One and Leafy. One’s arc is essentially Leafy’s with asterisks.
Both of them want to belong to a group, had people who were meaningful to them (Firey, Three), and who experienced some kind of “betrayal” from them (Firey not letting Leafy onto Dream Island, Three sharing the meteor), who retaliated with much more force than the situation deemed necessary (Leafy stealing Dream Island, One killing Three), who had the people who they wanted to belong to turn on them, and those being the people responsible for isolating them for years (Season 1 characters chasing Leafy at the beginning of season 2, the other algebrarians sealing One in the moon), [interestingly, both Firey and Three were not directly responsible for their isolations but played a major role in it]. Their past actions haunt their present ones, and they spend significant portions of time trying to “rectify” what they did (Leafy attempting to talk to Firey, make new friends in the beginning of season 4, and One trying to restore Three, tracking down and stealing the power of all the other algebrarians).
Leafy recognizes herself in One, consciously or not is up to debate, and is probably why she does the following:
It can be argued how Leafy was “punished” and had a constant reminder of her misdeeds (I would argue the constant reminding of her past, her inability to have a social life outside of new players, who she then lost after old players told them about what happened), but Leafy is trying to do to One what happened to her. Leafy had a constant reminder of her misdeeds, and maybe it was the thing that motivated her to keep trying to escape her past.
TLDR; One isn’t omniscient, Leafy knows what she is (her)
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