How To Tell If A RWBY Character Is Sharing Their Body With Another Soul

Their reflection fails to reverse when the other soul is talking.

Remember Volume 4? Oscar notices something wrong with himself in the mirror just before Ozpin makes himself known.

Here’s Oscar initially looking in the mirror, and not seeing anything wrong:

And here’s the exact next shot, directly before Ozpin speaks:

Notice how the pockets on his arm and chest fail to switch sides, to be a reverse image like mirrors project, in the second image, but not the first.

Okay, maybe it was a goof in that second shot. It doesn’t prove anything.

Here’s some images from The Lost Fable with properly reversed reflections:

And now here’s Ozma 2.0, just before and during his host asking him what they’re doing:

Notice his lock of hair has failed to reverse in the reflection. It’s swept towards his left-hand side in both.

Now, this is not foolproof. Not reversing a reflection is a very simple animation mistake to make, as we can see in Volume 7 Chapter 3:

Though, admittedly, Blake is metaphorically a person with two souls. Beauty and Beast in one person, symbolising the struggle between who she is and the person Adam wanted her to be. So maybe it’s not a mistake? After all, she is the person who introduces us to the concept of people with two souls…

So, anyway, why do I bring this up?

Well, a lot of people have been discussing Cinder looking sad in her reflection in this week’s episode:

Only, as a post by @witch-of-the-world has pointed out, her reflection has failed to reverse.

Now, this could easily be an animation mistake. Place a transparent model of Cinder behind the glass, fail to reverse-image it, easy mistake to make.

And, I mean, where would Cinder even get a second soul from? It’s not like anyone was merging souls with the Fall Maiden powers just as Amber died-

Oh.

Both Salem’s forces and even Lionheart have repeatedly said that that Ozpin’s reincarnation this time around has been much faster than usual. The process usually takes longer.

And we’re what? A year out from the Fall of Beacon, as opposed to Oscar’s six months?

And there’s just… little things that have left me and others suspicious. Her use of spears at the Attack on Haven, knowing that hurting Weiss would hurt Jaune, bringing up the Destiny line out of nowhere in Volume 6, the sheer amount of parallels between Ozma and Pyrrha (even using the same effect for their final deaths), the fact that Cinder’s outfit looks kinda inspired by Pyrrha’s…

So, to answer the question, why does Cinder look sad in her reflection?

I think there’s a small chance that it wasn’t Cinder in that reflection.