Game Theory - Eddie Dear Changes EVERYTHING! (Welcome Home)

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

We’ve been WRONG about Welcome Home this whole time! The latest update is packed with hidden messages and creepy new clues, but could the REAL secret behind Home change everything we thought we knew about the Neighborhood?

We've been wrong about Welcome Home. After countless updates, this ARG has come out with a brand new one, which finally reveals what's been going on, who these characters really are, and what home has been planning this whole time. Hello, Internet! Welcome to Game Theory. Now, I know what you might be thinking.

We are way too early to be celebrating Valentine's Day, or too late, depending on your perspective, I guess. But I just can't help it. I'm in the mood for some love and affection, thanks to the return of genuinely, one of my favorite horror ARGs, Welcome Home. The website about an old TV show that holds many dark secrets.

The puppets living in this neighborhood may not all be sunshine and rainbows. There's discord between friends, scandalous secrets and a sentient house who is behind it all. Home has been single-handedly causing members of the neighborhood to have psychological breakdowns by making them feel discontent, broken and alone, in order to put them under its control. Now, the website has a new Valentine's update, but along with the new aesthetic, There's new secrets to find, videos to watch, sweet, juicy, lore just waiting to be discovered, and of course, a new character in Holmes Crosshairs. Eddie dear. And let me tell you, theorists, not only does this new update tell us more about Eddie,

it also reveals something that we've missed about this franchise since the very beginning, something that totally changes everything we understand about these characters and this world. So, let's answer the cool neighbor as we tear back the secrets hiding in the new updates of Welcome Home. Like all other holidays in Welcome Home, this one has a slightly different name, Mail in Times Day, a day all about sending love cards to one another. So it's no surprise that our focus character for this update is our resident mailman, Eddie Deer. He's sitting front and centre, but he has this strange mark next to him, so naturally, we're going to click it. And as we do, a rip appears, taking us to a secret web page.

Seems like we're diving straight into things today. A letter then shows up on screen, and as we click that, a telephone pops out. Mail call, do you get it? I have been thinking about what this is. What we have together. But there is something I have learned. Connection is unknown and spound together. But what is it that binds them?

At first, I thought it was the physical string paper. Plastic. It is more than that. Help, anger. Necessity. Once again, it's Wally on the other end of the line. Just like every update before. But this time, he's talking about the connect.

that binds everyone together, hope, anger and necessity. Previously, we have noticed that Wally, and his friend and home master, need the neighbors to be unhappy, discontent lonely, in order to control them and do what they want. So Wally now seems to be confirming that way of thinking. However, he also goes on to say that these connections

are being severed, which from our previous encounters with Wally seems to be what this version of him now wants. This Wally is no longer controlled by home. He wants to stop home from tormenting his friends, and repeats that here by saying home does not need to be here. This leads to Wally asking us to play another game with him, a game called Mends. You will do it like I do. Find a blind spot.

Find a weak spot. Rip it open. Blind inside. And mend the line. Return what you mend. Back to where it belongs. Like nothing ever happened. Now the ARG really begins.

Time to find some blind spots. And based on how Wollie tells us to, rip it open, it will be just like how we found this secret page. There'll be a crinkle on the web page that rips open. The next page that we have to look at is the About Us page and right at the bottom there's this huge blank space. Pretty suss if you ask me. Sure enough, that leads us to a new page, the URL of which is titled Orange Letter. And when you click the envelope, a letter comes out. The recipient and sender are blacked out, but the contents are about someone using an old design for a story that left others feeling uncomfortable. Clearly, it's a letter

between crew members of the Welcome Home TV show. But right now, the letter itself isn't really that important. What is important is the blacked out sections that can be clicked on. When you do, text appears, mend it. Then take it to the mailbox. This is what Wally wanted us to find. There's a jumble of letters that appear, and you have to rejumble them to write out the word, perspective.

And when you do, nothing happens. But this word must be important. Wally said to take it to the mailbox, so I guess I'll jot that down in my handy-dandy notebook, ready for when we do, find a mailbox. Heading over to the homepage, we can actually find two other weak spots. One right next to Barnaby and one at the bottom on Eddie Deer.

The Barnaby one is a yellow letter with someone reaching out to an estranged friend. Not sure what their number is and just hoping this letter finds them. The sender's name might be missing, but something else I think gives away who it is. The flower at the bottom of it. We've seen this on a letter before, on a letter to Julie from Frank. Frank is the one that sent this letter. However, the letter is about making puppets and working in the studio, which sounds more like Frank's puppeteer than the character himself.

And he's reaching out to someone who is also a part of the Welcome Home production. With his comment about the person making a joke about his earless puppet and that this letter was found next to Barnaby, it would seem like this is likely Barnaby's handler receiving the letter, which is very juicy, but the letter doesn't hold any secret links. Well, besides a tea that has been circled with a heart. And in an ARG like this, that's not random. Eddie's paper chain on the same page reveals the purple letter. writing to their mother about their new job. There's a photo of a lavender field and last time we spoke about how Eddie Deer is associated with lavender.

But once again, this doesn't sound like the character Eddie, but Eddie's puppeteer. He's also talking about his job, calling it a production and how he can't say much about it. These letters are giving us a greater look, not just at the show itself, but at the crew. Grounding us a bit and reminding us that this is a real TV show with real people. But on this page is another highlighted letter. A G. See, I told you it wasn't random. Now onto the Discovery subpage, which once again has another rip. This time right on the clock face.

Eh? Eh? With it, we get the green letter, which appears to be a love letter. You are my star who is so divine because you twinkle, because you shine. A star, you say. We know someone who is literally a star, Sally Starlets. And the image at the bottom is a bird holding a poppy, which feels like another on the nose clue.

It is Poppy the bird writing this letter. But if this is a love letter, nope, the affectionate wording used, that would mean Sally and Poppy's friendship on the show could be a lot more intimate off-screen, much like we saw between Frank and Eddie in our last video. However, right now this is just speculation. I don't want to go around jumping the gun. Besides, there's another word jumble hidden in this letter, and it spells the word everything. Write that down, write that down!

Onto the radio tab, and it features a new episode of the Darling Broadcast Radio Show. However, unlike normally where there's a crinkle that we have to rip, The rip is already there. And clicking on it leads to a black screen which says, You can do it. Find the blind spot with a creepy Wally hiding in the darkness. Oh, just click around to see if anything. Ah!

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Just a jump scare. Great, love that, thanks. This isn't the only dead link we find either. There is a rip over the Krispy Sweat's Rice Puff cereal image. This time, it just says, not here, but bar it in the background and you will find an image of Wally, twisted and creepy.

These are more than just dead ends. They are telling us a story. Both of these were found by rips that were already opened, unlike the others where we have to physically make the rip. Both of them then revealed creepy versions of Wally. At the start, Wally told us to use these to climb inside like he does. So these are Wally's weak spots. The reason they're already open is because, like we've previously theorized,

home is in control of Wally. These rips are how it's doing it. These versions of Wally are what become of him, a home's control. Yikes, I guess it really is a good thing that he's trying to break away from homes control. Moving very swiftly on, we've got Howdy's Holiday Hullabaloo record. The rip reveals the Breen letter. I know that's not a typo in my script of the word green.

Breen is a kind of puky brown color. Just wait, guys, Pokemon Breen version is going to be sick. Anyway, this letter is someone else writing to their mother about a family reunion and being busy with work. And just by the way it's written, I can tell this is none other than the neighborhood shopkeeper Howdy. We know he comes from a big family after all, which is what this record that we clicked on was all about. So it kind of makes sense. But once again, a word is redacted, spelling the word mail. And with that, we have the word perspective, everything, and mail. And currently, nowhere to put these codes,

plus these random letters that aren't doing anything. Maybe the neighborhood page will help. It's usually full of secrets, and heading over there, you can see that it does not disappoint. A crinkle on Frank's face takes you to the pink letter, a letter about someone moving into a new home. However, they left suddenly and whoever the recipient is may not be happy about it. But the clue here is the phrase, this feels like a chance to grow. Along with the image of flowers, this is our resident flower expert, Julie Joyful. Julie left her family of rainbow monsters in the show to be part of the neighbourhood. So this is tying the real Julie and the puppet Julie together from a law perspective.

The jumbled word here is devastation, which is how I feel because I still don't know where to put them. However, as usual, welcome home knows how to suck me back in, because rather than just another rip, they pulled out a technique on the our homepage that they used in the last update. The update where Julie's house was surrounded by complete darkness. But now, after Frank's psychotic break in the same update, Frank's house has also become surrounded by darkness. Julie's house is mostly the same, except that the present on her bed from Frank is now gone. And the last letter is found in the joyful family portraits. This is the blue letter and it brings all the other letters we've read together.

Someone from the Playfellow Workshop is reaching out asking this person if they would be interested in being talent for the new puppet show. Welcome home. The only other person we know who is part of this group is the creator of the show Ronald Doralane. And there's a few other things that connect him because this letter is typed out, just like the orange letter we read earlier, which we found on the crinkle right next to Ronald's name. This connects both the orange letter and the blue letter

to Ronald being the sender. But the other connection is with the yellow letter that's sent by Frank. We surmise that Frank was writing to Barnaby or the performer for Barnaby due to him making a joke. And in the blue letter written by Ronald, he calls himself the funniest guy in production, which would surely be a title reserved for the wise cracking Barnaby. We've already seen how the characters on the show are inspired by their creators or performers. So it's not a huge leap to think that Ronald is the inspiration and possibly performer, for Barnaby, which would explain why he appears in basically every story. It also means that Frank

was writing to Ronald, the creator of the show, in his letter. He wanted Ian on what was happening. That then also explains Julie's abrupt leave in the pink letter. She says she left because of a sudden offer, and Ronald's letter is to someone who uses floral arrangements for art. This is clearly how Julie came to the show. What's odd though is that these people just up and left their normal lives to do the show. And when they got there, they then barely kept in touch with anyone, not even allowed to talk about what they're doing. Because this is up horror ARG, we immediately go to things like the evil cult of home, but this is actually just kind of classic Hollywood stuff. People getting so caught up in their work that they don't make time for anything else. And that

can't be more true than with someone who also had an experience working with puppets. Jim Henson. Jim Henson created the Muppets and some of the Sesame Street puppets. However, Jim was a workaholic who barely stopped for anything. In 1990, Jim sadly passed away due to a terrible case of strep throat, something that would have been totally treatable had he got it checked just days before. Jim was so buried in his work, he left it untreated and it killed him. All this to say, people working on a puppet show so hard they become isolated, it's not really outside the world of reality.

But it's not just the crew working hard. Secret videos we've discovered in past updates show a blurred line between TV characters and more adult themes, like Frank and Eddie's relationship scandalous for a 70s kids show, or when Julie swears when she can't make a flower bloom. Julie, Julie, where are you? Not exactly Kids TV. It's almost as though the characters and the people who puppeteer them are combined into one person.

Once again, we could take the horror route here, say that they're transforming into their puppets or something like that. But once again, this is something that just happens to performers who play a role for long enough. Carol Spinney, the puppeteer for Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird, made a statement when retiring from the role. Even as I stepped down from my roles, I feel I will always be Big Bird and even Oscar the Grouch. Once in a while, the characters being like the actors playing them and vice versa is normal. No weird voodoo magic, just years of a person and character merging into one. But is that all this is? Maybe, I just feel like we're missing a big piece here.

And it's probably behind whatever we use these secret words. for. We were told to return it to the mailbox, but we've not yet managed to find one. Hang on. There's a mailbox next to Eddie's house. And it has a rip on it. This takes us to a mailbox that says, return the mail. Perfect. We just need to do what we've done in most updates and add all the words to the end of the URL. And that gives us our secret videos. In the first one, there is a chess piece moving along a road. It comes to a door and Wally answers it. Do you have my mail? Wally says this in the most normal way we've ever heard him, which is very creepy. Either way, the bag gets dropped.

Wally takes the mail and returns the back. Go back to work. Revealing the person carrying the bag to obviously be Eddie dear. Yeah, I think we figured that one out. But Wally is acting really weird in this video because he's not acting weird. The symbolism is quite clear. Eddie is a pawn under the control of Wally, or rather, home. Wally has ripped open the blind spot and crawled inside.

In the next video, Eddie is asleep. He wakes up and someone is lying next to him in bed. Hands go over Eddie's face and someone kisses him. Now, the person is silhouetted and immediately not super recognisable, but I think it's pretty safe to say that this is meant to be Frank. In the previous episode, we talked about how Eddie and Frank are in a relationship, one that was potentially seen as scandalous at the time. And that idea seems to be true because when Eddie wakes up, he's panicking. The bed sheet is wriggling next to him and when he removes it, there's blood.

He covers his eyes, looks again, and there's not. There. Clearly, this potentially scandalous relationship is causing him a lot of fear and distress just like it was for Frank in the last video. But it's our next video that really brings everything into perspective. Get it? Because that's the word we use for this video. Anyway, Eddie is talking to Sally, but something is different. Eddie is not wearing his normal mailman attire, and the conversation is much more real. I don't be real with you. I can't remember the last time I've gone out anymore. Probably not since my last gig. I don't remember either. Could have been as far. The back is that, the welcome home test pilot for all I know.

The conversation then moves on to Eddie teasing Sally about her and Poppy being an item. I'm waiting to see. Labels might scare her off. Aha! So they are a thing! I called it! I called it! And I think the thing here is, even though we are looking at the characters Eddie and Sally, the conversation is about the actors playing them. We are seeing real stories of real people working on a TV show, but through the lens of these puppets. Which now explains a lot more of the strange videos we should we found. So with that new perspective, let's check out the last two we have to see.

Eddie is at the post office talking about working too hard. Another day in, another day out. Where does all that time run off to? It feels like time flies by so fast it can knock my cap off. But the more he talks about working hard, the more static is heard. The static becomes so loud. Eddie reacts to it. The noise built. And when Eddie eventually comes to, he sees his arm. laid over the paper cutting blade with the other hand ready to slice down. In the reflection, we see the blade move. Eddie grunts and ripping is heard.

He cuts to black and Eddie looks at his hand in horror, as if he had no control over his actions. This is home, taking control of Eddie when he begins to feel unhappy. That is his weak spot. And that's made even more clear in the next video. To find this one, you need to use all of the hearted letters found across the various links to make the word nothing. It starts the same as the last video, but darker.

Eddie says the same phrase, but more defeated. Another day out and another day out. There's all that time on off to. It's like time flies by so fast it could knock my cap off. Once again, the static comes in and takes control of Eddie. He falls to the floor, unable to move. But suddenly, he sees a light. He looks out the window and sees a star atop a Christmas tree.

He smiles and the video ends. The fact that this is similar to the... the last video is deliberately giving us something to inspect. We know this is Home taking control, but with our new perspective that these are real people through the lens of the puppets, we finally have an explanation for why Home is trying to control the neighbours. Before we theorise that Home did not want them to act like anything besides their TV counterparts, and when they did, Home would take over and get them back in line. But if this is real people, not puppets, the stories are just being told as if the real people are their puppets, then Home is the

representation of the TV show itself. It's an allegory for becoming so absorbed into your work that you forget who you are outside of it, cutting themselves off from their friends and family, giving their everything to the show. All of these people are working so hard that the show is beginning to control them. It's not a religious cult, it's the cult of Hollywood. And Home is taking it a step further. Home doesn't want them to be themselves. Home wants them to only ever be the characters they portray. Frank and Eddie's performers might have a relationship outside of the show, but Home doesn't want that because Frank and Eddie, the characters are not in a relationship. Home is using anger and discontent in order to control them, using their weak spots to climb inside

and keep that connection, forcing them to focus more on the show, more on their characters, to become their characters. That is the true story of Welcome Home, but there's hope. In that last video, Eddie takes control again thanks to the star. It brings him joy. The opposite of what home needs to get under his skin. But this star has more meaning than just a star. In one of the homewarming stories, Sally is seen atop that Christmas tree as the star. So when Eddie sees a star on the tree,

that's what he's looking at, Sally Starlet. Despite not interacting much within the show itself, in this update, we saw that Eddie and Sally are friends in the real world. Their real life friendship is what is keeping Eddie from being entirely consumed by his work, by his character. Sally gets Eddie to go out to not focus so much on work.

He is being moved away from the grip that the production and home have on him. However, there is one more thing we have yet to explore. We looked at Julie's house, but we haven't gone into Franks. Sadly though, that is going to have to wait till next time. Trust me, there is just a lot going on in there to the point where I think it needs its own episode. If you thought this series was dark before, you know, like with a hand chopping thing, just wait till you see what's hiding in there. Plus, there's a storybook on the website called The Ballad of a show.

Amos Valentine, which is marked as still being recovered and tells us to come and check back on October 2nd. But in the meantime theorists, remember, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.