400 years ago, the Witch of Envy brought about the Great Calamity. It took the combined might of a Divine Dragon, the Sword Saint, and the Great Sage to defeat her—and even then, they could only seal her away rather than kill her. In the time since, the legend of the Great Sage has grown and changed—as such tales do. Of course, this causes a bit of a problem for our heroes. They came to the Pleiades Watchtower to search for the Great Sage Shula, only to discover that no such person exists. Rather, they find Shula, the Great Sage’s apprentice, while the actual Great Sage, a man named Flugel, is absent—and has been since around the time of Satella’s sealing.

With this revelation, the question of this episode becomes simple: Who is Flugel? The big hint is that Shula mistakes Subaru for Flugel. She claims to recognize his scent—and still would even if his face were different. What’s interesting about this is the scent, so to speak, is most likely the “smell” that comes off him after using Return by Death that witchbeasts and Beast Humans like Garfiel can sense. After all, it wasn’t until several deaths that Shula realized who Subaru was and came searching for him rather than continuing to attack him.

These points lead us towards two possible conclusions: 1) Flugel also had Return by Death (or a similar power) or 2) Flugel is Subaru. While the first is certainly possible, the second is much more what the series seems to be hinting at.

Throughout the episode, Shula never seems to doubt that Subaru is Flugel. This implies that either she doesn’t care how Flugel acts as long as the smell is right or, more likely, Subaru is not acting out of character for Flugel. In fact, Shula’s demeanor and personality basically mirror Subaru’s own—complete with over-the-top reactions and a running commentary. They even play off of each other’s humor, be that naturally or by a long association.

Then, on top of this is the fact that the puzzle to enter the library is specifically targeted at not only a human from our world (as the stars are different in the Re:Zero world) but one who would be intimately familiar with the constellations and the legends behind them—i.e., Subaru.

While the “what” being hinted at by the story seems clear, it’s the “how” that trips things up. After all, in Subaru’s story as we have seen it so far, he has never been a Great Sage. However, we can still make some guesses about what is going on based on previous hints and general knowledge about how the world works.

Several episodes back, I brought up the theory that we have been tricked directorially—that we have been shown only a portion of Subaru’s time loops (i.e., the ones he currently remembers) while thinking we have seen them all. Beyond the charge of his cellphone and the items in his shopping bag, there’s nothing to prove that Subaru’s first arrival on the Re:Zero world was actually that. He could have originally arrived 400 years before that, had adventures, fallen in love with Satella, become the Great Sage, and then had his memories wiped and been sent to the current day.

On the other hand, as this is a time travel story at its core, it could be that Subaru simply isn’t the Great Sage yet—that sometime in the future, he will gain the needed powers and wisdom and then travel 400 years into the past. There, all he needs to do is 1) plant a tree to help himself defeat a flying whale, 2) get an apprentice, 3) meet, fall in love with, and contract with Stella before ultimately defeating her, and 5) return to the future—thus completing his own personal bootstrap paradox.

This also solves the Return by Death origin mystery, as the magical contract wouldn’t care about Subaru’s personal timeline. From the viewpoint of the world, the contract was made 400 years before, so of course, it’d be in effect when Subaru first arrived. Likewise, Satella would obviously want to mold Subaru into being the Sage, or she’d never meet him—explaining why she personally prunes any timelines where things go too far beyond expectations and sets the save points where she does (assuming she is indeed the one setting them, of course).

And if you want to go really into the weeds, during the events of Isekai Quartet The Movie: Another World, our heroes meet Alec Hoshin, a man from the Re:Zero world who already seems to know Subaru and Emilia personally—but not by those names (implying he knows Flugel and Satella instead).

All in all, this is another episode that tells the focused, immediate story while also expanding the lore in potentially massive ways. I wish I had all the constellation knowledge that Subaru does—as it’s obviously important to the story since nearly every Archbishop of Sin is named after a star (as well as Subaru himself).

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