OKAY I LOOOOVE TALKING ABOUT MY THOUGHTS ON GRETCHEN. in my mind, what i think hermann is trying to do is essentially get her own “faust”. in the play, gretchen dies because of faust, only to come back as an angel in the second act and save him from mephistopheles because he’s realized that knowledge alone cannot satiate him and has been actually working to help people. i think gretchen is from the same lab/program whatever that faust came from, only to have died, perhaps due to faust’s own actions. so what hermann is trying to do with that “dough” from canto 6 is to bring “back” gretchen/create an alternative identity of her that will give her access to the information the geschellshaft holds. i think this is what everything she’s been doing with the mirror tech and with aseah is going to accumulate to— acquiring a similarly obedient servant similar to faust with a connection to the geschellshaft, and one loyal to Her rather than limbus company. and of course, all of this build up is going to come to a head in, you guessed it, faust’s canto!

we’ve seen how motwe is basically the beginning of faust truly doubting the geschellshaft and her role in the company, the way she’s coming to realize she can be cared for outside of her usefulness to others, and her doubt is only going to grow and grow as time goes on. we’ve seen it— shes called out for dante and don quixote to get them out of danger where she NEVER would have done that before. shes internalizing that she can be cared for and care for others, and that might even be connected to gretchen’s possible death. “gretchen” comes back in some way as a result of herrman’s work with the dough, and her influence is what ultimately causes the final snap. and like… that is to say, i don think its going to be a good or pleasant dynamic. gretchen coming “back to life” and now being a part of hermann’s group, its that influence of someone so important from her past but simultaneously someone that’s Not the gretchen she knew when she was young, that’s going to break her. im imagining gretchen here as similarly blunt in the way faust is, being completely direct about the fact that they are on different sides now— but then she offers her hand to her, smiles softly, like an angel, and says they don’t have to be.