The Amazing Digital Circus just recently dropped their 5th episode on June 20th and it offers character lore that we haven’t explored before. While being a Ragatha centered episode, we learned a lot about the characters living in the circus and some of their life before entering.
Ragatha’s Life
It feels fitting to give her the center focus since it’s meant to be her episode. Namely, we discover that she was raised on a farm, something people already noticed from the previous episode where she said she missed her horses. We also find out she had an estranged relationship with her mother, who verbally abused her. This reveal really had me wondering if this is why she’s overly friendly to everyone. She’s trying to overcompensate for the cruelty she grew up with and not become like her.
However, it leads to a lot of discourse among the other circus people. Gangle herself said she can never tell when Ragatha is being genuine because of it. She also has a tendency to ‘slip’ and say something mean but in a way where it crosses lines. Much like Ragatha’s diss at Jax this episode about him not having friends ‘anymore’. This genuinely upsets him and she apologizes. During the intermission segment of the episode, we see Jax running and stopping at a crossed out door. There’s a frog type character in the image, likely the friend Jax lost to abstraction. Seeing that the next episode is a Jax episode, maybe we’ll get further context on this character lore and Jax himself.
Ragatha also blows up at Jax during the episode. When Pomni tries to calm her, she gets some of her rage as well. I also interpreted Ragatha’s explosive and rude slip ups to be a product of her environment as a kid. She never fully came to terms with the abuse and how to cope in a healthy way. That’s why she leans heavily into being positive to her own detriment as well. I find this fascinating and I wonder if this will be explored further.
The Rest of the Cast
Many of the cast got some character lore drops as well. We discover that Pomni is a 25 year old accountant who finds her life mundane. She liked to explore abandoned buildings and document them on YouTube. We also learn that Zooble explored buildings occasionally, but was also a bartender and tattoo artist. As reflected during the episode’s plot of them speed running suggestions, Zooble’s bar scene was their idea.
Pomni brings up to the crew that Kinger had a wife, which he’s shocked about because he’s only lucid in the dark and therefore doesn’t remember.
We already knew Gangle had an artistic flair, but beyond how we know she was a manager for fast food, she reveals that she went to community college for graphic design and dropped out. She laments that she hadn’t drawn much since dropping out. Zooble offers to draw with her, as they’ve developed a friendship in recent times.
As mentioned earlier, Jax has some lore this episode, especially about the friend. However, he’s still not upfront about everything. During the bar scene when Zooble asks about him, he make a Breaking Bad reference, so it’s not serious. Even so, we learn that he’s afraid of corn, something fans made up and GLITCH made it canon.
We get hints that maybe he’s one of those younger men who has internalized toxic masculinity. He says things like “This is peak male performance” and gets extremely embarrassed and angry when the crew voted to put him in a maid’s outfit. He even goes to beat up and try to eat his “evil Jax” doppelganger during the softball scene. However, evil Jax is a very timid and shy NPC. Jax immediately wanted to kill him. As referenced earlier though, maybe we’ll finally get a better idea about Jax and his issues in episode 6.
Speaking of which, GLITCH shared in a community post that it likely won’t be as long of a wait for a new episode. This tracks, as episodes 3 and 4 has roughly two months in between before a six month hiatus to now. Perhaps us fans won’t have to wait as long to finally learn what is up with Jax.
