Timeline
- Something about timeline does not add up. How long ago was the war in Centaurworld exactly? It seems to be relatively recent even, since a lot of characters get involved in it one way or another. But on the other hand, Beartaur refers to the war as something ancient, that he researched only through murals and other indirect sources. And murals depicted not only show centaurs, but humans also - but most of centaurs have apparently zero idea who exactly humans are. Unless, of course, there were several conflicts, and the war depicted on murals was long before the latest.
- Multiple conflicts sounds likely: it might have been that the one that the murals told involved humans, but the one that destroyed Wammawink's village didn't?
- In addition to the multiple conflicts theory, maybe different centaurs have different ages or even different lifespans? For example Wammawink might be chronologically much older than Beartaur, so "her ancient" isn't the same than "his ancient"?
- If the centaurs age differently, then the humans might too. Sure, the Mysterious Woman might look as if she's in her 50's or 60's, but in the show that might mean she's actually 100. Just because there are humans in the show, doesn't mean they have to age at the same speed that actual real humans do.
- Timeline thinking with info from Season 2: Here are events in chronological order:
- The elktaur meets the princess and falls for her. He wants to woo her, but increasingly feels like he should be a human so she would love him. He experiments magic and manages to come up with a way to split a centaur into human and beast halves. He uses this magic to split himself into the elk half and the human half (later known as the General). The human half marries the princess, leaving the elk half in misery.
- The human half meets up with the elk half, who insists that the princess should learn about the true nature of the two halves. The human half refuses and tries to kill the elk half, only to realize that he can't kill the beast without killing himself. Instead, he has the elk imprisoned for 10 years.
- The princess frees the tortured, miserable elk, who flees to the Void. There, the elk starts building a family of his own by using the fusion magic to create minotaurs out of humans and beasts. The magic gradually corrupts him into his know skeletal himself, the Nowhere King. This is also probably the point when the invasions to Human World and Centaurworld start.
- Minotaur wars in Centaurworld, a devastating and traumatic event to all population. Wammawink's village is destroyed and she is orphaned.
- The princess confronts the General and the Nowhere King, closing the portal between the worlds while trapping herself into Centaurworld, the General into human world, and Nowhere King inbetween. The minotaurs are trapped on the human world as well, without their leader.
- Wammawink goes around to gather a herd. She (first?) picks up Glendale (teen when encountered?), then (?) Durpleton (child), Ched (teen) and Zulius (adult?). It's unclear if this happened before or after closing the portals. Durpleton states that he is now 47 years old, which sets his "time of adoption" to roughly 35-40 years ago (if he ages like humans).
- Deductions of characters' ages judging by the timeline:
- Durpleton (47 years old) is clearly younger than Wammawink and Ched, possibly also younger than Glendale. Wammawink is clearly oldest of the herd, giving her appearance when meeting the others.
- Durpleton's age combined with the Elk's ten year imprisonment means that the Elktaur/General/Nowhere kind and the Woman are AT LEAST 60 years old, and most likely signifigantly older! (Durpleton's adoption was at least 35 years ago (which happened after minotaur invasion), the Elk was imprisoned for 10 years (before he started creating minotaurs), the Woman and the Elktaur both looked like adults when met, so bare minimum 15.) Especially the General looks pretty fresh for a guy of that age. No one wonders how he hasn't really aged over decades?? Propaganda?
- The Fridge Horror on that is pretty choice: The first thing we find out about the General is that most of his soldiers don't actually know him by his face, they know him by his fancy helmet. He also brings the oldest possible human veterans with him when he goes to bring reinforcement. Nobody questions his lack of aging because nobody in the army actually lives long enough to notice. Most of the adults of humanworld are dead, and the younger ones don't question it because of course he'd be older than themselves.
- Word of God is that the War has lasted for centuries, with the General, Nowhere King, and the Woman being made The Ageless... but this doesn't quite add up. The Beartaur — or an Generation Xerox thereof who also had the Hiding Song sung about him — was alive before the War. Gary was alive before the War, but was imprisoned by Judge Jacket recently enough that his horse, Becky Apples — who is also indicated to have been around before the War — is in the prime of her life.
Traveling between the worlds
- How did Horse get into Centaurworld in the first place? It's at very least strongly implied that there's only the one portal (with a door on each side) between both worlds, and opening it requires all six parts of a unique key AND magic. Horse only had one part of the key, no magic, and no portal, so what gives?
- The fact that one sixth of the key ended up in Horse's world in the first place suggests each individual piece retains some power to move between dimensions. Otherwise it would have been stuck in Centaurworld with the other five pieces when it was disassembled and the rift closed.
- Season 2 reveals that Horse's piece of the key was physically transported to the human world in the last moments before the gate closed, so this still doesn't really explain it.
- it might be a failsafe to avoid this exact scenario, since if one piece got stuck in the human world it would render it impossible to open the gate again, so they naturally pull towards each other and forcefully rip a short lived hole between worlds
- When the Mysterious Woman removed the key the first time, the doors closed. How does she remove the key again to enter into the between-space with the key? Wouldn't the doors close automatically when the key is removed? There was no indication of way to keep the doors open and remove the key.
- Considering the first thing the Nowhere King himself said to Horse and Rider was demanding the key and asking where it was, it can be inferred that the gates stay open even after the key is removed by design, and since we didn't actually see MW pulling the key out, just the immediate aftermath, it's possible she had to manually close the gates first and only took the key away afterward to prevent the herd from just opening it again.
- Season 2 reveals that moletaurs can tunnel between the two worlds. If this was always the case, why couldn't they have just taken Horse back to her world without needing to assemble the Key?
- Doug mentions that most of the moletaurs aren't as adventurous as he is, so it's possible they just weren't interested.
- Except it's not even treated as an option—the Shaman Moletaur doesn't so much as bring it up after coming around to the idea of helping Horse get home, and neither does Waterbaby and the Woman, even though the Woman in particular has a strong incentive to give Horse an other option from opening the Rift. The stakes of the first reason rely on the notion that there is no other way for Horse to get home, but the moletaurs wouldn't have even needed to be adventurous just to drop Horse off and leave.
- Possibly they just can't take anyone with them. It's special moletaur magic that allows them to move between worlds themselves while digging, it doesn't open a gate.
- Comfortable Doug digs first into the top of a crossbeam that doesn't nearly have enough space for the entire rest of his mole half, then immediately digs back down and comes out of the underside of that same crossbeam to watch the minotaurs. When a Moletaur digs from one side to the other, they're not digging through the earth! When Comfortable Doug says his claws can get through time and space, he means that literally, he's opening a wormhole that he can then peek out through. There wouldn't be a tunnel for Horse to go through, and if the holetaur can't actually exit the hole in the human world (which would explain why Flat Dallas has to come through the portal to face the minotaurs on the other side), the portal would always have a holetaur's butt in the way if she tried to follow after one of them.
- It's likely that gates dock the two worlds to one another while they stand open, figuratively pulling Centaur World and the World of Humankind adjacent to one another. Doug may only be capable of tunneling between the two while the gates are active, and bypassing the gates to travel across by other means may be possible for other creatures as well. His suggestion that he hangs out in Waterbaby's cell makes it sound like he's been crossing back and forth for a while at that point, but his adventurous nature only began at about the time of the gates being reopened.
Other
- How did Rider survive episode one? Last we saw of her in the intro, she was on the edge of a cliff, alone, surrounded by countless enemies (including at least one in the process of swinging their weapon at her), with her back turned looking at Horse. She's badass, but surely not THAT badass?
- When she reunites with Horse, she mentions she was taken prisoner and then escaped.
- The Mysterious Woman has clearly been in Centaurworld for a long time, but she still looks like the angular gritty style of Horse's home world. Conversely, Horse transformed into the rounded cartoony style of Centaurworld after being there for a certain amount of time. So how come the Mysterious Woman didn't change while Horse did?
- Didn't Horse's hair and then body change after accepting herself? Horse is a little messy and self-absorbed ("she's flawed, but she's learning"), but the Woman is a Broken Bird.
- Maybe learning magic caused her hair to change completely.
- Word of God is that Centaurworld only changes you if you, on some level, allow it to. Horse didn't want to be changed physically but she was still growing and changing as a person. The Mysterious Woman was not and therefore didn't change physically.
- Season 2's finale grants us our earliest chronological glimpse of her. At that time, she had been visiting Centaur World on multiple occasions and learning magic. It's safe to assume that, like Rider experiences at the very end, the MW experienced her transformation long before the series began in the form of her hair taking on its unusual, vibrant hue.
- So, during the Nowhere King's backstory, we learn that the General tried to kill him, but when that didn't work, he ordered his soldiers, who were apparently lying in wait just behind them, to capture him. Which should mean they were close enough to hear the entire argument. Did not one of them have second thoughts about learning their king had this dark secret?
- Maybe they already knew, and they were just his most loyal/bribed/threatened soldiers.
- It seems like the Woman outranked the General in whatever society they were in, given she's referred to as a princess when she's first introduced, while the General would just be some random guy. Given this, why did it take her so long to rescue the Elk, and why does she act like the only way to save him is for him to run away? Can't she just use her authority to pardon him?
- When the General married the Woman/Princess, that certainly gave him a big authority boost, as he now became married to royalty. So perhaps he managed to use that and his manipulation skills to prevent the Woman from doing anything? Wouldn't be the first time when someone with manipulation skills psychologically overpowers a person who technically outranks them. He may also have rallied other people to his side, further preventing the Woman to use her authority.
- It may also be that the Woman didn't know about the Elk's existence and imprisonment for a long time.
- When Glendale is trapped on the other side of the icy water in Season 2, why didn't Durpleton just try stretching out his neck like he does in other episodes (like when traveling into the moletaurs' hole) and using that to rescue her?
- Maybe he was too dumb/panicked to realize it in time, and the others were too much in panic.
- Given that the Nowhere King primarily wants revenge on the general, why did he have the minotaurs attack Centaurworld during the war in the first place? He only seems to use humans and normal animals to create minotaurs with the exception of Bayden, so it doesn't even seem like he was using centaurs to make soldiers.
- Maybe some minotaurs acted on their own and attacked Centaurworld for whatever reason (magically amped rage, human halves' prejudice against centaurs, etc.), and the Nowhere King didn't just care about his troops leaking to the wrong side? Or maybe he eventually cared, which is the reason why all minotaurs were in the human world when the Rift was closed?
- Given the Nowhere King hated being a centaur when he was whole, it's not unreasonable to assume he resents the entire centaur-kind and would want to attack them.
- Why do birdtaurs look like anthropomorphic birds, with two feet and two wings/arms (four limbs)? Shouldn't they have bird body minus head and humanoid torso, aka two feet, two wings, and two arms (six limbs)?
- Just the centaurs whose animal halves are quadrupeds have six limbs. Birdtaurs only have arms/wings and feet and Mermen only have arms and fins/legs because they're supposed to be half animal/half man, but the halves are just connected differently when the limbs can be dual-purpose.
- Granted, they aren't the only denizens of Centaurworld without a technical centaur shape (animal body - animal head + humanoid torso, or anything vaguely shaped like that); Gebbrey is a tree with two legs and two tiny arms.
- Why is the Elktaur animated more like he's from the Human world than Centaurworld?
- Maybe it's because he feels out of place in Centaurworld and feels the Human world more appealing?
- We only really see the Elktaur properly in his own memories. Because he's the one remembering it, he's possibly drawn more in the style of the other world because that's where he feels he really belongs, and that's how he's always seen himself.
- We do see it once in the show proper: Right before the Woman kills him. He looks that way because Centaurworld only affects people as much as they let it, and he always rejected the Centaur half of himself. Basically, i'ts Internalized Categorism taken to its logical extremes.
- What was Waterbaby thinking when she sent Horse and the Herd to get the key pieces? She clearly knows about the Nowhere King, and she seems to understand he's a big deal, but she had no plan for when he was freed and she didn't warn Horse or the Herd about him at all—-Horse and Rider almost died because they lingered in the Rift not knowing that the Nowhere King was in there, and if the Woman hadn't closed the gate he would have escaped and taken the key immediately. It might seem like she wanted the worlds to be connected again, but then she offers to let the Woman take the key and keep them separate as soon as they make sure Horse was okay. So essentially, Waterbaby in the show set Horse up on a ridiculously risky quest that could have ended in her and her Herd being killed along with Centaurworld being invaded, and didn't so much as try to prepare them for the actual danger. What was her motivation for doing that?
- Her goal was to repair the Gateway and resolve the Nowhere King so that the worlds could be connected again safely, she says as much during The Key. Anyone can plug the key into whatever technology it's compatible with, but to actually make use of the key's power directly, it's implied that a connection to both worlds is a pre-requisite. Waterbaby knows the only way to save both worlds and restore things to the way they always should been is to take out the Nowhere King, but she can't do it herself, that's part of the reason she tells the rest of the herd that Horse needs to earn the pieces of the key, she needs to make herself part of Centaurworld to use the Key.
And the key to unlock the gateway that joins both our worlds
Is to be a unifier
A bridge who’d connect those rejecting what needs to be done
Every piece is scattered, its magic unfurled
And we can stop this war
When you open the door, open the gateway
- Who exactly is singing The Nowhere King when Horse and Rider are in the Rift between the portals? It's probably not the Nowhere King himself, considering he sings his own rendition that has a much deeper voice. It's also not Horse or Rider considering that they're actively reacting to the situation at hand instead of singing. And it can't be any other character we know of due to no other characters being around. Is the song just there for the audience's sake? If so, that would make that rendition the only non-diegetic song in the entire show.
- You answered your own question. It's a non-diegetic reprise playing in Horse's head as the Nowhere King reveals himself and not meant to be literal like the other songs.
The Nowhere King and the General
Since the Elk/Nowhere King and the General are connected so that badly wounding & killing one would injure/kill the other (although to what extent is unclear — the General started puking up water while trying to drown the Elk, but was just fine when the Elk spent ten years locked up and wasting away)... 1) why did the Elk's mutation into the undead-looking
Animalistic Abomination not affect the General; and 2) when Rider impaled the Nowhere King, why did it fail to kill him and why was the General unharmed given it
did seriously injure the Nowhere King?
