Bts: how can we prove that we should've gotten nominated for best dance and REALLY rub it in MAMAs faces?
Got7: we got ur back fam
Bts: Bro ❤️❤️
Got7: Broooo ❤️❤️
ARMYs: wow they look so tired :( i wish they would just rest :(
Also ARMYs: WHY DOESN’T BTS HAVE MORE SCREEN TIME!! WHERE IS OUR 10 MINUTE SPECIAL STAGE!! LIKE BTS DIDN’T JUST HAVE A 3-DAY CONCERT NOT EVEN A WEEK AGO!!!
GUYS this is a long post, but bear with me because i got a theory of my own. SO! to start off, i don’t see a lot of posts mentioning the prologue, though it was longer than ‘i need u’ mv and ‘run’ mv individually, and i believe its content is really crucial to the plot line. for this whole thing to make sense, there is one crucial detail that i have noticed in the prologue: when the credits start to roll at 10:25, a song starts playing that i recognized to be ‘Non Je Ne Regrette Rien (I Regret Nothing)’, which if you’ve ever watch the movie Inception, was the ‘kick’ song. For those that have not watched Inception, it is basically the song used to indicate that those within a dream should wake up. when they hear the song, they wake themselves up by either falling or dying/killing themselves (many times by drowning).
anyway, what I’m trying to say is that at the end of the prologue, taehyung is jumping off of the scaffold in order to wake himself up. but wait… to wake up, they have to be asleep, right? but what if they are asleep? what if it was all a dream? THIS IS WHERE IT GETS COMPLICATED, BUT STAY WITH ME.
‘I NEED YOU’ MV
let’s start off with the ‘i need u’ mv. throughout the whole video, the scenes switch between individual shots of the boys (in which they are all suffering) and the group shots (where they are enjoying their youth and living happily). i believe that the group shots are of the boys when they first began dreaming together.
but as they continue dreaming, they lose the need to wake up and accept their dreams as their reality. except jin. take it as you will: jin is dead or jin is alive; what is most important to know is that jin is #awake. to prove this, jin’s solo shoots show him holding a lotus flower, which in buddhism symbolizes the state of bodhi, that of becoming awakened to the wonders of it all. he is also shown burning six petals of the lotus flower, which may symbolize the others’ inability to stay awake.
again, to wake yourself up from a dream, at least in the inception universe, is to kill yourself, so perhaps jin did that and when he does, the six boys remaining in the dreams begin to suffer (as seen in the individual shots). this is attributed to their confusion: were they in a dream or reality? if they were in a dream, jin would be alive. if they were in reality, jin would be dead.
each boy falls into differing degrees of depression and their reaction to this depends on whether they believe they are awake or not. rapmon, suga, and taehyung begin to act recklessly and violently (towards others and themselves- rapmon by smoking, suga by setting his room on fire, taehyung by murdering), which can be considered their responses to their grief over jin’s apparent death. jungkook seems to be in a daze the entire music video– perhaps he has acknowledged jin’s death and is trying to comprehend it. jimin is seen in a bathtub, either trying to drown himself out of depression or attempting to wake himself up so that he can see jin again, but he becomes more and more frustrated when he continuously fails to wake himself up.
lastly, let’s all remember that the members confirmed that jhope has narcolepsy, a disorder which keeps him from regulating his sleep-wake cycles. this further confuses him, because he has always been unsure whether he is dreaming or awake. by overdosing on his pills, he leaves his fate to his body: either he will stay awake or die (and ultimately wake up in reality). in the end, he does neither and simply falls asleep in the middle of the sidewalk, which may have brought him to the hospital room where he wakes up in the ‘run’ mv at 2:05.
PROLOGUE
the prologue starts where the ‘i need u’ mv leaves off, after taehyung has murdered a man. it seems like he is in hiding and he is obviously distraught over what he has done as he begins to clean the blood from his hands. he calls someone– presumbably jin– and tells him he wants to see him, because (as seen in the ‘run’ mv), jin was always the one to protect him and the other boys. the scene cuts to a completely different setting and taehyung seems to be waking up. i believe that he and the boys have now entered a deeper dream state, where taehyung dreams that jin is with them. jin is merely a figment of taehyung’s imagination. that’s why he is never present in the photographs they take.
for some time, they are able to be happy again, but as the dream continues, taehyung becomes aware that he has to wake up so that he can meet jin in reality. that’s why he climbs the scaffold and dream jin is the only one who does not stop him. again, when the prologue cuts to the credits, it begins playing ‘Non Je Ne Regrette Rien (I Regret Nothing)’, which indicates that taehyung is waking up.
‘RUN’ MV
OKAY ALMOST DONE. the mv starts off with taehyung falling into the water, with butterfly echoing a.k.a he is waking himself up from the dream he is having in the prologue. i’ve seen several other theories stating this, and i agree: the scenes within run represent taehyung’s life flashing before his eyes as he dies/wakes up.
it’s kind of confusing because it’s not filmed in chronological order, but i believe that the ‘run’ mv shows the immediate aftermath of jin’s “death” (as opposed to the ‘i need u’ mv, which is some time after jin is gone from their lives). it also shows what jin meant to the boys before he left, explaining why they were such a mess without him. when they were all together, they were invincible, they were the youth; it was okay, because jin was always there to save them from trouble, which is seen when jin drives the boys away after they trash a bunch of cars.
when jin is gone though, they slowly fall apart, now divided up into pairs. rapmon and taehyung try to continue living as though nothing is wrong– they vandalize a wall and run away, even mocking the police that was running after them. after they get caught though, taehyung finally realizes that jin wasn’t going to save them this time. this is when it really hits him that jin is gone.
in the scene with suga and jungkook, there is still leftover debris from their party, which they had while jin was still there, indicating how closely it follows. suga is seen lashing out angrily (out of grief?), while jungkook attempts to calm him down (comfort him?). in both the ‘run’ mv and ‘i need u’ mv, jungkook seems to be the only one who is come to full terms that jin is gone, but he accepts it, because he believes they are actually living in reality and there is nothing to be done about it. the only thing he can do is mourn and try to comfort the others.
jhope and jimin, as theorized by my sister, are attempting to heal themselves through their dreams, which is why they are seen in a hospital-like room (there are iv’s in the room and everything is white). at around 3:30, jhope is seen falling back asleep, and the scene immediately changes to all the boys, happy and complete, in a field, which is what jhope is longing for. in ‘run’, jimin is seen being pushed into the bathtub, which explains why he is seen sitting there in the ‘i need u’ mv as he reminisces the time he had there with the others while jin was still there.
at the very end, taehyung surges out of the water, and butterfly is no longer playing. perhaps he has finally woken up?
#STAYWOKE
TL;DR: THEY’RE ALL DREAMING AND JIN IS AWAKE
p.s: i think jungkook is gonna wake up next
