Okay okay I'm well aware that I'm absolutely bludgeoning a dead horse right now but hear me out.

The initial clue to me is the way the musical ends. At the ending of the show, all of the children are back in the roller coaster. Jane/Penny sings the same line she sung at the beginning "I know this dream of life is never ending / it goes around and round and round again". A lot of people interpret this as the time-loop theory, but I think otherwise. The big thing to me is that the rest of the choir all walks toward THE SAME LIGHT that Jane/Penny walked through, that Ocean had the opportunity to walk through, and that was shown at the start when the prize of resurrection was initially introduced. Furthermore, unlike at the beginning, when they're on the roller coaster at the ending, you don't hear any crash, metallic squeak, or any other sound indicative of roller coaster malfunction. It's just the regular stuff. Why would they be getting back in the roller coaster if they were already dead? If it started at the beginning, solidifying their deaths in the real world, wouldn't we hear the crash?

That's the very standard defense of the "they all live" theory, but the thing I was thinking about goes a little further. (Also to disclaim I'm not saying that I'm the only one whose ever come up with this, I've just never seen it talked about before.) Karnak says two things that I think are really important to this theory. First, the prophecy: "the one who wants to win it the most will redeem the loser to complete the whole." Second, his reply to Ocean's question about why they all can't come back: "sadly I've only ever had the power to bring one back to life." The key here is that he says one. Not one person, not one individual, not one living being, just one.

The first part of the prophecy is very clearly achieved; Ocean, who wants to win it the most, redeems Jane/Penny, the loser. But then what is meant by "complete the whole"? My theory is that Karnak meant that, in forgoing her ego and recognizing the value of all of the individuals around her, Ocean would make the choir whole again, unifying them as one. In her decision to save Penny and thus recognize the intrinsic importance of not only her own life, but life itself, Ocean "completed the whole", fulfilling that part of the prophecy.

That's where I think Karnak saying "one" as opposed to one person or one living thing comes in. In unifying the choir by recognizing their value as a whole, Ocean effectively made them "one". This was the lesson they were supposed to learn all along; that if they (but mainly Ocean) prove themselves capable of uniting themselves, they all earn the ability to live again. Because they are now "one" unified group of people, they are categorically aligned with Karnak, giving him the capability to bring them all back.

Or maybe not. there's a solid chance I'm overthinking and it's not that deep and this is just a massive cope bcuz the end is really sad.

First I would like to give a very very cold take: the Noel catfishing as Talia theory is AWFUL. TERRIBLE. GROSS. It plays into stereotypes that are used to communicate that all gay men are predatory and perverted, which is obviously problematic.

I also dislike the theory that Talia isn't real, because I feel like it's pretty explicitly proven that she is. Mischa speaks with her in his native language, has pictures of her, and from my understanding has spoken on the phone with her. Thus, her not being real doesn't make a ton of sense to me --- though I don't think theories about this are problematic the same way that Noel catfishing theories are.

However, that being said, it is clear that something bad would hapen if Mischa and Talia met and attempted to live out their happily-ever-after. Karnak, in an attempt to ease the children's sadness surrounding everything that Mischa potentially missed out on alludes to this, but Noel stops Karnak from actually telling him.

What I think Karnak alluded to was Talia's death. Though he is a fortune teller in more ways than just predicting one's death, his foremost function is as a machine to predict the time, place, and cause of one's death. He was able to read deeply into the children because they were there, but how could he have fully read the fortune of Talia? It doesn't make sense that he would have been able to --- but what he could know as a death-predicting machine is how and when she dies.

Maybe Mischa meeting her causes her to die somehow, such as a car accident when going to their wedding (something less dramatic than that probably, but you get the gist of what I'm saying.) Something about Mischa's presence indirectly causes Talia to die.

The thing that makes more sense to me, though, is that Talia is terminally ill, or fated to die young regardless of Mischa being there or not. This would make it so that, if Mischa were to begin a life with Talia, it would be cut short by her death.

Either scenario would ultimately just create more sadness and tragedy in Mischa's life, which is why Karnak wanted to tell this to the children; they would stop feeling bad about everything that Mischa would miss out on.

Also I'm well aware that I use a lot of semi colons and em-dashes but this is not AI generated, I just write like that <3

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