Watership Down Theories

[Darkling Nocturnal]

Often, the third season of Watership Down has been critizied, because it's far away from the first two seasons and had nothing to do with the books. Not only the animation style has changed, the series gets darker and broughts in supernatural powers.

Some like the new direction of the series, others are annoyed and often, the unlogical progress has been critizied. But when we take a closer look to the story and the events, we will see, that the third season is told logical and comprehensible very well. You have to give your own thoughts to it. Because of that, I want to analyze the third season a little bit.

Read all theories on HighLonelyHills.com

Now, you have a short introduction and the link to all of my theories. What are your thoughts about the development of the series? Or do you have even new ideas or theories, that could be added to the site? (Credits will go to you, of course)

Come and discuss

[Acacia Heartstrings]

For now I have only one question ... The whereabouts of General Woundwort.  

[Claws]

I don't know why people make such a big deal about the magic... yes, it probably wasn't the most clever element on the show, but it definitely didn't overshadow it either! It only rarely came into play and, honestly, it wasn't their worst idea ever (there were episodes where literally nothing happened and I don't see anyone complaining about those). Plus, did they really want them to show a death battle and probably dozen of on-screen deaths on the PG rating? I don't think so (and at least they were clever enough to not dumb it down too much, like Redwall did).

[Darkling Nocturnal]

there were episodes where literally nothing happened and I don't see anyone complaining about those

*cough* SHEEPS *cough*

But it's good, that we agree

And: A Black Rabbit like this wouldn't be possible without the magic stuff.

[Claws]

*cough* SHEEPS *cough*

Oh yesss.

And now that you have mentioned the scars, I need to elaborate on that as well (because, honestly, I didn't even notice that he couldn't have possibly gotten scarred by that... it is like Fry's brother on Futurama, we KNOW that he couldn't have become an astronaut and be the first one on Mars if he was already a teenager on 1999, but we were ready to "swallow" what was served in front of us without much thinking involved). Now, I agree that the scar thing was probably only shown to be either dramatic ("look everybody, I was squashed!") or to support the theory of he being actually dead... but that raised a lot of other questions as well, like... if he was effectively dead during the whole thing and was his job to hand Woundwort to the Black Rabbit of Inlè, why did he risk the mission so blatantly and so many times as well? Maybe he couldn't die twice? I don't know, but that sounded kinda risky, seeing how STUPID the overall nature of his missions was after the rock thingy... he could have died like seventeen times since he stepped on Darkhaven for the first time.

[Naylte]

I think that has to do with the whole concept of fate. Campion was told by Death itself that he needed to carry out the mission. I would assume that would mean that the Black Rabbit wouldn't actually take him until his task was complete. So, it probably tampered with a few things to avoid having Campion die prematurely. For example, what are the chances that Skree would save him the same day Pipkin befriended Skree (much less a rabbit befriending a hawk in the first place)? Campion said it himself when he led the Darkhaven army: the Black Rabbit told him he wouldn't fight Woundwort alone, so he trusted that he should take them to Watership Down despite the risks.

Now, yes, he did some undeniably stupid things (Go ahead and exchange dangerous information in the middle of Darkhaven with Blackberry, Campion. See what happens when you're inevitably overheard). But that probably was just a way to build up suspense. Either way, what the Black Rabbit said was true despite the bad decisions, so that would have to be my best guess.

Forgive me if I said anything blatantly incorrect. It's been a while and I don't exactly recall everything the Black Rabbit actually told him.

  became such an interesting character in season 3 in my opinion. His motives are really hard to understand, though...

[Lord of the Lough]

I also wonder how Woundwort survived the fall on the second (I think) episode of Series 3. I think that the Black Rabbit must have intervened whilst Woundwort was dying; Campion wasn't fulfilled with not killing Woundwort and therefore the Black Rabbit told him that he had his fate set to kill Woundwort and he was off again, leading to the events of the final episodes and Darkhaven. But that's just a theory, a game animation theory! Thanks for watching.