Alright, heads up. I think I have cracked the code of Little Nightmares. I have been steering away from all theory videos and posts and recently have been watching a few streams and playing through the games again. Add some overthinking and spices to it and Voila, here I am.
So the common conception is that Little Nightmares is a continuous loop of Six and Mono, betrayals and stuff. But what if I tell you that that is wrong? And that I have a whole theory in my pockets? I hope your mind is blown bc mine sure is after realising how dark the games could actually be if my theory is true.
First we have to understand how timeline loops are made. Because it's literally not time looping. It's just history repeating itself. Time is river that flows straight, no matter the branches. It has a origin and flows to an end. Time isn't like water, it's a river. If water loops, it could flow further due to water being a big body that is constantly pulled by different sources, like gravity and whatever it that makes the moon move water. Some sort of weak magnetic field maybe, idk.
A river cannot loop though. If a river would flow in a circle to then loop it would create a neutral space which cancels out the whole flow. It has curves, but never full circles, maybe in the river bends, but that, in terms of time, is a neutral space. It is part of a water body, but not technically a river.
Considering that, we have to find out what the spring of the time river of Little Nightmares is. I personally think that it is the Birth or Creation of the Signal Tower Creature, which for convenience I will just call The Eyes. It is a creature that uses life power, or souls, to sustain itself, somehow not only gaining mass from the devoured beings, but also powers. I will come back to that in a second.
The only being known to this day in that timeline, that has supernatural powers is Mono. Mono has the power to alterate realities and travel through them. We see that Thin Man has the same powers, later in the second game we also see that Mono is the Thin Man. So he is still the only known being with such powers.
And don't be like 'but The Lady has them too!' We will come back to that later.
What we don't know is how the Thin Man even came to existing in the first place. My bet is that somehow The Eyes were maybe attracted to Mono's presence and powers, using him to feed off of humans nearby, gaining mass. So basically there is no one actually throwing him to the creature. No one betraying him. That is if The Eyes are of natural occurrence and not a scientific one, except if it maybe broke out, but that is not something that can be proven in any way so yeah. I'll just go with the natural thing. It makes the most sense for my theory.
So we're at the point where years of time pass, The Eyes using Mono/Thin Man to alterate and manipulate the population, endlessly feasting. At the beginning of the second game we see the hallway with the door, where the Thin Man is trapped. I think that that is a distress call made by the Thin Man. Meaning, Mono gets pulled into the timeline by a distress call that, due to the same powers, feels familiar to him.
Faced by the cruelty of the alterated world, Mono needs to survive and figure out what is going on, meeting a child on the way. In Little Nightmares 2 it is Six. The normal timeline of the game is followed normally. There is no need for theorizing until the point of the sequences of The Hallway. Those are also distress calls made by the Thin Man.
After finally being able to go unnoticed by The Eyes, Mono is able to open The Hallway and frees Thin Man. Which then proceeds to take the child, for the sake of the second game, Six. It's not because of a betrayal. It's so that his younger self can go back to his own time without the ties he has made in this world. For he has been freed from the prison. The only thing that needs to be done now is to break every tie between the Thin Man and The Eyes. But not for Mono.
Mono doesn't recognize his older self as anything but a threat, maybe blinded by the friendship he has build with Six. So he of course wants to rescue her. Then everything still follows the game. The thing that in my eyes keeps the Thin Man happening is Mono actually erasing the Thin Man from reality. Because that fight of Thin Man and Mono is actually Thin Man trying to send Mono back the hard way.
When later on faced with the alterated Six, I had the idea that The Eyes did not only absorb physical matter, but also powers and abilities to at least some degree. So it alterated Six. Whilst overthinking this, another Idea came to mind. Since The Eyes only absorb abilities to some degree, in this case that it can only alterate itself (to look like it does as the signal tower), It and Six have to have some sort of connection through the alteration. But more to that a bit later.
Mono frees Six from the physical alteration, then gets betrayed by Six and becoming the next Thin Man. This is where the first point of the 'loop' is happening. A next Thin Man that after some years later calls his younger self to that timeline. You can see that by the static souls that you can find to unlock the extra scene. Those are all the previous Mono that became the Thin Mans. But that is only the loop of the second game. Let's see what's happening with Six.
Due to Six being formerly alterated by the Tower, she got that same insatiable hunger. Which is why she decides to go to search for the Maw, getting captured and brought to the Maw by the Janitor. There is not much theorize here. You can see static souls whenever Six eats, aiming to quench her hunger, but unable to. At the end she eats the Lady though, becoming the next one. This Entity is the only one in this theory that I can't assign a starting point to. And I will explain why.
Mono is the only known entity that has alteration powers. He is the only entity that is really repeating itself in the history of Little Nightmares. Six is just one of countless children betraying Mono. Like I said earlier, Time has no loops. History just repeats itself. Six is one of countless children getting alterated by The Eyes, essentially becoming a part of it. That is how they become insatiably hungry and able to obtain powers to some degree or at least strengthening them.
The Eyes physically devours mass, as you can see during the escape before the betrayal. But by the looks of many empty clothes sitting on benches and falling from bridges it can also probably suck it out through Mono's reality abilities. The Lady has the ability to suck one's soul out, leaving an alterated mass in the form of a gnome child. Six devours physically by eating, her body not having any further ability. After devouring the Lady though, everything in her visional field is getting its life sucked out.
That power is only stopped by a mirror and hold to a leash by obstructing part of the view, using a mask. So basically Six becomes the NEXT Lady, devouring the one that has betrayed Mono before her.
So history is just repeating itself.
Mono gets pulled by a distress call, but then doesn't help a new Six, but a new child completely. Due to there being a passage of lots of years, there would also be other entities, another world. Because time always flows in one direction.
And I think that that is actually much much darker. The first thought of Six being the reason it repeated is dark, yes. If she would have pulled Mono up she wouldn't have been alone. But she probably would have eaten Mono due to the alterations she's been through. The real reason that the history of Little Nightmares continues is due to Mono's own mistake, erasing his older self.
At least, that is my theory. Feel free to leave your own ideas and theories in the comments. I'd love to read through them. Maybe they will give me more ideas as well.
Also what would you rather have if they do release a third game? An explanation of how the loop started, so basically THE lore? Or how the loop ends? Maybe something entirely different? I will leave this work as an unfinished book so that I can always add on another chapter if I really want to.
Take care lovelies!
