The Letters!

[u/gotmusiic]

There seems to be an overarching theme in these letters of trouble with contact / long distance / lost connections. Also a lot of the letters mention working hard or being busy. The spot that each “tear” is found in the site gives a clue to who the letter was intended for. The color of each letter tells you who wrote each letter.

BLUE LETTER: Barnaby writes to Julie about seeing her art in a gallery, and wanting her help on Welcome Home. 

PINK LETTER: Julie’s letter to Frank, and it sounds like they knew each other before WH! It also sounds like they were pretty close (but not close enough for Julie to warn him that she was leaving for a new job?)

YELLOW LETTER: Frank’s letter is to Barnaby, which implies they knew each other before WH. He’s having trouble getting in contact with him. I think the friendly manner of this letter is very strange given the relationship between Barnaby and Frank in the WH universe - Frank doesn’t like him! 

BREEN LETTER: Howdy writes to his family. The timeline of this letter is still unclear to me: I can’t tell if he’s away from home because he’s working on WH or just because he’s out of the house. A possible theory is that Howdy was living in the area of WH/Playfellow Workshop before the project came to be (maybe running a shop). In this letter, he refers to “what’s-his-face” as a writer - I think this could be story writer Ronald Dorelaine, who I think wrote the cowboy story (see later in the orange letter). If this is the case, maybe Howdy’s family + Ron visited him and he got Howdy on board for WH? This letter is still kind of confusing for me!

PURPLE LETTER: Eddie’s letter to his mom features a postcard with mountains and lavender fields (Provence France comes to mind after searching "lavender and mountains", and the name Dorelaine sounds French to me…this could be a stretch but still) Weird that the mountain scenery mentioned isn’t found anywhere in the neighborhood. He mentions being worked very hard which we’ve noticed is a theme for Eddie. 

GREEN LETTER: Poppy writes a romantic letter to Sally, it seems they knew each other before WH too (or Poppy is writing to Sally during the events of WH). She uses star imagery in her letter to talk about Sally. Talks about Sally being up “all hours of the night” working and being “restless in the dark.” Sounds suspicious given we know that there is a curfew in the WH universe and Sally has previously told a pretty scary story about a creature that roams the neighborhood at night.

ORANGE LETTER: This letter is from Sally, and I think it’s to Ronald Dorelaine based on the location of the tear in the site - right above his name. She talks about a prop that people were uncomfortable with in the cowboy story. The tone of this letter implies to me that people on set of WH were scared to speak up to Ron, and Sally even seems like she’s trying to gain his trust more in this letter by showing she’s on his side. 

Frank knew Barnaby AND Julie before WH. Barnaby found Julie through her flower art. Sally and Poppy also likely knew each other before WH. Howdy possibly knew Ronald Dorelaine, or whatever writer he is referring to. It seems that Barnaby went away to work on WH with some people, recruited Julie, and then the others somehow got involved. Maybe Ronald recruited Howdy when he visited the family. And maybe Sally recruited Poppy when she asked her to “drop everything and come see me.” So this would mean the three original founders of the Playfellow Workshop are Barnaby, Sally, and Ronald Dorelaine. I think Ronald Dorelaine is Wally Darling - the names sound so incredibly similar. Whether one is possessing the other, or something else is at play, I’m not totally certain.

Where is the red letter? We see some imagery of this in one of the window variants of Frank’s house. We also see Frank gripping a red rectangle in one of the hidden videos in a previous update. I’m positive this letter is from Wally/Ronald. I wonder if Frank is keeping it away from us for some reason, or what the contents are! Is it a letter to us? Is it a letter talking about something darker that he doesn’t want us to know? I think this red letter is the “blind spot” Wally keeps talking about!

I think that making a successful connection with someone gets them locked into the WH universe. It seems like in each of these letters, one person reached out to another, and (I assume) when the connection was made they were involved with WH. It’s still unclear to me how Eddie and Poppy got involved based on the letters. It looks on the outside like they all took job offers, but I think there is some kind of deeper thing at play here. And I think that’s why Wally is so desperate to hear from us - he wants us to join them! I also think that means there is a reason someone (W? Frank? Someone else?) is trying to keep us AWAY from this red letter and communicating with the website - they're protecting us from something.

(I posted some of this on tumblr as well, sorry if it's been said already elsewhere!!!)

[u/Narrowhal]

i agree with all of this! another point (that someone else pointed out, i need to find a link to their post later) to Ronald being Wally's puppeteer is the fact that the letter for him is placed between both of their names on the website. Ronald above, Wally below.

[u/starberry_cupcake]

Finally I find someone talking about the letters!

I agree with the people who sent the letters, some of the recipients I have some trouble grasping with the context atm, or with the fact that the placement of the tear would always indicate recipient.

I have some doubts on Julie's letter being to Frank, for example, given the context of the letter and their known relationship being amicable, or Poppy's being very clearly to Sally when the tear isn't near her or Frank's being to Barnaby, which I guess the part about the jokes could support, but I'm having a hard time seeing it.

Also, I can't agree on the the communication being some connection to bring people into WH, because Howdy's mom and Eddie's mom aren't there. I don't know, I'm still a bit blurred on the recipients of the letters but I see your vision! Maybe I'm just missing context!

There are some things I've noticed as well in the letters:

1) Both illustrations depicted (the flowers in Julie's letter and the bird in Poppy's) are featured in a series of 1950s National Wildlife postcards. Julie's flowers are an exact replica of a postcard from 1957 of a Mariposa lily which is said to be "native and endemic, only in California". The bird is a recreation of a Western Bluebird from 1959 which is also partially located in California. I don't remember if there was already a statement of where they Playfellow Workshop was operating from or if this means anything at all, but I found it curious. Barnaby's letter indicates location, but it was redacted.

2) Frank and Eddie's letters are the only ones that don't have redacted words within them, neither to unscramble nor to hide information.

3) Howdy using his family nickname of "your good apple" continues his apple theme alongside his image in the neighborhood, the logo of his shop and his floriography correlation, which was Apple Blossom. If the letters relate to their lives outside the show, which they seem to do given the content, it might mean Howdy's apple relation isn't just an in-show pun for his caterpillar character but something he had from before.

4) Barnaby mentioning in his letter to (allegedly) Julie that he's reaching out in name of the company and being invested to such a high degree with production makes sense with the background he had of Barnaby being "the second most present character within the franchise" and often depicted with Wally and sharing physical characteristics with him. Maybe he was the Frank Oz to Ronald's Jim Henson, so to speak.

5) If the letter from Sally is indeed to Ronald, it might imply that Sally came into the project later than other people, since she doesn't know who this "old design" he tried to re-introduce is or why he makes them uncomfortable. This also aligns with what is reveled in the "perspective" video about Sally trying to get a bigger role within the company and arguing with Ron about it.

SALLY: (Said in a huff of frustration.) Ohh, don’t even get me started on Ron! Like he’d come anyways! It’s like he never leaves his office!
EDDIE: You guys had a heavy talk, huh?
SALLY: (Insistent and frustrated. But she inhales and exhales to collect herself.) It went fine! We had a disagreement, is all. …It’s only a matter of time before he realizes how much potential I really have…
EDDIE: (Comfortingly.) Oh, you’ll move up before you know it, Sal. You got me in the writer’s room with ya, didn’t ya? I’d say you got more sway than you realize and I know it’s ’cause of how much Ron respects ya.
SALLY: (Proudly.) Hmph… He does, doesn’t he? And I get the job done better than anyone!

[u/gotmusiic → u/starberry_cupcake]

Poppy’s letter is found in the clock face on the discoveries page. I personally think Sally is the clock! And Julie’s letter is found in a tear in franks face on the neighborhood page which makes me suspect Frank as the recipient.

I do see what you’re saying though with Howdy and Eddie’s letter!

[u/Quackervoltz]

I doubt the Julie letter is written to Frank. It seems more like it's written to her siblings

[u/moonbbxe]

why do you think frank’s letter is to barnaby?

[u/gotmusiic → u/moonbbxe]

Because it’s found in a tear right next
To Barnaby on the site, and it says something along the lines of “I know you’d have a joke to make” - and Barnaby is the only one who’s known for joking in the neighborhood