Is there going to be a Delta plothole?
If Episode 4 is going to be the usual 2 hour affair, then surely #Stillnotbitten know it's not remotely possible to cover up every loose end while also trying giving us a conclusive ending to Clementine's story.
The biggest loose end being the Delta. Now at first glance in EP2, we might have thought they were a small group nearby headed by Lily. But now we clearly know that the Delta is far, far bigger. It's spoken of and described as if it were a full-fledged army contingent to a central base in a city somewhere.
They have networks to other cities and have full structural operations that consist of activities such as conscripting children into slave warfare due to how much full-on war they are having with other communities. On purpose, the TT have written the Delta to be an insurmountable source of external, direct conflict.
Lily is not the leader, and I'm going far as to speculate that she's not even a high ranking leader. That's how grand the Delta are presented to being. Lily's not really talked about by Abel or anyone else as being a super important leader in the leader.
Infact going off what we can infer, Lily actually comes off as just an official Recruiter or something similar of some sort, whose main task in the Delta appears to solely concern with the recruitment of children into their army and war.
Her "base" of operations is a boat somewhere, and the number of people who are sent with her to do the recruitment drive on the Ericson school is only EIGHT. I feel like if she she were a higher-level commander in chief she would have atleast 20-30 people with her. It tells me Lily is not tasked to do the really important shit in the Delta.
Now the question is: How will the Delta respond to this? With only 8 soldiers tasked to this whole mission of recruiting and they're all situated on the boat, it's fair to say they can all straight up die in the boat's explosion. I'd be surprised if TT have even one of them live (the exception being Lily).
With the mission a failure and a potential death of its mission leader Lily, I wonder if the Delta will even notice they're gone, due to no one potentially being alive to actually get back to them. And that by the time they investigate the mission, Clem and co. can already be gone.
I'm just thinking the Delta conflict is way too big of a subplot to actually end in any realistic manner. The Delta if they wanted to, can easily kill everyone at the Ericson school. They're a full-fledged army going up against several children. This is a no-brainer. This is clearly something Clem won't ever win. Clem is not a God.
The only way TT can even reasonably end the conflict is to turn it to a plothole. Where the Delta are mysteriously not bothered by the failure of the mission and the death of the people assigned to it, or once they hear of it they don't find it worthy enough of following through and completing, and find Clementine more trouble than she's worth. If the Delta are going to continue to go after Clem, they'll go after her forever.
In a 2-hour finale, putting a gap to the Delta subplot is the only way to give the player a proper conclusion. Because the ending is not about the conflict with the Delta, it's about our personal journey with Clem and AJ.
Comments
I think it would be pretty realistic if the Delta never finds the kids if nobody from Lilly's mission returns alive. I doubt anybody at the Delta would know exactly where to look for the ship, nor would they want to use the valuable manpower on a search and rescue mission. Even if they found the wreckage of the ship, the boarding school is hidden deep in the woods and it's unlikely they would be found.
I don't think the Delta is a place we were ever meant to get a full explanation on... we know that they're at war and they sent Lilly to recruit the kids and that's pretty much all we need to know. Lilly and her team were the immediate threat to the boarding school kids and now that they're eliminated, Ericson's is no longer involved. They can go back into their base in the woods to hide and survive and let the communities from far away shoot each other up.
You say that but I'm wondering how did Lily found Marlon in the first place?
And Marlon was dealing with the Delta for a while. So I think they absolutely have knowledge of the school's location.
Lilly found Marlon when Marlon went too far away from the school's safe zone and was discovered, Lilly didn't know the exact location though.
You mean there isn't already? Hm...
Anyway, yes, the Delta is most likely gonna be avoided at best and is ultimately another example of TWDG's tendency to setup story elements that feel like they'll be major, but get relatively little to outright nonexistent payoff. It's just a more blatantly superficial one.
Also, it being a bigger, if starting to struggle force was inferred in the previous episode.
Abel met Marlon at some point outside of the safe zone and it was there that they came to an agreement to surrender a few of their own in exchange for allowing the others to stay.
On the second thing, I assume either Minnie told them what else to look for or they just searched the general direction Louis and Violet ran off to until they spotted it.
Maybe Delta is stretched thin with the war and don't want to risk losing even more soldiers by sending a search party for Lilly and her dead team so they just say "fuck em." Delta has resources but they all sound like assholes. I feel like if a group goes missing, they'd say, "they knew what they signed up for." And just presume Lilly's team is KIA.
My second theory would wrap things up but wouldn't make sense. Let's say Christa is in charge and they find out Clem is alive. Then you have one big final choice, Join the Delta and be welcomed by all or Stay at Ericson. Christa respects whatever decision you make and won't bother you if you don't join.
Even if we do see the Delta, so what? It's not like you can attack it or steal their shit. For anyone wishing to see the Delta: imagine it's like Alexandria but full of people close to savegness as the Whisperers.
If the Delta doesn't appear that's not really a plot hole so much as an omission of details that aren't critical to the story. Yeah, I'm nit-picking but it's giving me some bad Cinema Sins vibes.
Honestly I prefer that we don't see the Delta. Again; it's not necessary and the smaller scale complements the feelings of continued degradation brought about by the immense time scale. Tie whole idea of "We are the walking dead" and everyone living on borrowed time (this idea is most prominent in the comics otherwise) means that by the 8 or 9 year scale we hit by season 4 the contrast of isolation and lonilessnes of these communities really makes it feel like the world is slowly ending. I stand by the idea that making things small scale is one of the best decisions the series has ever made. I didn't give a shit about anyone in Richmond. I give a shit about everyone in Erikson.
Plus without any resolution to the Delta plotline it opens room for some ambiguity. What if the Delta sends more forces or a search party for Lilly's group? What if they win their war and come back for revenge? Was Lilly right about their luxuries and enemies being monsters? Is Clementine's war path a be-all end-all as opposed to Marlon's buying time or did she kick a hornets nest that'll destroy them all eventually? It makes you wonder and in classic Walking Dead style; there's likely no happy ending.
I hate to be the resident TV Tropes guy here, but the Delta, for all intents and purposes, is shaping up to be what is referred to as a greater-scope villain: an enemy/antagonistic force that is the more dangerous threat on a broader scale, but has less (if any) bearing/impact on the immediate story/plot. Lilly and co are the primary antagonists that we directly deal with, while the Delta as a whole is a much larger threat that isn't even really aware we exist; we're just dealing with an extremely small faction of their people that know about us.
I hoped for some explanation on this and also some explanation on who the hell they're fighting at least lol its annoying af.
Even if she was a high commanding chief, The Delta is likely stretched thin and need all the manpower at home so I wouldn't imagine they'd send a double digit amount of soldiers abroad.
The Delta even if they would notice Lilly is MIA, have bigger troubles and I doubt they have the resources or can spare much manpower on a rescue mission. As Mr. Beastly Ab Workout explained above, we aren't meant to know a wholel lot or get the entire exposition or will face entirely.
Oh yeah. I guess they are technically that now, aren't they?
It's not a plothole. We don't have all the informations regarding The Delta, but we've got enough to know that if they are at war with another group - or maybe even several hinted by Abel in ep3 - they wouldn't want to spent their ressources on a team they've send out for recruiting far away with a boat.
They probably just assume they got attacked by one of the enemy groups or by something else. And since The Delta seems to be really really big, I honestly doubt they'd care much about the death of Lilly and her team.
I think the conflict with The Delta will play a huge part in E4 by solely being the first conflict Clementine chooses to just walk away from, which is basically a subversion of the same story-trope used in every single season after S1 and it further underlines the overall theme of this season, that being the search for a real home.
Clementine has always engaged in or got caught up in conflicts between different people or groups throughout all of the four seasons. Her finally choosing the other way this time around, so she can have the best chances to live in peace with AJ (in an ideal scenario, of course), is a great way to end the season, the series and her character.
That is not a plothole. It's a way of saying that if you fight other people, you'll lose eventually regardless of how many you are, because there will always be a bigger group out there somewhere waiting for you and Clem actively choosing against this kind of life is just the best way and sentiment to end the story on.
This may even be the reason why she presumably never returned to Richmond, because she knew back then already, that there will never be an ending to the pain and suffering caused by big groups fighting each other.
Honestly, I don't think the Delta people really matter, just Lilly and her people. If they did matter, more of the story would be dedicated to them, and it would probably end up like the later episodes of ANF (which most did not like). There needed to be a reasonable motivator for this conflict, and child soldiers was the one they wanted, and this was the most logical way to do it. Maybe there's some importance with the comment mentioning Richmond, but maybe not. The final episode, in theory, will be a character-driven one, and not go all plot-heavy in trying to show the Delta and everything. Not everything is just a gigantic war, and this story certainly doesn't fit that mold.