Episode 4 of Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- (Season 4) deepens the series’ long-running mysteries while delivering a tightly focused installment filled with lore, character beats, and a cliff-edge revelation: who — or what — is Flugel? This episode centers on Subaru and the gang arriving at the Pleiades Watchtower in search of the Great Sage, only to find a confusing mixture of legend, misdirection, and a younger “Great Sage apprentice” named Shula. The episode cleverly toys with time, identity, and destiny, leaving fans with several compelling theories to chew on.
Table of Contents
Episode Snapshot: Pleiades Watchtower and the Great Sage Mystery
The party travels to the Pleiades Watchtower expecting to meet the Great Sage Shula—but what they find complicates everything. Rather than an ancient sage, they meet Shula, the Great Sage’s apprentice, while the true Great Sage, named Flugel, has been absent since the time of Satella’s sealing roughly 400 years prior. This mismatch between legend and reality forms the meat of the episode: the heroes must reconcile myth with the facts of the present, and Subaru in particular is dragged deeper into questions about his own role in the world’s history.
Key Clues: Smell, Behavior, and the Constellation Puzzle
Shula’s Recognition: The Scent
One of the episode’s standout moments is Shula recognizing Subaru not by his face but by a scent. Within the world of Re:ZERO, that “scent” strongly suggests the residue of Subaru’s Return by Death ability — the supernatural trail left by repeated deaths and resets which certain beings (witchbeasts, Beast Humans) can detect. Shula claiming to “recognize the scent” and associating it with Flugel raises immediate questions: did Flugel possess Return by Death, or is Subaru somehow connected to Flugel’s identity?
Behavioral Echoes: Shula and Subaru’s Mannerisms
Beyond scent, Shula’s personality is surprisingly similar to Subaru’s — energetic, reactionary, and prone to comical commentary. The episode plays with this mirroring: Shula treats Subaru like a long-familiar presence rather than a new arrival. That comfort could indicate either a long association with Flugel or a deeper truth: Subaru and Flugel may be the same person at different points in time.
The Constellation Puzzle and Subaru’s Unique Knowledge
The library puzzle at the Pleiades Watchtower is designed to be solvable by someone familiar with Earth’s constellations. Since stars differ across worlds, the puzzle strongly hints at Subaru’s Earth-born perspective being essential. This is a neat narrative device that reinforces Subaru’s significance to the older legend and suggests his knowledge is not incidental to the mystery at hand.
Theories Explored: Who Is Flugel?
Theory 1 — Flugel Had Return by Death
One possibility is that Flugel, the Great Sage, simply had a power similar to Subaru’s Return by Death. If Flugel bore the same magical signature, Shula’s scent-based recognition would make sense: she’s responding to the same temporal residue. This theory preserves the idea that Flugel is distinct from Subaru while accounting for the sensory clue.
Theory 2 — Subaru Becomes or Already Was Flugel
The more provocative theory — and the one the episode seems to hint at — is that Subaru either will become Flugel in the past or already had a past life as Flugel. There are two main variants:
- Subaru’s first arrival on the Re:ZERO world happened centuries ago, he acted as the Great Sage, and then his memories were erased before the timeline we have followed began.
- Subaru will one day gain the knowledge and powers to travel back 400 years, become Flugel, and thereby create a bootstrap paradox: his future self ensures events of the past that lead to his own present.
Both variants neatly explain why the world remembers Flugel, why Satella might have shaped events around him, and why Subaru’s Return by Death could “already” be active from the historical perspective of the world.
Time Travel, Bootstrap Paradoxes, and Satella’s Role
Re:ZERO’s core temporal mechanics allow for tricky loops. If Subaru’s timeline folds back on itself, many oddities make sense: the contract with Satella could be recorded as occurring centuries earlier (from the world’s point of view), and Satella’s interventions could be attempts to shape the person she wants Subaru to become. That would explain why some timelines are “pruned” — a more intelligent agent (Satella or another power) could be nudging events to keep history consistent with a looped timeline.
This read also covers the origin of Return by Death. If the contract exists in the world’s historical record 400 years prior, then even a newly-arriving Subaru could be subject to it. From the world’s perspective, the contract was “made” long ago; chronology from Subaru’s personal viewpoint becomes secondary to the contract’s place in history.
Small Clues with Big Implications
There are subtle narrative breadcrumbs that enhance these theories. For example, other media crossovers and cameos — such as a character in a different crossover film appearing to know Subaru by other names — hint that certain figures in the Re:ZERO world may have multiple identities across time. While those are not definitive proofs, they contribute to the larger sense that more of Subaru’s past (or future) is tangled in the present than previously revealed.
Why This Matters for the Series
These revelations do more than tease lore: they alter Subaru’s dramatic stakes. If he is destined to become a figure as pivotal as Flugel, then his choices carry greater weight and the story becomes a meditation on predestination, identity, and whether one can escape or change one’s fate. The episode smartly balances immediate plot momentum with these larger existential questions, keeping viewers engaged on both emotional and intellectual levels.
Where to Watch
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Season 4 is streaming legally on Crunchyroll. Watch Season 4 on Crunchyroll.
Final Thoughts
Episode 4 of Re:ZERO Season 4 delivers a compact, lore-rich chapter that raises the stakes and deepens the mystery around Subaru’s identity. By blending sensory clues (the “scent” of Return by Death), personality echoes between characters, and a constellation-based puzzle tied to Subaru’s Earthly knowledge, the episode makes a strong case for grander time-loop implications. Whether Subaru truly is Flugel, or merely locked in a loop that will make him so, remains to be seen — but the narrative payoff is tantalizing. As the series continues, expect more time-bending revelations, emotional confrontations, and the slow unveiling of how Subaru’s fate interlocks with the world’s past and future.
