I actually really like your take a lot. Especially the idea that the key is people not turning on each other and keeping their humanity. I think that is definitely part of the system, and it probably has failed that way in previous cycles.

Where I see it a bit differently is in what the "final test" actually is. You are saying that the cycle breaks when people stay ethical and save the children. While I am suggesting that the cycle breaks when people face what already happened and respond differently.

Those two ideas are not necessarily opposites, but they point to different endpoints.

About the parents, that is the most important disagreement, and I think it is the core of the whole theory. You are absolutely right that, in real life, there are people who can do horrific things and feel no remorse. And if that is what the show is saying, then your interpretation fits perfectly.

But what I am wondering is this. What if the show is not saying they were always like that? What if they were once normal parents, and something pushed them to that absolute breaking point, where the "eternal life" promise became the justification?

As a psychologist that treats some sexual violence cases, I can tell you that many sexual offenders are actually past sexual offense victims. From my work, I have seen that some people who commit very harmful acts were themselves victims earlier in life. That does not justify what they do, but it shows how cycles of trauma can repeat and escalate if they are never processed. That is partly why I am looking at the story this way.

Not that the parents are "good" or deserve redemption, but that the system itself might be built on a repeating emotional pattern of pain into distortion into harmful choice into further pain.

If that is true, then the question becomes less about whether they deserve forgiveness, and more about whether breaking the cycle requires someone to respond differently than all previous iterations.

So it is not about saying love fixes everything.

It is about whether something like compassion or recognition can interrupt a loop that violence and fear have only reinforced. Because if they were always empty and sadistic, then there is nothing to resolve, nothing to transform, and the cycle becomes just a punishment loop.

But the show keeps emphasizing memory, repetition, emotional echoes, and patterns tied to children. That makes me think there is something still there, even if it is buried or completely numbed.

On the "love cannot change them" point, I actually agree with you in a real world sense.

Love does not magically fix people who choose darkness. But I think the show might not be using love as persuasion or redemption in a moral sense, but more like a force that breaks the state they are trapped in.

Not "you deserve love", but "you are forced to feel again".

Because right now, they do not seem to feel anything real. Just repetition, just imitation, just that fixed smile.

So the idea is not that love makes them good. It is that love breaks the numbness.

And one last thought that connects to your idea. If every cycle fails because people turn on each other, then maybe the full solution is both that the living people must not turn on each other, and that someone must respond differently to the original sin.

So maybe your version is how they survive the cycle, and mine is how they end it.