Part 3/3 I think that the pre-apocalypse world lends itself to this kind of manipulation much better. So why help Jonah succeed? This has been bothering me for a while, and the closest thing I have to a theory is that helping Jonah’s ritual succeed was just a first step in a much larger plan, that the current apocalypse world is a stepping stone to something else, but beyond that I have no clue. Anyways, I just wanted to hear what you thought about all this or anything you'd add. Love your blog!

Thank you so much for the mail! And for reading the blog. I know I don’t really update it much, but it’s so sweet to know people still look through and get a kick out of it.

My thoughts on The Web are complicated. It’s the entity that I have the hardest time understanding, but I love it all the more because of the enigma. I can’t promise a satisfactory answer, but I’m more than happy to share my current theories!

I think you’re spot on in guessing that The Web knows there’s more to come. However, I don’t necessarily think it’s a foregone conclusion The Mother of Puppets wanted Jonah to succeed. I think it’s a possibility. A strong one, but I think it’s equally likely it saw the ascendance of The Archives as something inevitable and planned accordingly - not moving to stop it, but putting plans in place to survive while keeping a close eye on the important players. Maaaaybe pulling a string every now and again to make sure it was in a position of power when the time came.

We know TMA is a tragedy. What we don’t know is what form that tragedy will take - whether personal, global or something in between. If global, I think it’s likely that the world might just be screwed. There might not be a way to change it back, and as Oliver Banks pointed out in his “report to prevent future deaths” - with no new humans being born, eventually, the pool of people to feed off of will shrivel up, killing the fears in the process. The fearscape is an unsustainable existence. A world in decline.

If there’s truly nothing to be done? A portal to another world, another reality, seems handy. And The Web has one waiting at Hill Top Road.

But why not leave? Why hang around? There’s a case to be made that The Web’s gorging itself before the inevitable decline, but I don’t think that explains Annabelle or The Web’s interest in Martin and Jon. For all that I’m not a Web!Martin truther, I do think there’s a reason the theory is so beloved. The Web’s shown an active interest in both of our protagonists, and I think it’s likely it needs something from them before it absconds. It’s possible that everything The Web’s done to manipulate the plot has been to ensure that these two people would be there the moment it needs them most. 

Everything else I have is shaky. I’ve wondered if the tapes might be an evolved version of the Leitners (used to gain a foothold and seed fear into the world on the other side of the portal - assuming there’s only one). I’ve indulged in a wacky theory that the bleeding, eight-branched trees outside of HTR and Albrecht von Closen’s home in Schramberg might be part of the horrifying creature Annabelle talked about when she told us “when a spider reaches a certain size, it is often not entirely made up of spider anymore”. I have also wondered whether or not this is the first world The Spider’s watched burn before starting anew. Maybe the world-that-was always belonged to The Mother of Puppets. It was just so subtle no one knew.

There’s so much I don’t understand. So much I can’t explain (like the overlapping imagery throughout the show between The Spider and The Eye), and I genuinely don’t know if Jonny will give us answers to it all. Part of The Spider’s charm rests in its ambiguity, but yeah. Long answer short? I agree. Elias was just a stepping stone, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

[I just realized this made a whole-ass blog post instead of just replying to the lovely anon who asked my opinion. I know how to Tumblr. Tumble? Blog! Let’s go with blog. Anyway, here’s part 1 and 2 of the question in case anybody wanted to read the whole prompt:] 

Part 1 of 3 Can I hear your thoughts on this? Ok so at this point I think there’s plenty of evidence to prove that throughout the first four seasons the Mother of Puppets has been working to make sure Jonah’s ritual succeeded. We can see the Web’s influence every step of the way, as Jon becomes Archivist and gets marked by each of the powers. I also think the best evidence that the Web wanted Jonah to succeed is that Jonah did in fact succeed, and the Web tends to get what it wants.

Part 2/3 Loads of people have broken down all of its subtle manipulations, but the part I get caught up on is why. Peter Lukas said that the Web has never attempted a ritual of its own since it likes the world as it is, and I think this makes sense. We’ve seen a domain of the Web in the apocalypse, and while becoming a human puppet is scary enough, it doesn’t seem to fit with what the Web has always preferred, which is subtle manipulations that breed paranoia and make you question your free will