The BANGTAN THEORY

BTS "PROLOGUE" TRAILER EXPLAINED // THE BUTTERFLY THEME

July 26, 2016

BTS “PROLOGUE” TRAILER EXPLAINED // THE BUTTERFLY THEME

INTO THE VOID

In the first sequence, V is shown in shadowy lights, in some kind of twilight for he is transitioning into his butterfly self after having just killed his father in I NEED U: he is now entering the “void” that is adulthood, as depicted in the later Run MV (and symbolised by darkness throughout the HYYH cycle).

Right now he is in a state of shock and confusion and calls one of his hyungs, which will turn out to be Rap Monster (as seen in the Japanese version of the Run MV). Rap Monster his indeed the mature side of Jin (Jin being the soul, the main entity and the boys being its various components) and the one V (the rebellious side of Jin) would naturally call in such time of crisis (they are an official pairing for the HHYH Trilogy). This is the moment when, in Run, V falls backwards into the water and enters the realm of dreams.

Prologue, Run Japanese ver. & Run (darkness/void motif)

BACK TO NEVERLAND

The next scene at the pool site is actually a retake of what happened in I NEED U, of what will happen at the end of the Prologue and what will again happen in Run: the boys will be trapped in a vicious cycle for as long as they won’t accept that the death of youth is not the end of themselves. When each single one of them will be ready to let go of youth, then only will they be able to put an end to the cycle: it’s a process Jin, as the main entity, has to unconsciously go through to reconcile is old and new self (everything and everyone in the dream sequences are ultimately controlled by Jin’s psyche).

Here, V goes back to “Neverland” to escape the reality of what he has done. He lets himself fall backwards onto a mattress on the floor, a reference to his fall backwards into the realm of dreams and fantasy at the beginning of Run.

Prologue (falling into the realm of dreams)

He then looks at a polaroid of his father and crumbles the picture into his hand, a reminder of what he’s just done in I NEED U (and will have to do again, since he’s trapped in a loop): here, he symbolically kills the father once more (or for the first time — time doesn’t really exist in the HYYH cycle). He is lying down on an empty, abandoned pool, prefiguring the wide ocean (adulthood) he’ll have to dive into at some point. But for now he is safe, as there’s no water in the pool.

Prologue (pool site location & “killing the father”)

The other boys finally arrive at the scene as well as Jin who is first watching them from afar, recording them on tape, more like he’s actually watching a movie and merely recalling his youth (as seen in Inception, the old cam recorder can be interpreted as Jin’s totem here, so he can know on some level he is in a dream). Jin, as the main entity (the embodiment of the soul/psyche), is watching with nostalgia at the childhood friends who, really, are the embodiment of his emotions. He thought he had to leave them behind to become an adult. So of course he misses them, as he doesn’t feel like himself anymore without them. This is why he decided to come back again to his youth, to his Neverland (this is the moment in I NEED U, right before V does the unrepairable, when Jin gets “called back” by his emotions and looks at the window in a clear reference to the Peter Pan story) — only he’s not exactly like the other boys anymore.

They are the Lost Boys of Neverland, all innocent and carefree, while Jin here is either Peter Pan or Wendy (or both): not totally awake, but not sleeping either anymore (see the hashtags on Jin’s Instagram pictures for this concept: #DREAM,#InDream,#Awake and #Sleepy).