Season 2 of The Walking Dead Game was actually Clementine having a dying dream.
Cliche? Crazy? Maybe, but hear me out. This is actually a repost of something I posted on Telltale Game’s message boards. After seeing bisexual-amethyst asking if S2 of The Walking Dead Game was a dream, I felt feel this might be a good time to revisit this idea I was kicking around before I just did my own personal rewrite.
I think that, even though it wasn’t written to be seen this way, S2 both makes more sense and works better as a dramatic story if you assume everything happening to Clementine after the scene with the dog is actually part of dying dream. Think about it, which is more likely?
An eleven-year-old girl lost in the woods reeling horribly from a fight with a single dog is suddenly saved, later reunited with someone who was almost certainly dead in a part of the world far from where he was last seen, then accomplishes incredible feats of strength and endurance far beyond most adults, including walking off a rifle shot to the chest with no real consequences, and being seen as an equal by a vicious dictator, all in the span of a little over a week.
OR
A combination of malnutrition, exhaustion, shock, blood loss and possibly even rabies has caused Clementine to hallucinate an elaborate scenario in her head in a subconscious attempt to deal with her impending death.
If everything post dog bite is in Clem’s head, it actually explains the many plot holes, inconsistencies, and even the directionless feeling of the story because it’s Clem’s mind slowly coming to terms with the fact she’s dying. She’s thrust into these situations constantly because this is HER vision where she really is the center of the universe. The characters often feel flat or unreal because their merely concepts and memories intermingling with Clem’s psyche instead of real people.
Pete’s her desire for a strong, encouraging guardian like Lee, but the bitter memories of losing Lee cause Pete to die in the same way, getting bitten while being careless for just a moment. Nick telling Clem “You could have saved him” is actually Clem’s own guilt over Lee dying.
Nick represents memories and feelings towards Ben, a pity at his plight and general like of his well-meaning nature despite his mistakes often being fatal for others. The scene in the shed contains things she may have wished she had said to Ben. Nick’s deaths run parallel with Ben’s as well. They both die either because a supposedly good man and teacher (Walter/Lee) chose to let them perish, or they simply perish out of sight before ever seeing Clem again. (Clem was in the Stranger’s clutches during Ben’s second death.)
Carlos and Sarah are a combination of Clem’s insecurities and her desires to escape the world she’s trapped in. She wants to be sheltered from the horrors she’s faced with, and yet she also hates herself for wanting that. The scene when she tries to teach Sarah to use a gun is a reflection on Clem’s own limitations when she can’t answer Sarah’s question about things Lee taught her, like what she means by saying “The gun is just a thing.”
Carlos hitting Sarah personifies her conflicted feelings between wanting to be strong and yearning just to live life as a little girl again. Carlos dying is the ultimate realization there’s nothing that can shield her from the horrors of the world, and Sarah’s deaths suggest that Clem think that even if people don’t abandon her simply because of what she is, she will still be a victim of fate, snuffed out before she ever got to live her life.
Alvin and Rebecca represent her parents. Their initial indifference and hostility a product of Clem’s bitterness towards them for not being there when she needed them most. Far away when she was scared and alone, just like she is while in the shed. But Clem’s overwhelming desire to be loved again overrides their initial characterization, turning them into friendlier people with a concern for Clem. This would mean AJ is actually Clem herself, a pure soul thrust into a horrible world without even so much as parents for guidance.
Carver is a personification of Clem’s outlook on the cruel people of the world. To her, there’s no rational reason for the way they act, so Carver is a petty bully with power. His abusive tendencies are senseless and arbitrary. His ideology non-sensical. His ignorance and self-inflated sense of importance, baffling. Ultimately he’s doomed by his own self-destructive nature because Clem has seen the same happen to the St. Johns, Crawford, and the Stranger.
The minor characters are likely smaller less defined fragments of Clem’s mind. Significant, but more allusive. Walter is Lee’s dual nature of being wise and generous in one instance, then angry and vindictive in the next. Mike is a crude recollection of Lee’s appearance, who eventually leaves Clem just before recalling the actual Lee himself in his entirety. Matthew is a stand in for Carley and Doug. Someone friendly and helpful who was senselessly cut down right in front of her. Bonnie is a caricature of Lilly’s transformation. She was someone Clem thought she could trust ultimately revealed to be bitter and treacherous after losing someone close to her. Arvo and the Russians are warped versions of herself and the original group brought on by her disapproval of robbing the station wagon, seeing them as thieving monsters in this instance who push a child into being complacent with their misdeeds.
Luke, Kenny, and Jane are are a unique evolution of Clementine’s delusions, representing her deep seated desire to be saved from death somehow. They are all introduced as idealized versions of a savior, only to be corrupted and replaced by the next delusion. Their conflicts and deaths representing Clem’s internal struggle to rationalize some kind of hope for her to cling to in her final hours.
Luke is the charming farm boy, an ideal hero of fantasy. A product of Clem’s Id. The strapping knight swooping in to save her. But as a product of fantasy, he is repeatedly foiled by reality. He lovingly carries Clem, only to drop her when he thinks she’s bitten. He nominates her to traverse the bridge, and she’s nearly killed when he can’t help her. He recruits Clem for a spy mission at Howe’s, then is discovered himself. He goes to save Sarah, he can’t, and if Clem does, his role as a the dashing hero causes him to neglect his duty, leading to Sarah’s death. His last act is to assure Clem everything is okay, then he dies.
Her more fantastical savior a failure, Clem turns to someone she actually knows to save her. With the loss of Christa still too fresh in her mind, Clem instead recreates Kenny, a hero born out of nostalgia and a part of Clem’s ego. Someone who was real and tangible and could still be out there, looking for Clem.
Kenny survives the impossible, reunites with Clem after being separated by years and hundreds of miles just to offer Clem shelter in a beautiful lodge where they’re safe and warm. But confronted by Carver, her stand-in for the evils of the world, she slowly remembers Kenny’s many faults. His pettiness, his stubborn nature, his tendency to lash out. Gradually the nostalgia gives way to the reality of who he was, and then the reality gives way to cynicism, replacing most of Kenny’s heroic traits with villainous ones.
With Kenny’s role as Clem’s hero tainted, Jane is introduced to the delusion as an idealized version of Clem’s future self, her super-ego in a sense. A Molly like figure, completely independent, capable, fearless, with no need for others. A projection of who Clem could be and the belief she could survive entirely on her own strengths and abilities without help. The things Jane teach Clem are things Clem already knows. She already knew how to disguise her scent from walkers, she checked the pockets of the dead man at the camp, and earlier in her own vision she knee-capped a walker at the bridge. These are things Clem already knows.
But this image is slowly corrupted by Clem’s subconscious realizing Jane isn’t the kind of person she wants to be. Her unwillingness to save Sarah represents Clem’s dilemma; to survive like this would mean to become the kind of person who would have left a younger Clem to die, simply because at some point she was a burden. And Jane’s concern for Clementine is actually Clem’s own selfishness and loneliness. A lonely and selfish figure constructed by Clem only to care for Clem. Her willingness to hide the truth about AJ, the image of Clem’s very soul, is the realization that Clem would have to lie to herself to function this way.
Clem’s journey throughout the story is her progressing through the five stages of grief. From Luke and Pete finding her in the woods to meeting Kenny at the lodge is clearly denial. Against all odds, wounded and alone in the middle of a forest, Clem is found and saved at the last second and later meets someone long gone from her past. Clem refuses to think she’s dying and wants to believe everything will work out when she see hints of a stable life at the lodge.
Then Carver crashes the lodge and ruins everything, symbolizing the transition from denial to anger. This part is largely Clem’s revenge fantasy against all the horrible people in the world that have caused her life to be so miserable. The St. Johns, The Bandits, The Stranger, The Girl who robbed her, the men in the woods who kill Christa. Her desperate desire to see these terrible people of the world punished, climaxing with her being the one to stop Carver herself, possibly even relishing in his execution.
Amid the Ruins is bargaining. Clem is doing a mental inventory of what she should have done or could have done. Jane’s willingness to leave Sarah, the aftermath of her decision with Sarita, robbing Arvo and shooting Rebecca, all decisions that reflect Clem’s past regrets and doubts. Should Lee have saved her from the Marsh House? Would he have been bitten if he hadn’t? Would things have been different if they hadn’t taken from the station wagon? Should she have shot him? All questions still haunting Clem to this day.
No Going Back is depression. The landscape is cold, bleak, desolate. There are no signs of hope. And with every step forward things seem to get worse, with Luke’s demise, Kenny’s madness and eventually climaxing with Clementine being shot while discovering the treasonous actions of the people she thought were helping her. A depressing scene indeed.
Her delusions finally peak when she regresses back to putting herself safely in Lee’s arms, desperately wanting to shut out reality and just go back to a time where she felt safe. But it doesn’t last; her time is running out and her delusions have begun to collapse into themselves, as seen with Kenny and Jane fighting for control over AJ, the metaphor for Clem’s soul.
Leaving with Jane or Kenny illustrates Clem’s unwillingness to accept her fate, clinging to one of her delusions to the bitter end. With Kenny it’s that despite all logic to the contrary, salvation is within arm’s length, and all she has to do is desperately believe in it. And Jane’s endings signifies her overwhelming wish to think she alone controls her own destiny, and that she will survive through sheer force of will alone.
But the alone ending, is Clementine finding acceptance. She abandons the Kenny and Jane delusions and reclaims AJ, reclaims her very own soul from her own despair. Her carrying AJ into the herd is symbolic of her readiness to meet oblivion with the clarity of mind that only comes with truly knowing one’s self.
She was a brave, kind and loving person who brought some light into the very darkest of times. She knows that even if her time was brief, it gave great comfort to the other weary souls making this terrible journey with her. She takes solace in having stared down all the horrors of the world knowing that even if they killed her, they could not kill who she was. And rather than live on as anything else, she’s happy to die true to herself. Still the same sweet girl who made her parents so very proud and Lee so very happy.
Again, S2 obviously wasn’t written to be interpreted this way, but I’ve always been a strong believer in that a lot of the fun in art is interpreting it in ways the artist didn’t imagine. There are some holes with this theory, specifically some of the things characters talk about, such as Walter quoting John Steinbeck or the “kissing stuff” specifics are things an eleven-year-old probably wouldn’t know of or be able to conceptualize. Also, this theory would mean the stupidity and randomness of the prologue and the sixteen months time skip DID happen.
But I feel this theory is still much less full of holes than the canon story, and one of the people I originally discussed this with suggested it might make more sense that this is Lee’s dying dream, in which he’s trying see a future for Clem. Things like the prologue would be an extension of the denial phase, Christa and Omid finding Clem being the kind of thing he’d want to happen, and it being dashed being his subconsciousness doubts forcing him to construct other forms of denial like people saving Clem or Kenny finding her instead.
This interpretation would also mean it’s Lee’s doubts about what he did that we’re seeing. Clem’s out of character actions of being suddenly cruel represent Lee’s concerns that he made the wrong choices and turned Clem into someone terrible. I even suggested this “dream” could be what happens if Lee is left to reanimate. Perhaps people who turn into walkers wind up trapped in their own mind while their bodies become monsters that kill others.
Who’s to say? Well, I guess any of you can if you want. I do love discussion. =)
