For a while I've been occasionally thinking about this. I understand that Jill's story is substantially concluded and there's no real narrative need to bring her back, yet as a reader I can't help but wonder what might have happened to her in the years after the Lost Children chapter and especially after the beginning of the Fantasia arc. As for Theresia, I am convinced that the end of the Black Swordsman arc wasn't meant to be the last time we'd see her and that Miura planned to feature her again at some point later in the story, but that's just my headcanon as there's no guarantee on that. Given the circumstances we can only speculate...
Context: As for how I got the idea I have to admit that it's quite influenced by having read Vinland Saga and one specific twist of events with a certain character that happens in the second half of the manga (if you've watched only the anime, it's going to be quite spoilerous so read it at your own risk. Season 1 covers chapters 1-54, these events happen at chapters 114-122) so I'm gonna give a brief summary of what happens for context. Basically, years after the events of the first season, when Thorfinn has already made a decision to renounce to violence and find Vinland to build a new nation of peace, he meets again Hild, a female hunter whose family was ruthlessly murdered by Thorfinn himself many years prior, at the time she was a young girl and Thorfinn was in his revenge-thirsty phase while he was in Askeladd's mercenary band. She witnessed her family getting murdered by them (if I remember correctly, her father was a former Viking and was targeted due to that) and Thorfinn kills her father in front of her but he left her live since she wasn't a target. Hild isn't aware of Thorfinn's radical change of heart, but what she witnessed put her on a revenge path similar to Thorfinn's own at that time and she is determined to kill him for revenge. Thorfinn is heavily injured but Hild stops from killing him on the spot after recalling her father's words to forgive people. Thorfinn begs her to give him time to atone for his actions. After this encounter, Hild joins Thorfinn's group in order to keep an eye on him and take his life in case he'll ever resort to violence again. This encounter is honestly my favourite part in the second half of Vinland Saga since it's a vivid reminder of Thorfinn's early actions (and how much he developed), it introduces a great new character by bringing to the forefront a different point of view on the protagonist, and it adds a new complex layer of dramatic tension in the narrative and directly reinforces Thorfinn's motivation.
Now, I don't mean that Kentaro Miura would or should have done the same had he had the chance to and besides that, Vinland Saga for most of its run has taken a very different path than that of Berserk, it has a different message and goal, but I'm wondering if Matoko Yukimura might have been influenced by some elements in Berserk (Guts ruining Theresia's life when he was in his worst state of mind, but he eventually matured into a totally different man since then) for setting up this development and if in a way, he anticipated a plot twist that Berserk may only have kept in seeded form.
My Speculation: Keep in mind that I'm not knowledgeable enough about Berserk's timeline to know if this may occur (as in, how many years pass between the end of Black Swordsman, Lost Children, the end of Conviction and the point we're at now) and to be honest I don't even know how specific dynamics between characters may play out but here is more or less what it consists of:
I imagine that Theresia after the events of Black Swordsman arc, being suddently left alone, too young to take the Count's place but still of noble family, ends up in the Holy See and eventually joins the Holy Iron Chain Knights (similarly to Farnese) and maintains her intent of finding Guts and take revenge on him. I imagine her wanting to trace Guts' activity in order to eventually find him and have him killed. Being inside the Holy See, she must have heard of what happened to Farnese in Lost Children and the Conviction Arc (witnessing the Red Lake after the Eclipse, later capturing Guts for a short amount of time and abandoning her place after the events at Albion), and that Theresia would try to figure out what happened to her while also finding information about Guts. For this reason she travels to the locations we see in BS and LC, including Jill's village, years after the events we see (here we may see Jill having succeeded in bettering her life, but still struggling with many things) and I imagine Theresia bringing Jill along with her on the way back since she's the most crucial witness (this would spare her from the attack of various creatures after the merging of physical and astral world). I think it would be extremely interesting to see Theresia and Jill interact since they share the life-changing experience of being survivors of Apostles activity and also due to everything Guts did in their lives, for better or for worse. I think they would definitely be able to bond at a deeper level or at least have an intriguing dynamic.
Route 1: Conflict against Guts - Years later, I don't exactly know how I would make events play out since it's practically impossible to imagine how Miura would have brought on and resolved the conflict between Guts & his group against Griffith and the God Hand, but I imagine that after Fempto's defeat, Guts and Theresia encounter each other again. All of Theresia's anger and thirst for revenge would come up suddently and Guts & Co. are taken by shock at this turn of events.
What would comes next is pretty much inscrutable for me. Considering Theresia's own promise, how would she approach Guts and how would she confront him? How would Guts react to see the little girl from back then being consumed by revenge just like he was? Would Guts feel any sense of guilt for his actions and the innocent lives he involved in his revenge path back then (let's remember that an entire city was destroyed and everyone died in the first episode during the fight with the Snake Baron)? How would Casca and the rest of his group react upon hearing Theresia's point of view? How would Guts and Theresia settle things after so many years and after the main plots are resolved? I'm not really sure about any of these, but I'd love to see some of these things brought up... especially Guts' awful deeds while he was in Black Swordsman persona. I don't think that Berserk was ever meant to be a story like Vinland Saga that is about pacifism, an absolute rejection of violence and atoning for past sins yet I would like to see Guts be confronted by a living consequence of his own wrongdoings. I'd also love to see Jill have a crucial role in settling things with Theresia, maybe even Casca and Farnese.
Alternatively, if this may be set sometime before the complete demise of the God Hand, it may turn out that the Behelit would be destined to her and she'll be challenged to sacrifice someone she cares for (maybe Jill after they grow closer for a few years?) in order to become and Apostle and have the strength to defeat Guts. It would be quite insane but again, my theorycrafting isn't that sharp in imagining how things could be.
Issues - There are quite a few things that really don't work in trying to make things play out like this: first off, it wasn't Guts that directly destroyed Theresia's life. It was the Count and the God Hand that were behind everything that happened that, from the death of her mother to the Count already being an Apostle and activating the Behelit. Guts was just the spark that lit the fire. If anything, he could be blamed for critically wounding the Count and that eventually led to his death once he chose not to sacrifice Theresia, but technically it was the Count that chose his own fate. Also, if the trauma would lead her to obsession about Guts and looking for information, she would certainly stumble on some sort of documentation about the Band of the Falcon's rise in military ranks, Guts' role in it and their sudden demise. Since Farnese also arrived at the scene where the Eclipse took place, Theresia would easily figure out that a sacrificial ceremony happened there and that Guts experienced what she luckily didn't, so her motivation would crumble very easily. The other big issue would be... she did witness first-hand all the God Hand members, she did see Griffith (and this may be a problem now that he's becoming the central figure in the human world, she's a key witness of his real nature) and has been told by Void and viewed through Ubik's ability the entire process of sacrifice and becoming an Apostle. So it wouldn't really make sense to blame only Guts and obsess over having revenge against him only. Maybe Theresia would still blame everything to Guts due to her life being "relatively" normal and all these traumatic events happening once he showed up (besides she already seems to be doing so in the last pages we see her). Additionally, it could be that due to having lived in isolation for so long and being so young, her psyche may have blocked some details and memories of what really happened (namely the God Hand and her father being an Apostle) in order to elaborate things differently and just blame all on Guts. It would be a pretty lame excuse though.
Route 2: Peaceful encounter - An alternative version of this theory I thought of while recognizing the issues would also involve Theresia investigating not only on Guts' activity but also developing an obsession about the God Hand and Apostles. Having access in the Holy See's archives, she may be able to find old manuscripts and documentation that may reveal more of the God Hand and Apostles in past centuries (and how interesting it would be to find more about this!), but at this point, at a potential new encounter with Guts, would hold pretty much no narrative goal to solve or it simply wouldn't add much to the story (unless she may be involved in unmasking Griffith's real self in front of everyone), if that encounter would happen after the defeat of Griffith and the God Hand. Not to mention that writing down all of what Theresia did in the meantime would pretty much involve abandonding Guts' story for a considerable portion of time and I don't think it would work that well, but who knows, it may function as a pretty neat fanfiction side story focusing only on her.
I think I pretty much ended up devaluing my own theory... but lemme hear your thoughts!
Do you think Theresia's life post-Black Swordsman could be a plotline worth exploring or that it might actually have happened how I suggested?
Do you think Theresia or Jill deserve to come back in the story, and if so, how?
Or better, could these ideas of mine give you an alternative idea of how things may turn out for them?
Context: As for how I got the idea I have to admit that it's quite influenced by having read Vinland Saga and one specific twist of events with a certain character that happens in the second half of the manga (if you've watched only the anime, it's going to be quite spoilerous so read it at your own risk. Season 1 covers chapters 1-54, these events happen at chapters 114-122) so I'm gonna give a brief summary of what happens for context. Basically, years after the events of the first season, when Thorfinn has already made a decision to renounce to violence and find Vinland to build a new nation of peace, he meets again Hild, a female hunter whose family was ruthlessly murdered by Thorfinn himself many years prior, at the time she was a young girl and Thorfinn was in his revenge-thirsty phase while he was in Askeladd's mercenary band. She witnessed her family getting murdered by them (if I remember correctly, her father was a former Viking and was targeted due to that) and Thorfinn kills her father in front of her but he left her live since she wasn't a target. Hild isn't aware of Thorfinn's radical change of heart, but what she witnessed put her on a revenge path similar to Thorfinn's own at that time and she is determined to kill him for revenge. Thorfinn is heavily injured but Hild stops from killing him on the spot after recalling her father's words to forgive people. Thorfinn begs her to give him time to atone for his actions. After this encounter, Hild joins Thorfinn's group in order to keep an eye on him and take his life in case he'll ever resort to violence again. This encounter is honestly my favourite part in the second half of Vinland Saga since it's a vivid reminder of Thorfinn's early actions (and how much he developed), it introduces a great new character by bringing to the forefront a different point of view on the protagonist, and it adds a new complex layer of dramatic tension in the narrative and directly reinforces Thorfinn's motivation.
Now, I don't mean that Kentaro Miura would or should have done the same had he had the chance to and besides that, Vinland Saga for most of its run has taken a very different path than that of Berserk, it has a different message and goal, but I'm wondering if Matoko Yukimura might have been influenced by some elements in Berserk (Guts ruining Theresia's life when he was in his worst state of mind, but he eventually matured into a totally different man since then) for setting up this development and if in a way, he anticipated a plot twist that Berserk may only have kept in seeded form.
My Speculation: Keep in mind that I'm not knowledgeable enough about Berserk's timeline to know if this may occur (as in, how many years pass between the end of Black Swordsman, Lost Children, the end of Conviction and the point we're at now) and to be honest I don't even know how specific dynamics between characters may play out but here is more or less what it consists of:
I imagine that Theresia after the events of Black Swordsman arc, being suddently left alone, too young to take the Count's place but still of noble family, ends up in the Holy See and eventually joins the Holy Iron Chain Knights (similarly to Farnese) and maintains her intent of finding Guts and take revenge on him. I imagine her wanting to trace Guts' activity in order to eventually find him and have him killed. Being inside the Holy See, she must have heard of what happened to Farnese in Lost Children and the Conviction Arc (witnessing the Red Lake after the Eclipse, later capturing Guts for a short amount of time and abandoning her place after the events at Albion), and that Theresia would try to figure out what happened to her while also finding information about Guts. For this reason she travels to the locations we see in BS and LC, including Jill's village, years after the events we see (here we may see Jill having succeeded in bettering her life, but still struggling with many things) and I imagine Theresia bringing Jill along with her on the way back since she's the most crucial witness (this would spare her from the attack of various creatures after the merging of physical and astral world). I think it would be extremely interesting to see Theresia and Jill interact since they share the life-changing experience of being survivors of Apostles activity and also due to everything Guts did in their lives, for better or for worse. I think they would definitely be able to bond at a deeper level or at least have an intriguing dynamic.
Route 1: Conflict against Guts - Years later, I don't exactly know how I would make events play out since it's practically impossible to imagine how Miura would have brought on and resolved the conflict between Guts & his group against Griffith and the God Hand, but I imagine that after Fempto's defeat, Guts and Theresia encounter each other again. All of Theresia's anger and thirst for revenge would come up suddently and Guts & Co. are taken by shock at this turn of events.
What would comes next is pretty much inscrutable for me. Considering Theresia's own promise, how would she approach Guts and how would she confront him? How would Guts react to see the little girl from back then being consumed by revenge just like he was? Would Guts feel any sense of guilt for his actions and the innocent lives he involved in his revenge path back then (let's remember that an entire city was destroyed and everyone died in the first episode during the fight with the Snake Baron)? How would Casca and the rest of his group react upon hearing Theresia's point of view? How would Guts and Theresia settle things after so many years and after the main plots are resolved? I'm not really sure about any of these, but I'd love to see some of these things brought up... especially Guts' awful deeds while he was in Black Swordsman persona. I don't think that Berserk was ever meant to be a story like Vinland Saga that is about pacifism, an absolute rejection of violence and atoning for past sins yet I would like to see Guts be confronted by a living consequence of his own wrongdoings. I'd also love to see Jill have a crucial role in settling things with Theresia, maybe even Casca and Farnese.
Alternatively, if this may be set sometime before the complete demise of the God Hand, it may turn out that the Behelit would be destined to her and she'll be challenged to sacrifice someone she cares for (maybe Jill after they grow closer for a few years?) in order to become and Apostle and have the strength to defeat Guts. It would be quite insane but again, my theorycrafting isn't that sharp in imagining how things could be.
Issues - There are quite a few things that really don't work in trying to make things play out like this: first off, it wasn't Guts that directly destroyed Theresia's life. It was the Count and the God Hand that were behind everything that happened that, from the death of her mother to the Count already being an Apostle and activating the Behelit. Guts was just the spark that lit the fire. If anything, he could be blamed for critically wounding the Count and that eventually led to his death once he chose not to sacrifice Theresia, but technically it was the Count that chose his own fate. Also, if the trauma would lead her to obsession about Guts and looking for information, she would certainly stumble on some sort of documentation about the Band of the Falcon's rise in military ranks, Guts' role in it and their sudden demise. Since Farnese also arrived at the scene where the Eclipse took place, Theresia would easily figure out that a sacrificial ceremony happened there and that Guts experienced what she luckily didn't, so her motivation would crumble very easily. The other big issue would be... she did witness first-hand all the God Hand members, she did see Griffith (and this may be a problem now that he's becoming the central figure in the human world, she's a key witness of his real nature) and has been told by Void and viewed through Ubik's ability the entire process of sacrifice and becoming an Apostle. So it wouldn't really make sense to blame only Guts and obsess over having revenge against him only. Maybe Theresia would still blame everything to Guts due to her life being "relatively" normal and all these traumatic events happening once he showed up (besides she already seems to be doing so in the last pages we see her). Additionally, it could be that due to having lived in isolation for so long and being so young, her psyche may have blocked some details and memories of what really happened (namely the God Hand and her father being an Apostle) in order to elaborate things differently and just blame all on Guts. It would be a pretty lame excuse though.
Route 2: Peaceful encounter - An alternative version of this theory I thought of while recognizing the issues would also involve Theresia investigating not only on Guts' activity but also developing an obsession about the God Hand and Apostles. Having access in the Holy See's archives, she may be able to find old manuscripts and documentation that may reveal more of the God Hand and Apostles in past centuries (and how interesting it would be to find more about this!), but at this point, at a potential new encounter with Guts, would hold pretty much no narrative goal to solve or it simply wouldn't add much to the story (unless she may be involved in unmasking Griffith's real self in front of everyone), if that encounter would happen after the defeat of Griffith and the God Hand. Not to mention that writing down all of what Theresia did in the meantime would pretty much involve abandonding Guts' story for a considerable portion of time and I don't think it would work that well, but who knows, it may function as a pretty neat fanfiction side story focusing only on her.
I think I pretty much ended up devaluing my own theory... but lemme hear your thoughts!
Do you think Theresia's life post-Black Swordsman could be a plotline worth exploring or that it might actually have happened how I suggested?
Do you think Theresia or Jill deserve to come back in the story, and if so, how?
Or better, could these ideas of mine give you an alternative idea of how things may turn out for them?