The boy in "Don't Feed the Freaks" is the Freak at the end of the short.
At the end, the Freak is shown wearing the same scarf as the boy. This is because to the citizens of Autodale, he's a Freak.- Jossed by Friendly Shadow. However, the possibility that the Freaks are former humans remain.
- Not jossed, actually. Friendly Shadow could take place at a completely different point in the timeline.
The reason other towns failed is because they didn't have a Hive.
In "Don't Feed the Freaks", see see a lot of downed Matriarchs, indicating that there were a lot of cities like Autodale that fell apart.In a "Making Of" video, Word of God elaborates that the original Exceptional Girl, rather than being branded Ugly for not fitting Autodale's mold, was offered the chance to be hooked into the mainframe to help run the town. She agreed, and over time, more and more people with Exceptional abilities were captured and hooked up, forming what we now know as "Hive".
The reality is: Running a town is complicated. There are inevitably going to be situations you can't plan for. Cities that attempted to do this with the robotic Matriarch alone ran into situations that the Matriarch wasn't programmed to deal with, and things went downhill. Autodale, however, has several human brains of critical, creative, outside-the-box thinkers behind it, raising the odds that a solution to any situation can be found.
- Jossed: Those were likely failed attempts at cloning the original Matriarch, a nature goddess. Other gods were captured and installed, though only Autodale's didn't die or self-destruct.
Guesses and theories about how the series will end:
- It doesn't. The inhumanity of the system is so efficient, that the fatal malfunction of this sacrificial machine-city will take longer than the author of the series will be alive.
- The Matriarch will eventually die from aging. Without her, Hive, the robots, and the citizens will no longer be able to sustain themselves and will die.
- A scavenger from outside the city accidentally breaks one of the rotting, unmaintained support systems keeping the system alive, leading to its eventual death.
- A coalition of Freaks storms the city, conquering with heavy casualties and killing off the Hive, using the power of the city to mutate the world, sacrificing its remaining corrupted humanity to birth a new and alien ecosystem.
- This will be portrayed as a good thing, as Human society had decayed to insanity by that point, and the series will end on a bright note, with the world looking forward to a freer future.
- An exceptional citizen manages to rediscover hacking on their own and broadcasts the truth to the rest of the city, driving them insane and causing a panicked mass-evacuation.
- Hive eventually collects one exceptional citizen too many and loses itself to endless political bickering, leading to total societal collapse as robots begin making spontaneously violent actions even for Autodale.
- A being from another world discovers the monstrosity that is Autodale and uses its systems to radio for backup, bringing down a Kill Sat to wipe the capital out, and capturing the citizens for deprogramming.
- A second, final disease comes through and finishes what the first started.
- The Matriarch finally snaps and either escapes or dies trying, like the other Monarchs the Young Man found.
Eventually, the Freaks will become advanced enough to form their own civilization.
It's certainly plausible, considering that Autodale has been around for thousands of years and could certainly endure to see the Freaks develop that far and because the freaks have a humanoid body structure and seem much smarter than at first glance. The "Freak's" civilization will end up being much kinder and, ironically more human-like than Autodale (the supposed last bastion of humanity. It's possible that the freaks will end upbringing on the death of Autodale, either as barbarians ransacking the city or after they have become technologically superior to Autodale. The people of Autodale are severely inbred
- Their population is limited to a single walled city with no new immigrants, getting rid of "Uglies" severely limits their genetic diversity, and there's no indication that they're practicing genetic engineering. With the Matriarch explicitly warding off disease, it's possible that any conditions brought on by inbreeding depression are being suppressed. The shared skin, hair, and eye color shown by all Autodale citizens aren't just limited models and monochrome, but reflective of the town's limited gene pool.
Joe the Handyman in the "Model Citizen" short was also replaced and killed off, just like the family he supervised.
- Joe's interactions with the Robinson family might be indicative of him also developing his own autonomy, even if in a very small way, akin to how the Shadow has his own wants and desires in a different short. This was a huge no-no however, since Handymen are supposed to keep the people pacified, not develop any bond with them. As such, Joe was replaced and discarded, only further showing that even the beings that maintain the horrible system they're a part of are just as replaceable as the people they enslave.
