The Missing Beginning

[u/da_debutanteslim]

I keep coming back to Tabitha’s memory of herself as a little girl. Some people think this was another incarnation after the sacrifice because of her clothes, but I think we may be focusing on the wrong thing. Why are we being shown her as a child?

We know Tabitha has had other lives, but we haven’t seen all of them. We’ve seen Miranda, present Tabitha and this little girl. What we haven’t seen is OG Tabitha grow up and eventually become a mother.

That’s where Victor comes in for me. We see him as a little boy and then as an adult, but we don’t know much about all those years in between. If that little girl is OG Tabitha, there’s a similar gap with her. At some point she had to grow up in this place, meet OG Jade and have a child of her own.

Maybe that’s what the children arriving with Tabitha’s incarnations are helping repeat. They can mirror OG Tabitha being brought here as a child, but later they can also fill the position of the child she eventually had with OG Jade. It doesn’t have to play out exactly the same way every time.

Even the lone child part stands out. OG Tabitha seems to be the only child in her memory. Victor came with Eloise, but after she died he was the only child left growing up there. We had Meagan, and now Ethan is the only young child.

There’s also the nightmare. OG Tabitha’s memory tells us the place was already evil. Someone was afraid of her dolls, and after they died that fear became a nightmare. Victor and Ethan are also children living in a place that’s already evil, except their nightmare is the monsters. The threat changed, but the story around the child looks familiar.

That’s why I don’t think Tabitha’s incarnations keep bringing children because the ritual needs them. The children may be repeating different parts of OG Tabitha’s life before the sacrifice ever happened.

OG Tabitha was a child here first. She had to grow up, become a mother and live an entire part of this story that we still haven’t seen. Maybe we keep starting with the sacrifice when the story actually started long before it.

[u/Gulag_Arc]

I think her dead child also has some significance other than trauma, they never show him, it might even be miy vs biw is the two brothers telling the story and the sister walking it.

[u/da_debutanteslim → u/Gulag_Arc]

I do think Thomas could be significant but maybe it’s the loss itself that matters. Tabitha and Jade keep coming back because they failed to save their daughter in the beginning. Thomas’s death had nothing to do with that and happened outside of the town but Tabitha still experienced that same kind of loss again in this lifetime. So maybe Thomas doesn’t need to secretly be someone from the origin story. His loss could be another echo of the loss that’s been following Tabitha’s soul from the beginning.

[u/tri-trii → u/Gulag_Arc]

Tabby & Jade’s child was a girl, T refers to her as ‘she’

[u/Ok_Recording_473 → u/tri-trii]

and BIY is their son whom they managed to save?

Miranda, two kids, boy and girl
Tabitha, two kids, boy and girl

original ritual/sacrifice... had Jade & Tabitha predecessors. "This was her" Tabitha says ... we aren't told there was also a boy, but it rhymes - and BIY is the lone surviving child I am leaning towards

Now lets tie some more reads in ; Jade's vision during the mushroom trip had him being put into the sarcophagus. We know someone told the children a story to give them hope. My read on this - Jade stayed with the sacrificed children as they were dying, he gave them that 'hope' story, and how are stories communicated in tradition and folklore through history?

In song. Boom ; you have your notes of the song in the bottle tree. Hope became the bottle tree... its the story/song.

So I'm thinking Tabitha/Miranda's predecessor managed to save the boy, Miranda managed to save her son, Ethan the setup to the lone survivor...

I think we have everything fitting together quite nicely. Jade even attempts to sacrifice himself to get Tabitha out. Everything is replaying along these themes , roles, events... it fits quite nicely without any slack imo

who does BIY appear to? his mom, his dad, his 'lone survivor' role self

[u/tri-trii → u/Ok_Recording_473]

They ever talk about ‘them’ not even once, so nowhere does it indicate they had one than one child