xstonehill:

Okay, last one, and real quick.

I’ve seen a lot of people point out that 

… this looks an oddly lot like a photo of a child Roman Torchwick, and that the -wick in Brunswick might therefore not be a coincidence.

BUT I think there’s something we can add to this: if this was about Torchwick alone he would be in the middle of that frame, in the centre. But he’s not. Instead a little girl is.

And who came back this episode?

Neo.

The cinematography also seems to hint at this since most of the other photos focus on her as well, rather than on the boy.

Neo seems to be returning as a primary antagonist alongside Cinder, and this might be a good way to get a better hang of her character since she doesn’t speak.

Whatever happened at the Brunswick Mannor this might also be alluding to the trauma she experienced which caused her mute-ness (and if it really is some sort of nightmare Grimm it might explain her semblance.

Assuming that’s the case, it might be a good explanation for the attachment between her and Torchwick. What we see in that portrait frame is a case of class differences. This is especially obvious between the children, but the family in the middle is more formally/Well dressed than the ones at their side. The colors are richer, and the fabrics newer.

Not just that, but I took a class in the culture of time and space this term, and we studied how space and the separation of buildings can establish social hiearchies.

The first image above is called Brede Works and is from Denmark. It’s a work site from the beginning of the industrialization where people lived on the farms etc where they worked, and they basically lived in dorms. The design is very similar to that of Brunswick Mannor and, unsurprisingly, the big house in the middle is where the Master family lived.

Qrow hints at the fact that there are different families living in the Mannor when he says he had to go to the other houses to find the other corpses.

In other words, if this hypothesis is correct, that means that Torchwick and Neo lived in an opposing social hierarchy to what was originally the case, and it may well be that Torchwick saved Neo’s life. And being the only two children left alive after the incident they became attached to each other.

Other things seem to point to this as well; not just Neo’s character song (which was reintroduced in it’s 2nd part this episode), but also Torchwick’s panic when she goes overboard in v3 (Wasn’t it?)

He also states something that gains an interesting context if this theory is correct:

“The real world is cold! The real world doesn’t care about spirit! You want to be a hero? Then play the part and die like every other Huntsman in history! As for me, I’ll do what I do best: lie, steal, cheat and survive!”

The real world is cold. If the people at the farm didn’t die from a nightmare grimm then perhaps they froze to death somehow (that would be the natural explanation here, Grim aside). But it does seem that they were killed by a grim, which would also explain why he seems to hold a grudge against huntsmen specifically (which might also explain why he chose to side with Salem and go against the academies; there was no huntsman there to save their families.)

And last but not least, if this is all the case then the -wick in Torchwick isn’t a pun on his own family name, but on Neo’s. She wasn’t the only one who cared deeply for Torchwick; it went both ways.