I believe Subaru was summoned to bring the world to a free future and stop the cycle of the world being destroyed/reconstructed. The key is to have Subaru be born weak and improve Subaru’s self-esteem so that he isn’t conceited like past heroes.
In The Frozen Bond OVA, Melakuera, the previous Great Spirit of Fire, stated he had faced world-ending crises countless times and ranted about the Witch’s return. Some people may dismiss it as pure discrimination against Emilia ’cause of Satella and Emilia’s resemblance, but he may have physically witnessed a Witch returning repeatedly with the world burning every time.
This implies a powerful curse was casted thousands or even millions of years ago (just ’cause the world was destroyed repeatedly doesn’t mean those events weren’t part of the world’s history) in which the world is reconstructed repeatedly after its destruction from a very powerful Witch. In the distant past a yet-to-be-determined hero may have faced off against the big bad of the story, and in a moment of weakness in which the hero had to choose between the world and his lover, he chose his half-elf lover, dooming the world to destruction, and the final boss cursed the world to be extremely biased toward repeating the failure of that hero for all time.
What I mean by bias is the Seal in Elior Forest, or the equivalent of that, was probably opened during the first instance of the proto-hero of the story, and so the world’s biased towards that happening. The proto-heroine, who was probably a half-elf, most likely had the power to defeat what comes out of the Seal by becoming the Witch of Envy, after which she’d need to be put down as she’d become a world-ending threat. The world thus became biased towards repeating those events again even if the reconstructed worlds and people aren’t 1 to 1 with the original world.
In my theory, a group of characters from 400 years ago are working to push the world to one specific future in which the world is saved by forcably opening the Seal in Elior Forest on their own terms instead of one day having it be opened under unfavourable conditions if it will open no matter what. If the Seal is opened, a monstrous horde of creatures that have a passive AOE aura not even Reinhard can protect the world from may emerge, which will require Satella’s yin magic to defeat without bringing the world to ruin. Satella would return by possessing Emilia’s body before needing to be killed due to having limited bodily control. Multiple instances up until Season 2 show that characters are acting with future knowledge, and that’s why I believe this is true.
Echidna has shown she was reading ahead in her Tome of Wisdom with how she (the special font from a female in the OVA was revealed to have been the words of Echidna in Season 2) had Puck search for Emilia and have him enter a contract with her in which if he starts a contract with Emilia he’d slowly lose his memories, showing she wanted him not to do it until there was no choice, and how she turned Petra’s handkerchief into a special knife after Subaru spoke with her about Return by Death so that he could kill himself. Why would a Witch who wants unlimited knowledge be so invested in Subaru’s success when she could enter a contract with Subaru and learn about RBD, a pipe dream for someone who loves knowledge? It’s probably if a threat is approaching in the future in which the world’s end is coming, which would end her quest for knowledge.
It’s likely that it’s not just Echidna who had future knowledge but also past Subaru, Flugel, Satella, Pandora, and the other Witches too. Flugel planted what was known as Flugel’s tree centuries ago in the exact spot the Whale subjugation force needed for it to burn the trunk off to trap the White Whale underneath it, showing Flugel did that to help Subaru succeed. Petelgeuse apologized to Flugel-sama after making the decision to take in the Sloth Witch Factor, which likely shows Flugel made him promise not to take it in so that Petelgeuse wouldn’t take it in until he had no choice like Echidna did with Puck. If most Witch Cult Gospels don’t show anything after the first loop, then it was likelly Pandora who ordered the White Whale to stop chasing Subaru in Episode 17 and blow him away with its breath, likely to give Subaru time to reach the mansion before resuming its chase ’cause Pandora might’ve been purposely trying to bring Subaru to his breaking point so that From Zero with Rem could happen. Season 2 showed that mabeasts and Daphne find Subaru to smell irresistibly delicious ’cause of his Envy Witch Factor, so the White Whale wouldn’t have left Subaru of its own accord, and since normal Witch Cultists’ Gospels’ only have info from the first loop, it had to be Pandora’s meddling.
So Subaru and Emilia may have been born and put through suffering specifically so that they could be the hero and heroine of the story in an attempt to the lead the world to a future with free choice. Even if Subaru’s self-esteem is built up properly, he’ll likely never be okay with sacrificing Emilia unless Emilia herself tells him she won’t suffer and accepts her role in the story, which is why Emilia herself needs her self-esteem to be built up in order to be the queen piece who willingly allows Satella to possess her to defeat what comes out of the Seal and be killed by Subaru. The story of Re:zero likely requires the building up of Subaru’s self-esteem and that Subaru be born with a weak body relative to those of Re:zero’s fantasy world so that he isn’t conceited and can one day put down Satella and then finally challenge and defeat the final boss.
I know people will call it a poor development for the story for it to be preordained that Emilia will die at the end, but if the world’s cursed to have the hero of the story let the world burn for his woman, then it’d really be defying fate for Subaru to kill Emilia/Satella, ending the long-standing curse.
As anime-watchers up to Season 2 know, the lore of the Witches of Sin was likely falsified. That is why Crusch wrongly believed that Satella created the White Whale when it was Daphne who did so. If you didn’t know, Subaru not only means “Pleiades” but also “unite”, and this’s likely one of the reasons why the lore was falsified, and that’s so Subaru can unite the world against Satella at the end of Re:zero.
Echidna stated in Season 2 that the Witch of Envy consumed the other Witches of Sin and used them for sustenance, but if Satella really did that, there wouldn’t be a corpse of Echidna at the Sanctuary, which means that info isn’t true. Echidna’s a calculating person. There’s no way she spread a false piece of info on a whim. Therefore, I put it out there that uniting the world against Satella isn’t the only reason the lore of the Witches of Sin was falsified. I propose a secondary reason to falsify this information would be to obscure or make lost to history what the dead Witches of Sin were capable of, and that’d be ’cause those Witches’ll be revived. Just like how Emilia’s choice to say her name is Satella was meant to scare Subaru off ’cause she didn’t want to put Subaru in danger and ’cause he was slowing her down, I believe there are two reasons why the lore of the Witches was falsified. This would explain why nobody except Al knew that Typhon was the witch who had died in Priestella.
So the hero of the story during the time of Satella and Season 2’s Witches (including Pandora but excluding Hector) might have found out about the world being biased toward repeating this failure of a long deceased hero, so they took a step to defy fate by enacting a grand plan hundreds of years in the making. The hero might’ve returned to Earth after acquiring future knowledge with his allies to inject Subaru into Re:zero’s fantasy world in the future as the hero of the story.
As we have seen in the anime, Flugel is the name of the person who planted what was known as Flugel’s tree, and the White Whale subjugation force burned part of the tree off to defeat the White Whale by trapping it underneath the tree’s trunk.
Flugel itself means wing and can also be a nickname for someone with conspicuous sleeves at a time of dress regulations. So what this points to is that Flugel is a person not from Re:zero’s fantasy world who somehow came to be there given the nickname is for someone who dresses strangely, and this suggests that Flugel is from Earth. Flugel may have been the past hero of the story who returned to Earth as part of the plan to save the world.
Assuming this is true, the only way Melakuera’s mind could’ve persisted even as the world restarted repeatedly if there is some yet-to-be-determined force saving Melakuera just as the world is about to be destroyed and summoning him into the reconstructed world, and that would be how his mind persists. I wonder who has been doing the summoning in this case.
Regardless of whether the characters in the past were tipped off by Melakuera or someone else, they probably agreed to steer the world to a future that defies the bias of the world repeating the proto-hero’s failure. The first episode of Re:Zero being titled the End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End could mean that Subaru’s summoning is the equivalent of the endgame of MCU’s cinematic universe in the battle against Thanos.
I know Emilia’s goal to reduce racial discrimination and rehabilitate the image of half-elves is a topic Tappei intends to address. And I believe there’s no better way for Emilia to show that half-elves aren’t monsters than to sacrifice herself for the world in allowing Satella to possess her body to use her combat powers against the monstrous horde from the Seal. If Subaru and those in the know do a good job of spreading the word about Emilia’s noble sacrifice, even her biggest detractors would have to take a step back and acknowledge what she did for the betterment of the world.
The reason I have predicted that a statue of Emilia would be erected at the end of the story and that people of the world would make pilgrimages to it and bow to this statue in reverence is ’cause it’s the ending that I believe most dovetails with Satella dying and Emilia still being a very respected figure. This is an ending where Subaru can still be happy about his accomplishments while not being destroyed by Emilia’s death because Tappei took care to give him achievements outside of protecting Emilia while also rehabilitating Emilia’s image.
Now I will explain how Al factors into this. Subaru means Pleiades in Japanese, and Pleiades is referring to a star cluster in the Taurus constellation. Al’s true name, Aldebaran, is a star in the Taurus constellation that follows the Pleiades star cluster in the night sky. In Arabic, Aldebaran means the follower for that reason. While some of the Arabic meanings for certain stars hint at the powers of Sin Archbishops, perhaps it would be better to consider Al’s name in relation to Subaru since Aldebaran isn’t a Sin Archbishop.
Since Aldebaran follows the Pleiades star cluster, perhaps he was given that name because he was Naoko and Kenichi’s next son after Subaru, which showed a fixation from at least one of his parents on their first son who disappeared. Al told Priscilla not to call him Aldebaran in Episode 16 of Re:zero, and that might be because that name is a constant reminder that his parents loved Subaru more than they loved him.
Since names have power in Re:zero, Aldebaran as a name could very possibly mean that Aldebaran would be the next person to be summoned after Subaru was. Aldebaran is pretty much guaranteed to have been summoned to Re:zero’s fantasy world since at least one of the carriage driver, Priscilla, or Al recognized Subaru’s attempt at hitchhiking when hitchhiking shouldn’t exist in a medieval society, meaning Subaru’s attempt to catch a ride should’ve fallen flat on his face, since Al literally knew what Subaru meant by the Kansai dialect when he was exasperated about hearing it in Episode 12, since Priscilla used the English word “chance” knowing Subaru knew the word (and given that Priscilla doesn’t know what apples are, she probably isn’t from Earth since pretty much every grown adult on Earth has at least seen an unpeeled apple before), which shows that she did so knowing Subaru was from the same world as Al, and since Mimi was eating cheeseburgers, which shouldn’t exist in a medieval society, meaning someone from Earth has previously invented them in Re:Zero’s fantasy world. This means Al is either formerly a Japanese citizen, an immigrant who had not yet become a Japanese citizen, someone whose work brings him to Japan sometimes, or a fan of Japanese culture.
Now, I have to say that Re:zero is a logical series. Unlike tons of poorly made isekai series out there, all characters in Re:zero have their own underlying motivations. Something like the isekai protagonist of other bad isekai stories would be made to look good for being self-righteous against Lugunica’s knights, but Subaru got his shit kicked in ’cause Re:zero is a real story, not shit meant to solely be wish fulfillment. It’s clear that Re:zero is a story where there are actual consequences ’cause of this.
Where I’m going with this is that there are time travel stories out there that posit that all of time is happening at once, meaning there are no real rules and almost anything can happen with it being a matter of the writer’s discretion. The bootstrap paradox commonly featured in time travel stories is also highly illogical and only exists “just because” rather than there being an actual legitimate reason for being used that can be reasoned through logic aside from the author said so.
‘Cause Re:zero is a highly logical series, I posit that time is linear in Re:zero, and I think the main reason Al was summoned to the fantasy world to a point before Subaru’s arrival at Lugunica’s Capital is that Subaru undoubtedly was transported to somewhere in Re:zero’s world or a place that was a limbo between worlds where his body never aged even the slightest before he suddenly arrived in Lugunica’s Capital in Episode 1 of the series and that this period where that happened was before the time Al was summoned to Re:zero’s fantasy world.
Now I know some fans of time travel stories might be rubbed the wrong way by what I have posted, but that has never stopped me from posting something controversial. Re:zero being a logical series isn’t the only reason I believe that time is linear in this story. We as viewers know that when Subaru shows the intent to reveal anything about Return by Death that Satella drags him to a dark world where she often squeezes his heart. Given we know that what is known as Return by Death resets Subaru’s body, meaning that the soul is the seat of where memories and thoughts are held instead of the brain in Re:zero, I surmise that the reason Satella can so easily read Subaru’s mind is that that dark world is a pocket dimension located within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul, and since that would mean she is always lurking around Subaru’s soul, she can readily read his thoughts.
This could explain why Satella’s witch scent is so strong after Subaru dies, and that’s because Satella lurks within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul through that dark world. I believe that in between the time Subaru was snatched away from Earth and Al’s summoning, Satella was building this dark world for some purpose, which I believe is for her to help Subaru bring about her desired future where she is killed by him as she requested in Episode 38. Satella will one day emerge from the dark world that is within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul to possess Emilia in order to fight what comes out of the Seal in Elior Forest, and then Subaru will need to lead the force that kills her after the threat of the Seal is gone for good. There had to have been a period of time where that dark world was built after all. It wouldn’t have existed “just because”.
Thus since I’ve speculated that Al was summoned after Subaru but came to Re:Zero’s fantasy world before Subaru did, I believe Al might’ve been the immediate previous iteration of the hero of the story who chose his lover over the world, and Al’s summoning might have meant to be a trial run for Subaru’s success. It’s possible Al knew that Priestella was Typhon’s grave ’cause in his past world before he was summoned to the current world, the Witch Cult might’ve successfully extracted Typhon’s remains, leading to Priestella’s destruction. That would also be how Al knew that it’s possible that all the remaining Archbishops would be in Priestella and how Gluttony’s powers work. I believe that after the time period from 400 years ago in which Satella caused the calamity which destroyed half the world, the world is reconstructed to be right after that point after its destruction due to that group of characters’ successful intervention, which would be why Al isn’t from an alternative timeline but just the previous iteration of the world. Al would get summoned into the world Subaru is in after his world was destroyed by the same force that re-summons Melakuera repeatedly, the previous Great Spirit of Fire who seemed to have knowledge of the world facing world-ending crises countless times. Satella, Echidna, Pandora, and co. would’ve hijacked the path the world would follow by injecting Al and Subaru to be the heroes of the story, and this could be the only way to break the cycle of the world being destroyed and reconstructed.