Transcription
Out of all the interesting stuff presented to us in chapter 5, by far the most interesting was the gut-wrenching next steps of the weird route. A scene that when I played through it made my skin crawl, my heart palpitate, and my hands shake. While the last chapter was scary, this was on another level.
Unfalteringly forcing Chris and Noelle into the lake, it fully encapsulates the feeling that you are trying to force something you are not supposed to. You're trying to break the game in spite of the cost. But that scene where the fabric of reality is seemingly torn asunder. Well, we have to wait for the aftermath. It means something. It means that every single theory up to this point of who the knight is has been wrong.
During this scene in which Chris and Noelle are forced into the lake, they are consumed by darkness and shadow. But they are together. Hand in hand. Thus, becoming one. Amalgamation of darkness. This is the knight. And I will prove it to you.
First of all, the knight has already been shown to have similarities to the amalgamates from Deltarune in its ability to change form and its dripping. Plus, being a creature of darkness and the others of its ilk also having ties to the amalgamates. The darkness that surrounds it acts like water and when it's attacked, it glitches the hell out as if its existence is a glitch or breaking of the game to begin with. But this scene at the lake, for such a short scene, it tells us everything. All we have to do is cross-reference it with the knight fight and one by one the dominoes begin to fall.
First and most obviously, the one and only act we get to perform in this fight is to hold our breath to try not to drown. We see as our vision narrows focusing on Noelle and only Noelle. Our chests tighten unable to breathe as we feel light-headed. Staring at none other than a golden star or the sunset all as the north and east winds blow fiercely. It always stood out to me as odd that it was the north and east winds, but look at this animation. Look at the lighting of the sun. The sun sets in the west. Noelle's hair is being blown southwest, which means that the north and east winds are blowing fiercely. Drying deeper and deeper, we feel surrounded. Our chests twisting until suddenly a tempest. Harsh winds accompanied by none other than rain or snow as we sink to the bottom of the lake. Our heartbeat is twisted as normally Noelle and Susie would feel each other's heartbeat. But here that beat is twisting and intertwining with Noelle's. Feeling cornered just like she had so many times before that. But now she gets to grow wings and fly just like she had wished. Together, both Chris and Noelle get dragged into the depths and become one. The texture of which permeates the knight's fight. But there is so much more that suddenly all seems to make sense.
One of the most prominent things about the knight is its poses and how they perfectly match a plethora of Chris's poses. The pointing, the hanging, the trying to look cool and so many others. A trend that yes, even continues into chapter 5 with this pose. Chris's X slash attack that they only have against Spamton Neo being reflected by the knight as well. Alongside the fact that both Chris's and the knight's weapon both change shape. Hell, even when you try to analyze the knight, it says Chris couldn't learn anything. Both because it is Chris and because during the weird route, Noelle says, "We know each other better than anyone." During the sword route, Chris kills Tenna just like how the knight kills him. And best of all, Chris is very accustomed to making dark fountains using their knife of which the knight uses the black knife. Thematically, the knight fight is like the Chara fight we never got. Red cuts the reality with the knife, the usage of 999, and of course Chara's counterpart is none other than Chris. With the final nail in the coffin being that when performing the final attack against Flowery, the attack Chris does is [ __ ] identical to the attack the knight does to kill him just a minute later.
Meanwhile, on the Noelle end of the spectrum, the deer antlers and deer-like face when it was screaming are dead giveaways. Just not to Dess being the knight, but instead Noelle. The sound effect the knight makes is even a slowed-down version of Noelle's scream. Noelle is the only character capable of using weapons outside her class, specifically a sword and more specifically the black shard. And when you cast Snowgrave, it makes this noise. Which is disturbingly similar to the sound that the knight makes. The knight has Chris's blades and poses while also having Noelle's magic and design philosophy. Are you convinced yet? Are you? Because we are only just getting started.
In chapter 4, Susie says that the Knight would have to be someone who goes to church and knows the mayor, of which both apply to Noelle. She even suggests they must have a connection to the police force, which would be Chris and their father, as Asgore was the police chief. And like any good Deltarune theory, it always comes back to roots. If you weren't familiar with the theory, it suggests that this area of Mantle Quest is representative of Hometown. Using this and looking where the lake would be is this area, in which a completely dark enemy mirrors our exact movements, whom we take full control of and are able to reach the other side. This enemy, who serves as a reflection of us, in the code has an alternate sprite, an alternate sprite that is a black deer. The black deer isn't Dess. It's so so much worse.
Then there's the biblical imagery. It's already known that the thorn ring is symbolic of Jesus's crown of thorns, but the Knight also has holes in their hands as if they were crucified, something we essentially see happen to Noelle during chapter 2. But you know what this means, right? This also tells us definitively who the angel is. There's been this question about whether the soul or Noelle or the Knight was the angel, but it's always been all three because they are essentially the same. Time and time again, Noelle is referred to as angel and shown with angel imagery. Meanwhile, the same applies to the soul, while the Knight is the one who is prophesied to open the angel's heaven. Weird route Noelle, having a piece of the soul and becoming the Knight because that that thing is the angel. And you want to know the most ironic piece of it all? During chapter 2, Queen even talks about making a new knight, and the person she chose was Noelle, telling her to choose the world that makes her happy. Of which, that is the chapter we actually begin turning her into the knight. By making Noelle fight, by making her kill her friend, we are making her stronger, strong enough to break the game, strong enough to be the knight, a character that does 999 damage and can literally slash through reality because they have found a way to break the game. They were, in fact, something else. Something no one could have predicted.
But how, I hear you shouting into the void, how can Chris and Noelle be the knight if they're right there? And that's because there is only one ending, one, meaning that the weird route isn't an ending. It will loop. The knight will take form out of our power, and using its determination, it will reset the timeline on its own, maintaining its own existence as it forces itself into the timeline, an anomaly. The weird route exists to show us how the knight came to be and why Chris >> [music] >> so faithfully serves it.
Meanwhile, on a normal route, the knight one by one kidnaps people, bringing them to the shelter, and then, as per the cut shadow crystal dialogue, freezes them. A gallery of preserved lightners before Susie will be the one to claim our power, and in order to prevent the tragedy, will reset the timeline. As she herself says that if she were to choose, she wouldn't have an ending. She would have it go on forever. Both routes will have us, the soul, entering either Susie or [music] Noelle. Then they will use our power to reset the timeline. Pink and gold, hopes and dreams, Susie and Noelle. The girl with hope crossed on her heart and the knight being made up of shadow crystals, which Shawn tells us are the power of lost dreams. With there being one true ending where we acquire the twisted sword and kill the knight, preventing the tragedy without Susie having to reset the timeline. Finally bringing about the end of the story. Don't forget, in Undertale, the sins of one route carry over to the next. And if you still need one more piece of evidence, when equipping the iron shackles, an ironic representation of Noelle's binding to the game, Noelle says, "I'm the ghost of holidays past." >> Don't forget, I'm with you in the dark.