As we all know, RWBY is a show that is built around taking in established narrative and character archetypes, layering them, tweaking them and/or ultimately subverting them. One of its core narrative and symbolic elements are the seasons, so it seems only fitting that they’d take inspiration from and implement established overarching seasonal archetypes (in terms of tone and narration) to the plot.

One of the major works in terms of archetypal literary criticism that deals with the seasons has to be Frye’s. Frye proposed that the totality of literary works constitute a “self-contained literary universe”. Since we’re watching a show whose whole premise is having every single myth, legend and fairytale coexist in a single universe, with characters sometimes alluding to multiple myths at once, I’d hope this sounds uncannily familiar.

Frye divided all literary framework into four categories: comedy, romance, tragedy and satire. What sets Frye apart from the other critics is that he linked each category with a season. He posited that literary works were how humanity assimilated the outside world and nature at large, which is how those four types of plot structures correspond to the four seasons in the cycle of the natural world.

What does that mean for RWBY?

If, as I suspect, each narrative arc corresponding to one of the four continents in Remnant - with each continent symbolizing a season - aligns with the genre and plot structure defined by Frye, then we can make more or less accurate predictions as to the direction and themes of the two remaining arcs (as well as some of the plot points).

So, first we’ll see how the first two arcs, Vale and Mistral, hold up to the Frye scheme.

As I said earlier, Frye aligned each genre with a season:

-Spring is comedy, with themes of (re)birth and resurrection of the hero. The subordinate characters attached to this genre are the mother and the father.

-Summer is romance, because both are representative of culminations in the human journey, summer being the conclusion of the seasonal calendar, and romance ending with achievement and triumph, usually in the form of a union or marriage. The subordinate characters here are the companion and the bride.

-Fall is tragedy, with themes of demise, dying god, violent death, sacrifice and isolation of the hero. The subordinate characters are the traitor and the siren.

-Winter is irony/satire, with themes of darkness, dissolution, the return of chaos, and the defeat of the heroic figure. The subordinate characters are the giant and the witch.

Going off this, and knowing that each kingdom in Remnant is representative of a season, we can divide the RWBY narrative into 4 respective arcs, each assigned an archetypical narrative structure:





- Vale is Fall, meaning the Vale arc is a tragedy. Now, I know that your knee-jerk response to this would be disbelief especially with the tone set by V1-2, but here’s the thing: team RWBY aren’t the protagonists of the tragedy. Ozpin and Pyrrha are. We’re basically seeing the tragedy unfold from its supporting cast’s POV.

Once you go back through V1-3 and reread the plot through Ozpin’s and Pyrrha’s POVs, linking up the scenes having them as a focal point together (especially Ozpin’s), the tone changes drastically and it aligns perfectly with the beats of a classical tragedy. As early as V2 you get to see Ozpin growing steadily more isolated (isolation of the hero) as he loses the support of Ironwood and the Council, we see him get irreversibly dragged (and dragging our main cast and Pyrrha with him) into an inevitable confrontation, because of his complacency and passivity (fatal flaw) that ends with Pyrrha’s sacrifice, Penny’s violent death and his demise.

Pyrrha being literally based on a tragic hero, her story fills every single beat of a tragedy, V1 establishing her innocence, inexperience and righteousness, V2 being her high point but also pointing out her “fake” invincibility (thus her fatal flaw), V3 having her grow isolated and then sacrifice herself while staying true to herself and what she stood for (completion of ideal).

One thing to clue you in about Ozpin being one of the Vale arc’s tragic heroes is one of the first things Cinder tells him: “Such arrogance.” Ozpin thus dies for said arrogance, which is basically the moment when a tragic hero is punished for their hubris.





- Mistral is Spring, meaning the Mistral arc is a comedy. Don‘t think about the tone, think about the themes. And sure enough, Mistral was all about the resurrection of our heroes, both literally (Ozpin reincarnating) and figuratively (each member of Team RWBY dealing with the aftermath of V3, growing individually and culminating in them getting back together stronger and a lot more anchored in their respective roles, Yang’s resurrection is as unsubtle a callback to the phoenix’s as it gets tbh). The subordinate characters of a comedy are the mother and the father, and this arc’s primary supporting cast and driving narrative force was without a doubt the parental figures: Taiyang, Raven, Jaques, Ghira and Qrow. This arc was about our heroes going from under their guidance to challenging it, thus getting more agency and control over their own destinies. In this aspect, Mistral is both a rebirth and birth for Team RWBY: their rebirth as individuals after the loss they experienced at the end of V3, and their birth as their own people, as full-fledged heroes, going from the supporting cast of the tragedy of Vale to the main cast of this arc.





Now that we have established that there is enough of a basis to assume the RWBY arcs do in fact build up on the Frye scheme, what does it tell us about Atlas and Vacuo?

-Atlas is winter, so Atlas is irony and satire. We can expect this arc to articulate itself heavily on social commentary; I fully expect the faunus cause and the rising military dictatorship to be the focal points of said commentary.

The subordinate characters of satire are the giant and the witch. The witch refers to Salem of course, our resident Wicked Witch of the West, but I also doubt team W.T.C.H’s name is coincidental, so it refers to them as a whole as well. I think by the time the Atlas arc is in full swing, all of team W.T.C.H will be there. There is another witch we’ve lost track of for a while now that this could be applied to, and it’s Glynda (though I fail to see a narrative purpose to her appearance as of now, but I feel the need to point it out just in case).

As for the giant, CRWBY has proved time and again how they’re prone to using the same theme/archetype both literally and figuratively, and this time will be no exception.

Figuratively, both Jacques Schnee and James Ironwood could be called giants, Jacques as an industrial tycoon, Ironwood as an increasingly dictatorial military leader. Moreover, Ironwood’s name quite literally refers to a place in Norse Mythology where giants were born. As for Jacques, his myth basis Jack Frost is thought to be based on Norse mythology giants. But Jacques could have links to another myth:“Jack the Giant Killer”. Quite ominous, isn’t it?

You see, one of the typical examples of irony in archetypal story-telling is actually the tale of Goliath vs David, where the giant is prodded by a cool and observant but almost invisible enemy into a blind, stampeding fury and then pushed to its own demise. Which, incidentally, follows the exact same beats as the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fairy tale, where Jacques Jack, a poor man climbs the social ladder through a loveless marriage a beanstalk to a land high in the sky (Atlas), steals into an enormous castle (the Atlesian academy slash military enrollment grounds), robs special treasures you’d never find anywhere else (the relic) and causes the death of the giant who owns it.

What I’m saying is, I expect Jacques Schnee to go full turncloack and align with Salem and W.T.C.H, help them steal the relic and propel Ironwood’s (self-)destruction, in return for them giving the SDC ground to prosper and it being fully sanctioned by the new regime (as in, everything Ironwood is not doing rn), if not putting Jacques himself at the helm of Atlas. Jacques is a ruthless businessman first and foremost afterall. Give him good enough a deal, and he’ll sell all of Atlas over as long as he profits off the trade-off.

And well, as far as irony goes, will there be anything more tragically ironic than Ironwood driving himself in a frenzy, growing increasingly more paranoid under both real and imagined threats, needled by the infiltrated team W.T.C.H and Jacques, until he triggers the fall of that which he so desperately was trying to protect all along. I think Ironwood dies here, and Jacques being on team villains means a 3-way Schneebowl is coming, Weiss vs Winter (who’s 100% team Ironwood) vs Jacques, and I think the outcome will be devastating for everyone involved but especially Weiss.

As for the literal part of the giant allusions, well. It has been a while since we’ve last seen these goliaths, and it seems too good an opportunity to pass up for CRWBY:

Or they could hit us with giant mecha structures à la Star Wars, a project G.I.A.N.T that Watts is all too ready to hack into and turn against the Atlesian military. I’d keep my eyes open for any giant allusions in Atlas’ arsenal, chances are they’ll be playing an active role plot-wise.

Which brings us now to the themes. As stated above, the main themes of satire are darkness, dissolution, the return of chaos, and the defeat of the heroic figure. We can surmise that Atlas will be the lowest point in RWBY. Frye goes as far as link winter to “Götterdämmerung myths” aka the fucking Ragnarok. Wiktionary has a second definition for Götterdämmerung which is a “cataclysmic downfall or momentous, apocalyptic event, especially of a regime or an institution”, so yeah we’re going to see the Atlas regime full on collapse as chaos takes over in there. Team RWBY will experience its must crushing defeat. My guess would be that, after Mistral establishing Ruby’s powers and having them bring a note of hope to the narrative and the upcoming battle against Salem, Atlas will be about the limits of those powers. I think Ruby is about to face the reason Summer died and lose to it, aka the Fenrir of this Ragnarok but this is a whole other theory I might delve into in a separate post since this post is already running too long and Atlas and its connection to Norse Mythology deserves to be delved into in detail. But yeah Atlas will be on SOME shit, my dudes.





-Vacuo is summer, so Vacuo is a romance. The subordinate characters here are the companion and the bride, so basically the lovers are at the center of the narrative here. As far as RWBY goes, 3 pairs of lovers have thematic and narrative importance: Salem and Oz, Jaune and Pyrrha and Yang and Blake.

So now that the Adam subplot was carried to an end in Mistral, and after the narrative centers more around Blake, gives the Faunus cause more depth and prepares her for her future role as a leader in Atlas, what does that leave Bumbleby with narratively in Vacuo, especially Yang? The one remaining hanging thread by then will be Yang/Raven, which prompts me to believe the bees will be confronted to their foil as a relationship, a.k.a Taiyang/Raven, making the latter the fourth lovers pair to mark this arc.

Taiyang and Raven coming back into the narrative at this point means we’re gonna get insight about another lover of Taiyang’s, Summer. I think Vacuo is where we’ll get all the answers wrt to Team STRQ, and after witnessing for ourselves how she died in the Atlas arc, we’ll get flashbacks of how she lived in the Vacuo one, which will be the thing to propel Ruby again after losing heart in the wake of the absolute apocalypse I expect Atlas to be. I also think CRWBY would get a kick out of having Summer be a major narrative force of the summer arc in the story.

I personally am a believer of the Spring Maiden!Yang theory and I think there’s enough set-up for it, mainly:

The fact that out of all the students at Beacon, the only contenders for the Vytal Festival by the end were Pyrrha and Yang (who only got disqualified because of the Mercury ordeal)

The way Yang is always set up as the strongest out of team RWBY

Raven was established as a foil to Blake but V5 establishes her as a foil to Yang, which culminates in their confrontation at the vault

The part of her confrontation with Raven where she establishes that not only is she stronger than Raven, but readier to face Salem and thus more fit to have the Maiden powers, which is why she’s the one that retrieves the relic from the vault. Raven might be the one to open the vault but she never gets inside. CRWBY could have had the confrontation happen after Raven retrieved the relic from within but they didn’t and I think it’s significant how Yang is the one allowed inside the vault and to handle the relic first, as if it’s always been her rightful place.

Which means I fully expect Raven to die at this point of the narrative. There’s a part of their confrontation where Yang tells Raven about the version of her Tai told her about and the one she’s always held out for, and she asks her if she killed her, too. It’s the thing that strikes Raven deeply and completely shatters her composure as she finally runs out of excuses and has to face herself and what she’d become. I think it’d be symbolically powerful to have Raven align with and die for the just cause, thus resurrecting that version of her.

For the remaining two pairs of lovers, Salem/Oz getting a conclusion in the last act of this story comes as no surprise, as for Arkos…tbh I don’t really see anything there (yet).

As for the themes, summer is for triumph, the messianic hero defeats the enemy who is associated with winter, darkness and moribund life (if there ever was a way to perfectly describe Salem this is it). Summer ends with an achievement, usually a marriage.

Now, out of the four pairs of lovers precited, I wonder who the ones getting constant and consistent development still and all throughout the story, are both alive by the end and have been shown to get growing awareness of their deepening feelings could be?

I wonder…

;)