Film Theory: Bluey is a WITCH?!

**Thunder** **Thunder** **Splash** **Splash** **Splash** **Dog laugh** **Music** Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory! The show gone crazy! Today we return to the wonderful world of Bluey. The hit animated show comes to us live from the land of Australia. Now, in case you missed this one, Bluey is about a family of dogs known as the Heelers. There's Bluey, her sister Bingo, her father Bandit and her mother Chilli. In each 8-minute episode, they participate in simple everyday adventures, like playing stay awake with a balloon or preparing for the family barbecue. All in a way that is super fun for kids and very relatable for adults.

This is great! They are learning a lesson and we clean house! But what really makes Bluey iconic are the episodes that focus on the wild imagination games the family plays. Ranging from whale watching to pretending there's a fairy causing mischief in the house and her father acting like a human claw machine. Insert coins to get amazing prizes. This is legitimately one of the best animated children's shows I've seen in years. Address all the joys and stresses of both childhood and parenthood in the purest way possible. It's so good. True story, I started watching the show with Ollie about a year ago and even though he's now graduated to the world of Gravity Falls, I'm so proud of you buddy, I'm still up late at night watching episodes of Bluey and relating a lot to Bandit . .

But the more I look, the more one question lingers in my mind. Is magic real in this world? You see, the imagination shown while the characters play their games really goes to the next level. Like really! These characters are incredibly invested in their backyard adventures. Whether it's a very aggressive puppet, we can take care of this mom! Unicorn! Oh! My back! My neck! My back and my neck! Lash! Call my lawyer! Even something as elaborate as turning into a runaway monkey that rampages through the garden. Do you want to see our reptiles section? And while most of it can be dismissed as simply parents agreeing to like the nth grade, there are other moments in the show that seem impossible to believe.

Like the episode where the kids literally learn to use magic to influence their environment. Or when Bingo uses a feather wand to make everything heavy. Heavy cereals! What is happening? And as you watch the show, more and more of these strange things keep appearing. These imaginary games seem to have a ridiculous influence on both the characters and the world around them. Enough to have to ask: Is the magic in Bluey real? Are all of these games actually the result of characters casting spells, hexes, and enchantments on each other? Well, after digging back into Bluey's world and pulling out some classic theoretical tricks, I think I can definitely prove the answer is yes.

Friends, grab your wands and sticky geckos as we investigate the authentic evidence of the magical conspiracy taking place in Bluey's world. Now, on the surface, you could look at a bunch of these games and just think it's kids' imaginations in action. They are simply very interested in their games. But there is commitment, and then it goes far beyond what is expected of real children at these ages. To the point where these games no longer look like a bunch of little kids playing make-believe games. And this is clearly demonstrated from the first episode of the series. In episode one, Magical Xylophone, we see Bluey and Bingo playing with a xylophone that can freeze anyone in place.

They simply stop, mid-step and mid-sentence. At first, Bingo and Bluey use the xylophone to freeze Bandit in place and play some pranks on him. And he becomes so committed to that part that he freezes when the kids aren't around. And the neighbors start to look at him strangely. Now, to be fair, you could attribute that to a good father who plays with children. But here's the thing. Later in the episode, Bingo gets upset because Bluey won't let him play the xylophone. And when he finally gets it later in the episode, Bingo uses it to freeze Bluey.

And works. If Bluey really loves the xylophone as much as she does and doesn't want to play along with this seven year old, she could easily break the rules of the game and take it away from Bingo. But she doesn't. Instead, she has a pretty serious conversation with Bingo while she's frozen. Now this wouldn't be such a big deal if it were just a one-time event. But is not. This type of extreme imagination play is common throughout the series. In the episode, Feather Wand, again, this is the one where Bingo uses a feather to do heavy things, we see her weigh the toilet seat just as her father is getting ready to relieve herself.

And instead of abandoning the game, she chooses to run downstairs and relieve herself. Well, it's not clear where exactly, but she's supposed to be in the front yard, based on Chilli and Bandit shouting hello to the neighbor. Bandit! What are you doing? Good morning, Wendy! I mean, you could commit to a game, sure. But at this moment, Bandit exposes himself to his loved ones and neighbors in a completely inappropriate way. Public indecency is literally a crime. Are you doing that just to play a pretend game for your four- and seven-year-olds? Speaking of being inappropriate, there are also cases like the season two episode Dance Mode, where the kids get three chances to wag a parent's tail and say: Dance Mode! forcing parents to dance no matter where they are.

Seems like it should be a fun game, right? Well, it would be if the kids didn't decide to use it on Chilli when she crosses the street. Oh, shake it, Chilli! Good morning, Wendy! Now, obviously, this is very embarrassing for Chilli, but she watches her dance moves. If she really had full control of her body and wanted to get out of the situation, she could move away from the crowd of cars so she wouldn't have to face them, or use moves that would make her move faster on the street. . Instead, she's shaking her thing in front of Wendy's windshield.

Apparently, Wendy is the recipient of many of these embarrassing Heeler moments. Now, again, if this were just a one-time event, we could just ignore it, but it happens again to Bandit at the post office. Are you OK? I'm fine. Just ignore this. This right here? It is simply disrespectful to both the store employee and the huge line of people waiting behind him. Even when the store clerk politely asks him to stop, Bandit says he can't. If you could stop dancing for a moment. He would if he could, buddy. Hey! Twinkle fingers! Hurry up! Either it's magic or Heelers just suck.

And it's here, when the games start to affect your everyday life, that you really start to see the fictional nature of the games break down. For example, let's look at the season 3 episode Sheepdog, where Bandit pretends to be a sheep to distract the kids from bothering his mother. But here's the thing. When Bluey isn't looking, the Sheep Bandit decides to break into Wendy's garden and start eating her dirty laundry. He even headbutts her butt when she threatens to bring Chili. That, again, is a level of commitment that is the result of magic or simply extreme irresponsibility on Bandit's part.

Also, seriously, Wendy has to be the most patient neighbor to ever live next to these public nuisances. But what really decides it is that even when the kids stop playing, Bandit doesn't stop performing. Twenty minutes later he's still acting like a sheep, while his kids were upstairs playing with the neighbor and his wife just finished her alone time. Everything is alright? Yes, everything is fine here. Why does he keep doing it when everyone else has abandoned the game? But perhaps most compelling of all is Daddy Drop-Off, when Bandit has to take the kids to school and they're late.

And yet, just as he runs to the car, Bingo finds a leaf and uses it to catch Bandit in slow motion. Stack it up and stack it up, kids, we've got it right... If Bandit is late getting his kids to school, you'd think he'd just ignore the game and load them into the car. That would be the responsible thing. He could make up something about how the school denies imaginary play, or how this sheet isn't actually a magic wand, or literally anything so he can do the responsible thing and get his kids to school on time.

But again, act like there's no other option. He acts as if he has been under a magic spell. The slow motion spell is only released when Bingo waves his wand again, causing Bandit to crash into his car. But he waits. Bandit is freed from the spell when Bingo waves his wand, of course, but she's standing behind him. If this were truly a simulation game, there would be no physical way for him to know when she waved that wand. We don't even see her eyes move or follow behind him to look at her. Watch the clip again.

In fact, we can go one step further. Here is the scene in a video editor where we can see the images and the audio track. Look at this. The "yah" bingo and wand wave sound effect are here. They actually occur after the wand is waved and Bandit is released. This right here shows us that there is no way for Bandit to know that he has accelerated again based on audio or visual cues. It can only be explained using real magic. And that's how we know that magic exists in the real world. For real life? Yes, Bluey, in real life.

Because we get physical proof that magic exists. Like here, where Bingo sneaks into the bathroom, he weighs Bluey's toothbrush without her hearing and it works magically. Up to this point, Bluey hasn't been a part of the game, so he wouldn't know that things must be heavy. And while she might be pretending not to see or hear Bingo, the way her reactions perk up certainly seems to indicate that Bluey isn't aware of anything that's happening. But the evidence that really seals it, the one that is irrefutable and definitively proves that magic exists in this world, occurs a little later in that same episode.

At the top of the episode, we see Bingo use the feather wand to make his father's cereal box, bowl, and spoon heavy, forcing them to fall to the ground. And throughout the episode, we watch Bandit as he tries to prepare his breakfast. But there is one moment that absolutely stands out. What's up, bandit? You used to be able to lift spoons. Did you catch it? Here, as Bandit attempts to use this broom and a rugby ball to lift the spoon off the ground, the broom physically bends. And that ball squeezes under the weight of the spoon.

And we see that the broom bends starting with the spoon. There is no way this could happen if the spoon was its normal weight. There is literally no physical way for that to happen. Therefore, the feather wand actually had to have worked on that spoon, giving us even more definitive proof that magic really exists in the Bluey-verse. And that suddenly puts other episodes in a whole new context. For example, in the season 1 episode Fairies, the Heeler family is bombarded with mischief caused by the dreaded fairies. Do you know what this means? That? We have fairies! Now, much of this episode is framed as Bandit trying to make up to Bingo for ignoring her earlier in the day.

And on a surface level, you might watch this episode and think that parents are making magic happen for their kids. But as much as the parents here could have made some of the things happen in the episode, there's no way they could have done it all. For example, halfway through the episode, everyone hides in the closet and Bingo is tasked with finding clues about what the fairies might want to leave them alone. When he returns later, the house's living room is a mess. Toys and trash are scattered everywhere. Figures hang from the ceiling. Koalas? Just chilling out'.

Like I said, this is an Australian show. It's implied that Bingo was the one who did all of this, but there's just no way. To hang those koalas on the walls and that shoe in the middle of the room, he would have needed a step ladder that was at least eight times his height. And as much as Chilli and Bandit ignore the needs and safety of their neighbors, I don't think even they would allow their favorite four-year-old to use something like that unsupervised. But still, that little bit happens off-camera. What about something that happens in front of the camera in real time?

That would be pretty convincing, right? Well, in that same episode, after discovering a fairy ring with Bandit's phone inside, they turn around and discover that the entire yard has been covered in fairy rings. There's no way Bandit and Chilli could have set all this up. We see them literally in every scene leading up to this big reveal. And if those rings had already been there, Bingo and Bluey would have seen them by now. And if they just pretend not to see them, you wouldn't get a Bingo reaction like that. His eyes are huge. She's shaken by those rings.

But here we do not have to assumesitting. Again, we get physical evidence that they weren't there a second ago. While the camera does its best to try to frame the rest of the garden for most of the scene, look at where Bluey is in relation to the first fairy ring. If you plot her position in relation to the wide shot that we then cut away, technically we should have been able to see the tablet's fairy ring in the lower right corner of the screen. But she's not there. Until Bluey notices the rest of the fairy rings on the other side of the garden.

This had to have been done using magic. So am I saying that fairies exist in the Bluey-verse? You bet I am! At the end of the episode, Bingo directly sees a fairy placing her dominoes in the same heart shape that Bingo made for his father. While it could simply be imaginary, and the show tries to leave it open to interpretation, all the physical evidence we have, from bending brooms to fairy rings to slow-motion wands, proves otherwise. And now that we have a couple of undeniable proofs that magic exists here, so what? I mean, that's crazy and all, but why should we care about this?

Well, we can actually trace the source of the magic, and it is none other than... If you look back through all the episodes and evidence, you will realize that many of the imaginary games played throughout the series are actually created by Chile using some form of magic. Some examples? In Asparagus, Chilli gives Bluey a piece of asparagus and explains: It's magical asparagus. Turn people into any animal you want. Chilli whispers this to Bluey, so Bandit and Bingo can't hear her or know what game it is. And yet, when Bluey shouts Donkey! Bandit immediately turns into a donkey.

Chilli created a magical object and teaches her children to do the same throughout the series. Magic that, again, goes too far when Bluey transforms his father from a peacock into a walrus and makes him fall out of a tree and land on his back. That's not playing the game for fun. This poses a risk of serious personal injury. Additionally, Chilli is often shown to be able to control magic within the games that Bluey and Bingo come up with. In the episode Magic, when Chilli sees Bluey and Bingo using magic on Bandit, the children run and she is able to stop them.

Who taught you how to use magic? In fact, Bluey simply confirms that she learned how to use magic from her mom. Do you use magic? Magic? Yes, you can use it to make people do anything. Mom taught me. Honestly, she could go on and on. Like at the end of that same episode, where Bingo uses magic to sit his dad down and force his mom to go to the door, all without dad looking. Anyway, I think the main takeaway from all of this is that if this is real or extreme magic, it would suck to have Heelers in your neighborhood.

Oh, sure, this magical family may seem charming to all of us happiness-starved Internet kids for their love and commitment to the game, but that's us looking in from the outside, removed from the situation. As we've seen here today, this family disrupts the flow of daily life for literally everyone around them. Whether it's in line at the post office, or trying to dry laundry in the front yard, or when your name is Lucky's dad and you're being attacked by magical crocodiles, get it off my back! attacked by magical snakes, Snakes! Get it off me! or simply gnawed by lions.

Oh, Mrs. Heeler, I don't know anything about this. Imagine how you would feel if your adult neighbor came out of a bush and started biting your foot. There are childish fantasies and spreading joy, of course, and then there is assaulting your neighbor. Uh, dog creature thing. So while it may seem like it's all fun and games for Bluey and Bingo, living around these monsters would literally be anything but. But hey, that's just a

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! And cut!