theory time The "Lucy is an Ancient" Theory (wow all the woodie lore we get is about lucy!)

[MaskedMildew]

Hey gang, I figured I'd post this theory I have. I dunno if anyone else has picked up on it, I didn't find anything myself. I'm gonna try my best to explain why I believe Lucy the Axe could be..... an Ancient!! Like the spirit of the Shadow Maul or Reaper. 

First things first, lets start with Woodie, the scraps of lore we have for him, and what Lucy means to him.

We know that the survivors entering the Constant (at least in the DS era) have a pattern of wanting something, or being emotionally vulnerable- and this is typically what Maxwell preyed on to get them into the Constant. 

In Walter's short, we get a glimpse of Woodie's cabin. He has references to his family being from Scotland in it, various stereotypical Canadian British Columbian Guy decor, two very conspicuous chairs in the main room.... and "Lucy's" outside.

That's right... Woodie never took the physical "Lucy" with him. I put Lucy in quotation marks because we don't know if Lucy was always his axe... or if she was the person that second chair in his home belonged to.

The guy went deep into an uninhabited forest to get away from people, why would he have two chairs in his home right next to each other? Pair this with with how he leaves his red "Lucy" axe outside, rather than having left her on the chair or something like one might if they were romantically invested in something.

Keep this in mind too when considering whether Lucy could’ve been a real person or was always an axe.

Now, putting the pieces we have so far together, one could follow this story pretty easily: 
Woodie lost his wife and was reminiscing on memories of her while listening to the radio, which was the prime moment for Maxwell to swoop in with the promise of reuniting them.

Don't Starve fans might be skeptical for a few reasons: DS fans are split pretty evenly between wanting Woodie to be "just some funny guy" and also desperately wanting more information on this mysterious Lumberjack. When you put this theory into perspective, it all feels too easy; or it just feels wrong to completely blow open a huge point in Woodie's lore that is otherwise kept close to Klei's chest. 

Secondly, somewhat related to the first point: Klei's got plans in motion for their lore. The idea of even the gameplay of the world is that you start out knowing nothing, and slowly, SLOWLY, you gain more information. Even then, though, the game becomes more complex and deep. Essentially the team's been doing the same thing with their lore. Whether they only had a loose idea at the beginning and are now really hitting the road running with the direction they want to go in terms of lore, or if they always had an idea for it: they've been giving us glimpses of it over the past... 12 years? We've never gotten the full picture even after all this time, all these shorts and expansions. And each new bit of lore that gets revealed, there's another complexity added to it. Again, people might be thinking "this is just too easy a conclusion to come to, I could've thought of that." 

They might just really be banking on Woodie's general obscurity in relation to the main story as a way to give him a lot of interesting tidbits that people won't immediately dissect.

Thirdly: I'm just one person posting something on the internet. I could just be way too much of a fan of Woodie and reading too much into all this. And I could totally be wrong or be wrong about some things and right about others. Either way, I don't anticipate getting any answers from Klei for a long time if at all, which only adds to skepticism. 

(If you ask me, Don't Starve and its short animations/puzzles/lore drops are begging to be nitpicked.)

So lets back-track a little and talk about why Klei might've decided to drop so much potential, very vital Woodie lore in this one short.
(AKA: the Woodie Tangent part of this theory thread, cus I love him)

If you've seen the short animations on Youtube, you might go to the comment sections here and there to get a general community consensus on them or the character. The comments are overwhelmingly positive and a lot praise how the lore is being handled. 

Then you get to Woodie's very own animated short.... 

If you've seen it, you know it's a silly animation where Woodie , in the Constant (unlike other shorts til then), is chopping trees and gets attacked by a tree guard. He uses his three wereforms to fight it, and overall its a pretty fun time. The comments are mostly positive, but a lot expressed disappointment in not getting any more lore about Woodie. He's a very mysterious character, even despite having one of the longer character bios in the game. 

So, eventually Walter comes along. A young boy from Canada, part of a boy scouts troop, really into monsters. If the developers didn't have Woodie in mind when making Walter, they ended up becoming very intertwined character and story-wise anyway. Klei being the cheeky devils they are, decided that if people wanted Woodie lore so bad, they'd get it.... via Walter's short. We only get a few glimpses at background things (we might've even got a hint that Woodie lives on vancouver island) but to Klei, that's enough. Clearly we've gotta do something with what we got. 

But even Walter's short didn't give us enough for full answers to anything.

Let's move on and get to the real stuff: Lucy, Maxwell, and the Ancients.

The Ancients in Don't Starve lore refers to a powerful society of bug people that existed in the Constant long, long ago. They went extinct because of their over-reliance on nightmare fuel, which brought them from famine and gave them great magic and technology that allowed them to live in a bustling utopia, for a while.

We see an ancient in the metaphysical "flesh" in Hamlet as the Ancient Herald. We also know that the spirits that embody such weapons as the Shadow Maul or Shadow Reaper were once ancients, and their souls were probably in the pure horror/dark tatters used to create those items. 

Anyway, the reason why they matter in this instance is because the only other living, talking tools we know about in the game are the Shadow Maul and Shadow Reaper, who both happen to have special dialogue for Woodie. They’re possessive over him, and jealous of and particularly spiteful towards Lucy. They’re also made with dark magic, unsurprisingly, and that’ll come into play later in terms of my theory for Lucy’s existence.

I’m noting now that the Shadow Reaper/Maul and Lucy all have a nonchalance about them and are eager to be used. Also, that they all feature red prominently in their designs.

As fun as I find all these personality similarities though, we won’t talk about them much. Here are these comparisons for the hell of it:

Shadow Reaper quote:
  "We make a good team, no matter how you ssssslice it."
Lucy quote:
  “We make a good team!"

Shadow Maul quote:
  "Ch- cho- chop. CHOP!"
  "Ch- chop tree... CHOP TREE!"
  "CHOP! CHOP! CHOP!"
Lucy quote:
  "Chop chop chop. Heh."
  "Chop, c-c-chop!"

Also on this point of Lucy being a magical item, remember how she will always disappear in the world if Woodie’s gone too long and be replaced by a normal axe. If Woodie tries to use any normal axe that isn’t her, she immediately disappears from where she was last dropped and poofs right into Woodie’s hands in place of that axe.

Alongside this, typically you can only carry/have one Lucy at a time, and she does have special dialogue if you can somehow hold another one.

So, we’ve established the similarity between the talking items. Keep in mind that its established now that inhabitants of the Constant can summon the souls of the Ancients to be used as objects with dark magic.

Moving on…

Its safe to say Maxwell couldn’t manipulate too much beyond the confines of the Constant and his portals and the radios, like we see with him needing Willow and Wilson’s help.

He also can’t seem to drag anyone into the Constant whose name doesnt start with W. Also, whenever Maxwell “fulfills a wish” in order to get a survivor into the Constant, it always comes with a twist. (If Woodie didnt want anything new or different from his current life, he wouldn’t have been lured in. If Woodie just wanted his axe to actually talk to him, he wouldn’t just be given that no strings attached. If Woodie wanted someone back and was promised they’d be in the Constant, why not turn them into his axe, which as a lumberjack he’s metaphorically married to?)

The possibility of Maxwell dragging Lucy’s spirit into the world alongside Woodie is feasible, considering Wendy and Abigail’s situation. But if that were the case, then why not let her stay as a spirit attached to Woodie, rather than having to construct an entirely new form of axe? Because remember, Woodie didn’t bring his real axe into the Constant with him.

You could argue: “because he’s bored. Lol.” and to that i say….. Yeah true lol. Work with me here! 

Here’s another potential point towards Lucy’s spirit being brought in with Woodie: Wendy’s quotes for Woodie often refer to Lucy, and how Abigail favours her. 

But keep in mind that this (Wendy/Abigail recognising a spirit in Lucy) only tells us that there IS a presence in Lucy. Also, considering Winona’s short, I think it’s safe to assume that Abigail might only be able to exist in the Constant because of her flower somehow being tethered to its magic. Lucy wouldn’t have had that.

Alongside that, Maxwell’s quote for examining Lucy:
  "Ah. How have you been, Lucy?"

(edit feb 14 2025:) AND his quote for examining Woodie's Walking Stick: "Lucy does fine work."

He knows there IS something in the axe and appears familiar with her

So…

Let’s rule out a few other ideas for Lucy’s existence real quick (just in terms of this theory… because i still love these interpretations): 

Lucy being purely in woodie’s mind: then other characters wouldn’t think much about her, Maxwell wouldn’t speak to her so familiarly or as a real person. Even if the magic going into the DST world made her able to speak, Maxwell would be more likely to show surprise at her sentience (its something new that happened after his reign) 

Lucy only existing because Woodie willed her into existence on arrival into the Constant: See above, Maxwell wouldn’t be so familiar with her. Plus, putting together the pieces of woodie having left his real-world fire axe outside his house while he was spending his down time inside, we can assume that woodie in the real world didnt have the same deep connection to his axe. If he could will something into existence, why not have it be the real person he was missing that he wouldve shared that chair with?

Lets start wrapping this up.. Cus I’m no good at writing coherently in long-form.

Here’s what I think could be the potential timeline of events for this theory, putting all the pieces together: 

Maxwell needs to lure a depressed, possibly mourning Woodie into the Constant and promises him he’ll reunite him with his partner, Lucy. Her spirit’s not tethered to the real world anymore (because unlike Abigail, she didn’t have that odd flower) and Maxwell can’t manipulate the world outside of the Constant to that degree- but he has a lot of power inside of the Constant. He calls upon the spirit of an Ancient, seemingly the only spirits that can be returned to a level of sapience, with dark magic of which he’s especially adept, and forges its spirit into that of a special axe.

Then, either he imbues the axe with Woodie’s memories or the axe/eldritch powers-that-be gain them in their own way (think Maria from Silent Hill,) and upon Woodie’s passage to The Constant, he receives her. 

As far as Woodie’s concerned, he’s gotten everything he needs, and takes his existence in The Constant without much disdain. As for Lucy, her old Ancient spirit is happy to be alive again and feeding off living beings (trees). It takes getting used-to to be an entirely new “person”, but she gets the hang of it. She’s clingy and codependent because he’s her source of fuel, but quickly forms a bond with him and ends up caring about his wellbeing, to the point of helping his survival in the DST era. Woodie is blissfully unaware and thriving.

....

....

Alright, thanks for reading! I know it was a lot. Feel free to discuss. I love Woodie and Lucy. I'm sure I missed a few things, like maybe how Lucy knows about Woodie's wereform cycle with the moons and when his beaverness gets low (the moon thing could be a reference to how the Ancients worshipped "Alter"/Them, and the beaverness thing could just be her dark magic picking up on his curse) ... or how Lucy is very picky with other survivors and very sure of herself/forward/brash like the other sentient items, but those are more of a stretch.

Edited February 14, 2025 by MaskedMildew
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[JUSTICEBEETLE]

I Love Lucy!!!

[MaskedMildew]

17 minutes ago, JUSTICEBEETLE said:

I Love Lucy!!!

I love Lucy! 

[The Starver]

19 hours ago, MaskedMildew said:

(If you ask me, Don't Starve and its short animations/puzzles/lore drops are begging to be nitpicked.)

Please, somebody. I’m begging.