Who/what is Metheus?

[lakhnish]

I don't fully understand who/what is Metheus.

Here is what I do understand.

• Return of Them is return of the celestial beings, aka the "moon".
• We get the murals in the Archive biome, we're Maxwell says that the name Alter keeps repeating.
• When look at the debug name for the Celestial Champion and for the eye that awakens from the moon, they have the suffix alter to them.

So very clearly, Return of Them means return of the "moon" beings, which is Alter. 

Now here is where the confusion starts.

• When Ancient Fuelweaver deactivates the portal, he utters this line "Metheus...".
  • When doing the mind control attack, he says to "Lend me your power, one last time".
• From the wiki, it says that during the Klei dev stream, Metheus is confirmed to be female (unless this has internally changed).
• In the Axiom Visus trailer, if you take the first letter of every word in the description, it spells out: "METHEUS IS HERE!"
• From the trailer itself, it's just Charlie on the Lunar Island, revealing the true nature of the "moon" with the Ancient Torch.

Them is the moon, which refers to Alter.

Since FW only says Metheus upon deactivating the portal with the three dots at the end, it's probably an emotion of longing rather than the intense hate he has when referring to Them.

But then Klei drops that "Metheus is here" line from Axiom Visus, which makes me confused. (Does Klei mean Metheus is the moon? Doesn't make sense though.)

Does that just mean that Metheus is referring to whoever is bearing the Tragic Torch, in this case Charlie? I don't get it.

[Guille6785]

14 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

I don't fully understand who/what is Metheus.

you're not supposed to

[lakhnish]

7 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

you're not supposed to

It didn't hurt to ask in case others have it figured out :>

Edited May 12, 2022 by lakhnish
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[Guille6785]

5 hours ago, lakhnish said:

It didn't hurt to ask in case others have it figured out :>

I was making a joke about the plot holes :pensive:

[Hornete]

21 hours ago, lakhnish said:

[snip]

I have a lot of these same questions... Klei's been leading us with a carrot on a stick on Metheus for soo long now haha. Feels like they hint at them, and then stay quiet, and then hint at them again, and it's been like that for a while. I do believe Them is a collection of beings rather than a single entity though, I think both Alter and Metheus are part of that collection of beings, and if we're to believe the shadow eye you see in the gateway in the ancient murals is metheus, then that gives us two eyes. This is a theory i've seen floating around that the collection of 'Them' make up a whole body, Alter and Metheus the two eyes, Perhaps The Gnaw is a part of Them and is the mouth, maybe even big foot is part of Them. Though i'm not tooo confident in the theory.

An idea/theory a friend had that I really like is the next arc would be focused on Metheus some way like how RoT focused on Alter(in a way? kind of? I mean they only popped up in the last update so maybe not xD). It'd be focused on shadows and maybe even revamping sanity mechanics in some way, sort of like the shadows are trying to fight back as the moon tries to take hold of the Constant with it's growing power, do quite like the idea. Let's hope the first "Setting The Stage" update of this year gives us a hint at the next story arc.