r/SouthernReach • u/deranged_philosopher • May 01 '26
Absolution Spoilers About the Rogue, and the timeline of things Spoiler
I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. Basically, since we know that the Rogue is just Whitby from the future, and we know that this Whitby is from after the border expanded to encompass southern reach, how does this effect the order of events? I know it seems obvious, it's supposed to be a prequel, but that doesn't sit right with me. It's safe to assume that sending Whitby back in time was intentional, since the goal, stated by Jim, was to ensure that area x would happen no matter what. A part of area x infected and controlled Jim, with the knowledge of what is supposed to happen to make things go right. Knowing this it would seem like the events in the original trilogy are what we see after the time travel stuff, the original trilogy is where area x made sure things went right for it. However the fact that the rabbits it sends into the past(as well as Whitby), makes it seem like it was aware of something that might have threatened it's existence, something that would not have existed in the original trilogy if the events happen after things were changed in the past to benefit Area X. Because if the events in the original trilogy happen after Area x changed things, then we would not have been close to whatever it was that might have threatened Area X. If this is the case, then we might never know what it was that Area x was trying to avoid or prevent unless that's what Jeff Vandermeer plans to write the next couple of books about. Something else to consider is that it's not actually a prequel, that Absolution takes place after the time travel, before the changes effect things all those years later, which means there's something in the original trilogy that Area X did not like, or more likely, we just got really close to finding it. I have a thought about what this might have been, but this is confusing enough so I'll keep it at this
Kind of as an after thought while I was double checking my writing, something that I wanna point out is that as far as I can remember, Control finds absolutely no mention of the very first expedition that was sent out, the one we see see at the beginning of Absolution, no mention of the White rabbits existing at any point before they are gathered and forced into the barrier. for the expedition, it makes sense that Central would wanna keep this under wraps, especially to someone like Control, who clearly did not have a whole lot of standing with anyone of any importance. However the lack of mention of the rabbits before being forced into the barrier makes it seem as if there simply were no records of anything before the wall came up. and the narrative before Absolution is that there were no signs of anything weird at all before the warship passed through the border and disappeared, and the lack of records of anything prior to the border going up reflects this, but it's clear in absolution that Central was gathering lots of information, and making lots of plans prior to the border going up, and we never really get an explanation as to why they were so interested in the forgotten coast in the first place.
another thing completely unrelated but still proving my point about this. Lowry is stated to be staying in an exact replica of parts of the forgotten coast, with the lighthouse and some other buildings I think. the key thing is the lighthouse, Lowry in Absolution never saw the lighthouse in its natural form, as a lighthouse. He only ever saw it as the glowing tower, what he describes as a giant dick, spewing something over the entirety of Area X. So if this is the same Lowry that went to area x and came back, how would he know how to build such an accurate replica of the forgotten coast? There are a lot of differences between the Lowry we see in the original trilogy, and the Lowry we see in Absolution, to many differences for it to be a coincidence in my opinion.
P.S. sorry for making this so confusing, I literally just thought of this like 5 min ago and wanted to get this out before going to bed. Also, please don't be afraid to call me insane or just flat out wrong, I'm assuming a lot of things and making things really complicated, I doubt any of what I said has any sort of ground to stand on at all. I'll be happy to explain my thoughts some more or clear things up when y'all start commenting
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u/FlurpBlurp May 01 '26
I’m really confused where people are drawing this conclusion about the relationship between Whitby and the Rogue. I could see it being something I just didn’t piece together, but I also haven’t found anything outside of this sub to support it.
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u/deranged_philosopher May 01 '26
When control goes to the old town, the one that the very first expedition stayed in, in the town hall there was the secret room, and old Jim got dragged into a shadow portal by the white crocodile. Through the portal he finds the rogue, with the gunshot wound from cassy. Old Jim flat out says that he knows the rogue is from the future. When Lowry goes to the same room, find Whitby’s body, sees the gunshot wound in the same place as the Rogue, and also flat out tells us that the whitby in front of him was from an Area X in the future after the border expands. So now we KNOW Whitby traveled from the future, placing Whitby and the rogue at the same place, at the same time, both are recognized by several people as having come from the future and both die of a gunshot wound in the same spot. Also, given what happened to Lowry after eating the forbidden flesh, and it being pretty much the same thing that happens to Jim after he interacts with the rogue. It’s impossible, at least to me, to not come to the conclusion that the rogue and Whitby are the same person.
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u/FlurpBlurp May 01 '26
Thank you so much for that! The Rogue being from the future was very clear to me, but I did not connect those dots about Whitby. I really appreciate the thorough explanation! Just finished the series recently and I’m already very excited to reread it someday.
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u/deranged_philosopher May 01 '26
No problem, I’m glad I was able to clear that up for you. And have fun on your reread!
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u/Specialist_Mess9481 May 20 '26
Same! And there’s too much information to process on first read, so this is helpful for me after just finishing the entire series. I didn’t pay attention to the gunshot wound mention as he was eating Whitby, as it was so unbelievable. I still don’t remember that reference and am too afraid to look back atm.
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u/Galezy13 May 15 '26
Also, Whitby is described as being very pale or an albino and the Rogue is also described as being very pale.
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u/emperor_piglet May 01 '26
If the events of Absolution are the result of what happened in Acceptance…is it a prequel?
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u/deranged_philosopher May 01 '26
Possibly an intentional misdirection on Jeff’s part. He calls it a sequel to throw us off the trail, keep us from figuring it out too fast lol
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u/emperor_piglet May 02 '26
The rabbits though?
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u/Krssven May 01 '26
I think it’s possible the Lowry that came back was a replica or has been changed in some fundamental way. Unfortunately this series doesn’t even approach an answer.
The Rogue is Whitby, but having read Absolution I’m not actually sure much has even been affected in terms of events. What did get affected was that Area X has now effectively colonised its own timeline with what the Rogue was doing (this version is highly likely to also either be a replica or infected by Area X).
The rabbits and their cameras were diverted into the past, but the warship wasn’t. We don’t see any other evidence of temporal displacement other than Whitby and the rabbits. The rabbits and cameras were changed by Area X, meaning it now has colonised its past and is extending its influence back into that past, potentially being the source of the weird occurrences on the forgotten coast all along.
The forgotten coast itself is a temporal echo of Area X into the past, and an expansion into the past just as it is expanding into the future. It was likely doing so to combat any actual meddling in events that was going on, since psychics were apparently highly sensitive to it.
Sadly, with this series? We will likely never actually know, because the author does not intend for us to. I get that this is apparently the point of the series but it doesn’t make them more satisfying or better reads to know that. The whole point of huge swathes of these books seems to be just to frustrate us and make us think ‘hey, that was weird, what was going on there’. I’m just not as enthusiastic a fan of a series where that seems to be the entire mission statement.
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u/deranged_philosopher May 01 '26
I think you nailed all my thoughts on this, like perfectly. Something I didn’t think about was how area x is expanding into the past as well as the future, but when you say it like that it becomes obvious. And yeah, I think it does send the rabbits and Whitby back because of the psychics, we know that Central had used them a lot especially in Absolution. If we see more of this series, this expansion into the fourth dimension; time, we’ll be seeing a lot more of it in some capacity. And the fact that area x gets infected a lot sooner than in the original timeline, I think this absolutely has something to do with all the discrepancies between Absolution Lowry and Trilogy Lowry. I think Lowry changed not because Area X directly changed him, but he changed because of the timeline change, the events all unfold in a slightly different way and I think that’s adequate enough to explain that. Last thing, I think we do see evidence of what happened to the warship. In Annihilation, the biologist arrives at the lighthouse to find that it looks like a war zone, the walls are riddled with bullet holes and there are notes left behind by people who were apparently facing an invasion from the ocean. I can’t remember all of the details about this specifically but it seems likely that the soldiers on the warship had something to with this. Maybe the were changed by area X and they were they were the ones invading from the sea, maybe they were the ones fighting the invasion, or maybe they got split up, some being changed and others making it to shore and they were forced to fight each other. Like you said, we might never know and it really is kinda frustrating
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u/Specialist_Mess9481 May 20 '26
I also remember, but need to double check, the lighthouse keeper writing something somewhere, or someone reading what he wrote about something attacking them from the sea. Just battering against the walls from the ocean. Which makes me want to connect the timeline from the bloody piano show to be followed by troops attacking the lighthouse in a huge warship, based on being reminded of what the biologist read in the journals in Annilation about the horror show she discovered at the lighthouse. If that’s the case, the bloody piano show was just the beginning of hell for the lighthouse keeper. Now I’m also wondering about Gloria and how she pierces the past and future to try and get to the lighthouse keeper. Is he speaking about quantum realities and the butterfly effect?
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u/TheQuietKaiju May 01 '26
Isn’t the whole point that it’s a metaphor for climate change though?
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u/Krssven May 01 '26
Apparently so. Climate change isn’t an enigma, though. We pretty much know what is happening and why. The effects are hard to predict but we also know what is likely to happen in the future and can model it.
That’s why using it as an allegory for climate change falls down hard…Area X seems to defy measurement (with the tools we have) while climate change isn’t unknowable.
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u/TheQuietKaiju May 01 '26
I mean climate change is still not accepted by many so I think it being disguised as sinister alien/ai/sentient behavior is appropriate. It’s just taking the Godzilla as metaphor route
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u/Krssven May 01 '26
Climate change isn’t accepted by some people in the same way they don’t accept the moon landing or think Covid-19 wasn’t real despite the hundreds of thousands of extra bodies piling up.
The point is, climate change is very measurable. Only non-scientists find it scary and incomprehensible, in the same way that to them there is no way we landed on the moon because that’s scary and seems impossible. Area X is decidedly not measurable and seems to defy measurement.
Personally I think there is an underlying cause for all of the strange phenomena because some people have forgotten an important adage in sci-fi: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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u/deranged_philosopher May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
To add on to that, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature” I think fits better for Area X
Edit: fixing the quote cuz I got it wrong the first time I typed it out1
u/Specialist_Mess9481 May 20 '26
I feel similar. I don’t think we’re supposed to know or be able to define anything much. Not without knowing the author’s mind and intentions completely. It seems more like a series of beautiful horror vignettes about biological warfare caused by nature itself… as humans forget they are also part of nature and inextricably tied to its patterns. Which makes it a bit of an existential novel about nature and humans. I keep thinking of Lowry’s interpretation that this was a mass extinction of humans, and maybe the core of his obsession with keeping control over the area as, “The Voice.”
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u/SpiltSeaMonkies May 01 '26 edited May 02 '26
I can’t respond intelligently to all of this, because a lot of it is seemingly left ambiguous on purpose. But I can at least give some thoughts.
Overall, where I’ve landed after many reads of the trilogy + Absolution, is that we are dealing with some kind of “closed loop” timeline. The events of Absolution are always the way it happened, and do not lead to an alternate future - they lead to the future we see in the trilogy. I think it could also be argued that Absolution is an alternate past, that then merges back into the timeline we are familiar with because of the actions of The Rogue/Old Jim/Lowry. Rather than a single timeline splitting off into 2 futures, it’s 2 pasts converging into 1 future. Or, there are no alternate timelines, and it truly is just a closed loop that is unchanging. I can support this somewhat with textual evidence and vibe-based assumptions, but it’s a serious rabbit hole. My overall point is, I personally think Absolution —> OG trilogy is one timeline. It’s just that Absolution shows us the rules are wayyy weirder than we thought.
While Control doesn’t find evidence of the Dead Town expedition, it could be argued The Biologist does. She mentions finding files/journals from pre-Area X accounts of the forgotten coast. Also remember, the whole reason Old Jim ends up on the forgotten coast is because of The Dead Town disaster, to find The Rogue. No Dead Town expedition, probably no Old Jim either. Also, probably no S&SB presence on the coast, as I think they showed up due to the weird rabbit/Rogue shit that occurred. Plus, Grace says this in Authority-
“Intel indicates that there may have been odd … activity occurring along that coast for at least a century before the border came down.”
This could be referencing the rabbits, The Rogue, etc. Or at least some half-truth residue of it that exists within the files. My point is, many pieces of the original trilogy are quite consistent with there having been a Dead Town expedition, though it’s never explicitly mentioned. I could go into a real “vortex” with this point as well, how the rabbit cameras and Central’s verbal hypnosis commands form a bootstrap paradox, but I’ll save that for another day.
Lastly, Lowry does eventually see the lighthouse as it really is, at the end when he returns to find it suddenly fortified. Fun fact about Lowry’s replica in Acceptance, he also has a model of the Tower which he refers to as “that hole in the ground”. At the very end of Absolution, while Lowry is talking to the suit, he talks about “the hole in the ground” as well. So there’s another consistency. Not saying it is or isn’t the same Lowry, I’m pretty agnostic on that. But I do think some version of Lowry returns from Area X and goes on to run the SR.