As first, it seems a bit silly that even Rider sings to Horse in the world they live in. But for two reasons is it appropriate. First, it may be a coping mechanism to help Horse get through the fiery ruins of the village, as she is still a steed and needs gentle encouragement. Second, there's a certain Symbolism that (when compared to the Centaurs' singing) Rider's song feels more dignified and elegant. It's meant to establish the comparison between her world and the titular Centaurworld, and why Horse doesn't take to the latter.
Later, Horse attempting to sing "Hello Rainbow Road" is noticeably prompted when she remembers Rider's song. She's remembering that Rider used her song to help Horse ease her fears so she could move on. Here, Horse is doing the same for Wammawink and her herd, using songs to help ease their worries about leaving home so they can move on. Also counts as Fridge-Heartwarming, showing how much Rider has influenced Horse and why the latter wants to return to the former so badly.
According to Horse's narration, the general wanted her and Rider to retrieve the artifact because (even if they didn't know what it did at the time) it's supposed to be the key to winning the war. Now that we know it acts as a portal to a world of centaurs who can use magic on a whim, it puts things in perspective. Of course, the general would request the artifact, especially if it meant having allies who could fight the Invaders with limitless magic.
The revelation that the General is a former centaur trying to seal away the Nowhere King for his own selfish purposes would actually explain how he knew about the existence of the one of the key pieces. He was once a centaur and would know a thing or two about such keys.
The Princess once told the Elktaur that centaur magic is best welded when both the centaur's human and animal halves are in harmony. The key that teleported Horse to Centaurworld only took effect because, in a metaphorical way, she and Rider are like two halves of a whole centaur. They share a bond that makes them as one being.
There's a certain Book Ends to the Mysterious Woman's songs. Her first song is about how awful and horrible love is, reflecting on how it drove the Elktaur to becomes the General and the Nowhere King all in the name of love. Her final song in "The Last Lullaby" is about her acknowledging that everything the General-and-or-Elktaur did "for love" wasn't love at all. It signifies that she's finally growing "wiser" that love shouldn't be so horrible to involve the terrible things the Elktaur did.
When Rider first meets the General, the latter presents himself as the stable hand to jokingly mess with her. On the surface, it seems to be a small joke. But in a symbolic way, this is Foreshadowing that deep down, the General is the kind of person to hide who he truly is, the way he hid his elk half from his bride for 10 years. If nothing else, it's supposed to hint to the audience that we can't trust him.
Why does the Elk insist to Horse that they celebrate with cake, specifically? Because cake is associated with one of the Nowhere King's happier memories (as Elktaur) when he and the Princess celebrated his accomplishment as Rift Keeper with cake. It was also one of the better foods Elk got to eat when he was forced to fend for himself.
Becky Apples is noticeably Horse's Shadow Archetype. Yes, she's a very good warhorse in that she revels in battle like she's supposed to. But she's what Horse would be if she didn't have her redeeming qualities of loyalty and (later on) compassion.
Notably, Horse's muzzle is lighter-colored when she undergoes her Toon Transformation. It's not just there to symbolize how much younger and brighter Centaurworld has made her. It's also meant to set up how unfamiliar she looks to Rider.
There's a Stealth Pun to how each character is cartoony or not based on how the world affects them. It's meant to represent a character taking themselves seriously. Horse becomes cartoony because she's learning to not stress over who she is as a warhorse. By contrast, the Elktaur is more serious-looking than his fellow centaurs because he takes himself too seriously.
Wammawink's overprotective attitude and eventual attachment to Horse makes a lot more sense when it's revealed that she was the only survivor of her old village after it was razed to the ground. She's already lost one herd, so her coddling the others and keeping them close to her is her way of making sure it doesn't happen again.
Why does Ched call Malandrew a "demon", and initially seem so afraid of him? There's the obvious—Malandrew is completely monochrome in a world of colourful critters, and tried to use Ched as a croquet ball in childhood. But pay attention to that flashback—Ched is physically a child, and so is Malandrew. Flash forward at least thirty years (going by Durpleton's age relative to Ched)...and Malandrew doesn't show any signs of aging. No wonder Ched freaked out a little, Malandrew is definitely not normal.
When Horse, along with many others prior, go to the Whaletaur centaur to end their pain. The Hero's Journey, AKA the monomyth, describes a part in the journey where the hero either dies or is at least demoralized and defeated, only to rise from the ashes as a new person. This part is literally called the belly of the whale. It would make sense for this part in the story to be represented by a literal whale.
The unnamed woman had been following the trail of the herd since at least episode 6 but doesn't catch up to them until episode 10. That's because she's a human, who is just slower than large quadrupeds. It took Wammawink stalling and Comfortable Doug's musical number for her to catch up
The Nowhere King is the only resident of a Void Between the Worlds, where nothing else exists. He really is the king of nowhere.
Made even more bitter by Season 2, which shows that he is someone with no place to be. Namely, he is the elk part of a magically split Elktaur, whose human part took all the benefit of being split - by marrying the woman the Elktaur loved. Worse, the human part first tried to kill the elk part, then imprisoned him for ten years. No wonder the elk part felt he belonged nowhere, and as he stepped into insanity, he took Nowhere King as a moniker.
The mystery woman's and the Nowhere King's mere presence shifts the tone of the series to a more dramatic and serious atmosphere. However, unlike the Nowhere King, the woman still has moments of comedy, albeit small. If you notice, however, the only times the comedy appears is during the time they're in Centaurworld and not the void where the Nowhere King resides. Given the way Centaurworld works, she'll have to follow the rules of the world.
The Woman's final song says she'll "be here to help turn the key". She does turn the key—it turns around in midair before turning into a spear.
The Birdtaurs calling Wammawink the "worst" character in the cast makes sense, at least when you are watching the show from the outside. Without context or knowledge of her backstory as an orphan with attachment issues, she just seems like an overly-doting mother figure at best or an overly clingy & annoying person at worst. Compared to Glendale and Durpleton, she doesn't have as many comedic relief moments.
In addition to the herd being more like a family than anything, why would the "But we're platonic" line make sense? Look at who says it: Glendale, one of three females in the herd...and Zulius, who has shown some very clear attraction to men. Even if there were romantic feelings in the herd, Zulius would be the last one to have romantic feelings for Glendale or any other female friend of his.
While usually people moving from Human World to Centaurworld start turning more thin-line-cartoony the more they embrace Centaurworld, the Mysterious Woman's only non-standard trait is her poofy (but not that cartoony) lavender hair. Season 2 offers a potential explanation: As a young princess, she often traveled to Centaurworld for leisure and loved that world more than her own dull one. Her fascination towards Centaurworld manifested as lavender hair during that time, but because she only made trips there and didn't settle in there, her hairstyle didn't turn. Later on, when she trapped herself into Centaurworld, her hair did turn poofier, but her cynicism and seriousness prevented further transformation.
When Zulius sees the grease boys oiling up a buff centaur and he asks how he can get the job, his mouth looks notably puckered or chapped, as if he had dry mouth. In other words, he looked really thirsty.
When the Mysterious woman confronts both The Nowhere King and the General, the latter tries to deny their evil and pleads for her to return to him while the King remains dead silent and motionless. Even as she runs down the General to kill him who is desperate to save his own life, he does nothing to rescue his other half, knowing full well it will be the death of them both. When the woman finds them again in the gorge, The Nowhere King lays close to his human half's corpse and immediately complies with her request to become whole again. Judging by his past and his willingness to be slain by her and his inner good aiding horse, it can be inferred that unlike the general, his love for her was real. He was willing to abide by her wishes and desired his reunion/death as well.
However, in the Rift: Part 2, the Nowhere King blames the woman for turning him into the monster he became and claims he forgives her, despite his skeleton self being a result of his own tinkering with the key. If anything while both halves genuinely loved her at first, by the end all that's left is obsession, hatred, and regret. The elk half accepts his death more willingly given all the time he spent isolated in the rift, as if he was already dead, while the General, after living as a human for so long, had more of a sense of self-preservation. Both were once the same and where their places switched, they would have acted the same.
One may assume that in our language, Minotaurs should mean a creature that is half-bull, half-man. However, the show uses Minotaurs in another way. According to Greek myth, the origins of the Minotaur were a result of the intercourse between a human woman and a bull. In the context of the show, Minotaurs only refers to the unnatural fusion of the creatures.
To clear up confusion, this would mean that a half-bull centaur would rather be a Bulltaur, not a Minotaur
Another way of looking at how the show does minotaur is the fact that they're a failed attempt by the Nowhere King to use the Key to create more centaurs. He created taurs, but instead of a humanoid upper body on a nonhuman body plan, he got a nonhuman head on a humanoid body plan.
Gary was Becky Apples' trainer, and apparently he was with her until quite recently. So how did his skeleton end up into Centaurworld while the Rift was closed? The answer lies in moletaurs, who are able to dig between the worlds; Gary probably accidentally ended up into moletaurs' tunnels and got sentenced. And why is he a skeleton already? Centaurworld magic; in Centaurworld, things tend to be cheerful and wacky, and skeletons look less gross than decaying corpses.
When a sheepish Rider delivers her report to the General, after mistaking him to a stablehand, he completely believes her about the fact that her Horse ended up in another world, shapeshifted into a whimsical beastie, and they fought for their lives against a king that tried drowning them in tar. It turns out he was too reasonable; the General knew all along that the Nowhere King was his other half.
In a way, the Nowhere King represents the two more common attributes we describe as "evil". His beast form is reduced to petulant murderous impulses while his human side is a calculating sociopath.
Zulius' Freeze Frame causing a burning sensation on anyone in the panel with him can be understood as an interpretation of the burn-in effect from leaving a screen paused for too long.
In the Tree Shaman episode, what Horse needed truly was to see Wammawink's backstory. What power does she later gain for herself? The power to see others' backstories!
More of a case of Fridge Humor, but speaking of the tree shamans, why does Durpleton want/need his talking farts to be proud of him? His parents are also assholes.
The tiny Wammawink in "Holes, part 2" flees because she's terrified of the original Wammawink's giant eye. Moletaurs don't have eyes, so of course Doug is able to befriend the tiny centaurs!
That sight gag also shows why the ladybugtaur in Wammawink's flashback was so apathetic to her. He didn't see a suffering girl, he saw a terrifying giant.
Horse decides, sight unseen, that Becky Apples is hateful. Symmetrically, the Woman- Becky's future rider- decided that the herd were naive and irresponsible before she even met them.
The General was ready to acknowledge Rider's story and jump into action immediately, not just because this girl showed up knowing of the Nowhere King, but since it's established the two suffer from Synchronization, The General probably suffered magical injuries and stabbing pains out of nowhere from Wammawink and Waterbaby shooting the Nowhere King, and then Rider impaling him with the key spear; he knew the Nowhere King was under attack by people who could and would kill him, and when he didn't drop dead after the pain subsided, he knew they had failed and his other half was most likely free. Of course, this would also make his support of Rider and aiding Waterbaby all part of his gambit; once the Centaurs were afield in combat against the Nowhere King, everyone who had the potential to kill either half would be in one place for either or both of them to kill off... except he wasn't counting on the Old Woman, who neither of them could bring themselves to harm.
In episode 1, Horse drops into a tiny, isolated world in which people ignore their trauma by repeating riskless, "fun" acts that barely stimulate them. In episode 8, Wammawink does the same thing. It's a sign of her Character Development that she can now see the darkness and futility of such a world, and understands (even if not consciously) why Horse needed to escape it. Not long after Wammawink frees the whaletaur's victims, her herd unlock the path between worlds and leave Centaurworld for the first time, in a literal demonstration of how their symbolic knowledge of their reality has grown. Instead of being stuck on Earth (their trauma) or in Centaurworld (their self-imposed repression of that trauma), they can move between realities as needed to truly heal themselves and improve both worlds. Wammawink still uses escapist coping mechanisms when she needs to, but she is also capable of being honest about her pain with others and fighting her abuser instead of running.
It's also notable that Wammawink and Horse's arcs intersect at that moment, because it shows that they're drastically different characters adjusting to the same reality. Horse's arc starts with her beginning to understand that the Herd are also traumatized people who need their coping mechanisms as much as she does. Wammawink's arc ends with her saving Horse from over-applying that mentality. Because they see their past paths in each other, they can help each other escape those paths. Commonality is, strangely, exactly what leads to diversity.
The Horsetaur's "privilege" is given a lot more context when you take the final episode into account. Humans treated Centaurs appallingly, it would make sense that the Horsetaurs - who look the most "human" all things considered - would have either been treated better by the humans, or would have tried to assert themselves as superior to their counterparts in that environment. They're even trying to emulate human world environments - albeit not very well!
Horse and Rider's relationship is a distinct parallel to the Elktaur and Mysterious Woman's relationship. When Horse was separated from Rider, she was terrified that her time in Centaurworld (as well as her Toon Transformation) would change her so much that Rider wouldn't recognize her. However, when Horse and Rider finally reunite, their bond ultimately proves powerful enough that Rider is able to recognize Horse despite her having changed. In contrast, the Elktaur didn't like who he was at all, and tried to force himself to change into someone he believed would make him a suitable match for the Mysterious Woman. Instead, the Elktaur's self-hatred and extreme actions not only resulted in the creation of the Nowhere King and turned the Mysterious Woman into a Broken Bird, but it was All for Nothing as the Woman later admits she would have loved him as the Elktaur anyway.
You'd think the soldiers of Humanworld would start to notice that the General hasn't aged since the Nowhere King became corrupted, but of course they don't. Since he orders his men to capture the Nowhere King alive and unharmed so that the General can deal with him personally and murders the ones who try to kill the Nowhere King themselves, and since the war has already claimed the lives of all the other adults of the General's (apparent) age, not only do his soldiers have no frame of reference for what a human of his years even looks like in the first place, they only ever know him by his rank, not how long he's held it. Nobody who actually gets to meet him in person lives long enough.
Apart from the Elktaur, all the Rift Workers seem to be holetaurs. Well, duh, of course they are. The holetaurs probably originated the rift in the first place; the rift's just a big, oft-traveled and well-maintained holetaur hole!
What is the nature of the war or the warriors that Glendale mentioned in the song? Is it the reason why Wammawink is so protective of her herd?
Answered in episodes 4 and 5: It's the same war that Horse and Rider were fighting in the human world, against the same enemy, and that enemy wiped out Wammawink's entire home village and family.
Horse's narration claims that the war has been going on for as long as she can remember and that it claimed her parents. What has Horse been through as a foal to grimly remember that this war claimed her father and mother?
Worse still, according to theories connecting to how young Wammawink was when she lost her village to the same war, this war has been going on for up to fifty years.
The fact traveling between universes can lead to the visitor's form morphing to match the locale in this setting has some rather disturbing implications if that's the reason the Nowhere King Was Once a Man, what kind of place could he have been sent too to end up as... that?
Probably for staying in the Void for so long.
This ended up being Jossed come to Season Two, with the actual reveal of the Nowhere King's backstory.
The horror from this is it shows the Elk using the Key to create minotaurs and each time he does, he becomes corrupted more and more. The thing is, he simply didn't care and continued to use the key as his flesh and bone is stripped away, leaving him an oozing mass. At that point, he was too far gone to care and only wanted revenge.
"The Ballad of Becky Apples" opens with the General carrying a wounded soldier back to camp, along with the riderless horses of an entire battalion that was wiped out. With the reveal that his life is tied to the Nowhere King's and that he'll kill his own soldiers if they try to eliminate the Nowhere King—as the General shows by stabbing Rider in the back—it's all but stated the General led the battalion to their deaths and has been sabotaging the war efforts of the people he's meant to protect just to ensure his own survival.
When the Elktaur used the key to split himself into two beings, both retain the memories and intelligence of the original. But he tested the process on a rutabagataur, which split into a baby and a normal rutabaga. Or was it normal? Did he briefly create an intelligent rutabaga? Also, many rutabagataurs are crushed, exploded, or eaten over the course of the rest of the series, so...
To add to this, if he hadn't put the rutabegataur back to normal, what would've happened to it? Imagine cooking or eating the rutabega, and then suddenly, your infant is dead, possibly by grotesque means, of which there's no reasonable explanation. Yikes.
Alternately, the rutabaga somehow remains safe, but you're left over time to wonder why this apparently human infant has never aged one day, assuming the process works for the rutababy as it did for the Elktaur.
Some additional Fridge Horror; Rider explains to Horse that the minotaurs merely held her prisoner when realizing they outnumbered her, and she was able to find the portal. We find out they were under the Nowhere King's control. In the Series Finale, the General impales Rider In the Back when she attempts to kill the Nowhere King. What does it say that the minotaurs, dreaded enemies, had more of a moral code than an ostensible Big Good?
Probably that they were planning on eating her or using her to make another minotaur.
The Elk's food memories appear goofy at first, but are dark when you learn he used to be a person and is now pretty much reduced homeless in an animal form and eating trash. And while his imprisonment chronologically happened later, it gives another meaning to how important food is for him in his memories.
Durpleton's backstory becomes even more heartbreaking when you notice his parents have actual names (Tony and Gurple Durpleton), while he has a Repetitive Name (Durpleton Durpleton), showing his parents didn't put any effort into naming him... almost as if they never even wanted him to begin with.
The Nowhere King's attack of Rider looks like a magic version of sexual harassment.
When the Woman meets the Nowhere King, he's nothing but respectful, almost to the point of reverence. When the Woman meets the General, he starts talking big talk about how he's been motivated by his love for her this whole time. From their very first appearances, you can tell which one of them is the one who actually inherited the Elktaur's feelings for the Woman. In a similar vein, you can see exactly how the magic split him down the middle: The Elk is everything that the Elktaur thought he needed to rid himself of, the General is everything he thought he had to be in order to have the life he wanted; the Elk has an unbelievable amount of patience and (for good or ill) enough personal integrity to refuse to compromise it, appreciates even his lowest moments because he knows how much worse it can get, a pretty good sense of humor, and most importantly, a desire to belong in the first place. Meanwhile, the General is everything else: smart and strong and handsome and easily-loved, but also cowardly and self-centered. Makes all the Rift Part 1 stuff hit different...
The Nowhere King's angst song started with him watching a human throwing a frisbee to a dog. Was he really attracted to humanity, or to the power he thought humans wield over other creatures?
More like fridge Tear Jerker, but there's probably a reason Horse and Rider are simply known by those incrediblyimpersonal names. Considering that they live in a world that has been war-torn for who-knows-how-long, it's most likely a way to make sure they don't get too attached to each other. War Is Hell, after all.
Going by the affection they have for each other, it's more likely that Horse simply did not know or understand Rider's name, considering she was just a horse.
Rider never corrects Horse at any point during their reunion or goodbye, and openly refers to Horse as simply Horse. Either it's a cultural thing, or they tried not to get attached but failed miserably.
Alternatively, "Rider" really is her name, as it can be in the real world, and she opted to give her horse a similarly on-the-nose name as a joke.
Another fridge sadness: When finding out Wammawink is a war orphan who is the Sole Survivor of her village, there's a scene of her packing her stuff, with a clump of pink fur as one of the items. It may seem kind of redundant if you think the fur belongs to Wammawink, but if you compare it to the rest of Wammawink's fur, you'll see that it's a different shade; the fur doesn't belong to Wammawink and is most likely a Tragic Keepsake from a dead loved one.
Those seaweed accessories the Whaletaur wears? Yeah, those are bandages around her forearms/wrists. It says a lot about her that she's willing to do what she does despite the obvious toll it takes on her, both for her constant crying and what is apparently a self-harm habit.
from leaving a screen paused for too long.