Midsommar left many things open to viewers’ interpretation, making way for a lot of theories, including one that suggests Pelle is the Hårga’s new oracle. Filmmaker Ari Aster has become a big name in the horror genre thanks to his films Hereditary and Midsommar. The former was released in 2018 and centered on a family haunted by a mysterious presence following the death of their grandmother and which only got worse after another family tragedy.
Aster’s second film was Midsommar (2019), a break-up film disguised as folk horror, which proved horror movies don’t need to be set at night – and, in that sense, being the counterpart of Hereditary. Midsommar follows a group of friends who travel to Sweden for a festival that occurs once every 90 years, but to their surprise, they end up finding themselves in the middle of a pagan cult with no way out. The cult is that of the Hårga, who use psilocybin mushrooms to integrate outsiders into the village and make them feel comfortable, only to slowly (and sometimes not so much) turn them into sacrifices.
The Hårga have some truly twisted and obscure traditions, and are not opposed to incest (though they do see it as taboo). In fact, one of the elders explains to Josh (William Jackson Harper), who was writing his thesis on the village’s midsummer celebration, that they had their own oracle, who was in charge of writing their sacred runic text. The oracle, Ruben, who has physical and cognitive limitations, is briefly shown throughout the film, and is explained that he’s the product of incest, as he’s “unclouded” and thus more open to receiving the word of the gods. Now, as Aster tends to leave a lot of clues throughout his films that point at bigger and important revelations, a fan theory suggests that Pelle is the commune’s new oracle after the events of the film.
A theory posted on Reddit explains that Pelle’s crowning at the end of the film, along with the elder’s speech, point at him becoming the new oracle – which would also mean that he’s one of the inbred people in the commune. The author of the post points out the elder’s use of the phrase “unclouded intuition”, used when telling Josh about the oracle and the sacred book, and later at the end of the film when Pelle is “recognized for his clouded intuition”. They add that, because Pelle wasn’t born with a disability as Ruben was, he was required to prove himself to have “unclouded intuition” in a different way.
Another Reddit user pointed out the tapestry at the very beginning of the film, which pretty much tells the events that are about to happen. In it, Pelle is shown sitting in a tree, drawing – at the end of the film, the oracle sits in a cloud of cotton, representing him looking down at the commune. Another user added that the sacred book was full of runes that were clear and easy to read, but Ruben just paints in it. This shows that not all oracles had the same limitations as Ruben, so it’s possible that having a disability isn’t a requirement to be an oracle. Pelle might have not orchestrated everything, beginning with the death of Dani’s parents, as many fans believed (and Aster later denied), but it’s still possible that he became the Hårga’s new oracle after the events of Midsommar.