Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Sweet Tooth seasons 1 & 2.Alongside the bizarre births of animal-human hybrid babies and the ravaging sickness of the H5G9 virus, Sweet Tooth's purple flowers is another oddity that arose during the Great Crumble. These flowers only grow around places where people are infected with the Sick. Humans treat the purple flowers as dangerous and eradicate them when they appear, but what if the purple flowers actually contain a cure for the virus? Indeed, Sweet Tooth season 1 revealed that the virus and the hybrid babies came from the same original source: microbes discovered by a science team in the Alaskan ice, brought back to Birdie's lab and injected into chicken eggs with the intention of growing vaccines.
Instead, Birdie accidentally grew a deer-boy hybrid, and before she could get any further, her research materials were confiscated, and she was transferred away from the project. Shortly after, the mysterious H5G9 virus began wiping out humanity, while at the same time, all babies began being born as hybrids. Dr. Aditya Singh attempted to create a cure for "the Sick" by vivisecting the hybrid children captured by General Abbott and the Last Men. In Sweet Tooth season 2, Singh finally used Sweet Tooth's purple flowers, but only to give Gus visions that led them to Fort Smith's labs. This may only scratch the surface of the capabilities of these strange, new post-apocalyptic plants.
What Sweet Tooth Reveals About The Purple Flowers
Sweet Tooth's purple flowers were first introduced in Sweet Tooth season 1, episode 3, "Weird Deer S**t," as Jepperd and Gus are journeying towards the train station. In the distance they see a small town completely covered in the purple flowers, with a large yellow biohazard sign warning people away. Gus notes that they never had flowers like that at his home, and he thinks that his Pubba would have liked them (which may actually have been a sly hint at their true nature, since Pubba dies from the Sick in the pilot). Jepperd is not so enamored, saying, "Those flowers show up every time the Sick does. They're like an omen or something."
Even the nature-loving Bear thinks that the purple flowers are dangerous. When she, Jep, and Gus are forced to cross the Valley of Sorrows — a great meadow of purple flowers that grew up over a mass grave of the Sick — she describes them as toxic and says that no one goes near them unless they have a death wish. In Rani and Adi's community, the purple flowers are eradicated as soon as they appear.
People seem to believe that since the flowers grow up near sick people they may also spread the virus. However, the general populace also believes that Sweet Tooth's hybrid children caused the Sick, which is not true. When Gus falls into the Valley of Sorrows, the only effect he experiences from the flowers' pollen is vivid dreaming. What if Sweet Tooth's purple flowers aren't actually dangerous, but are the key to saving humanity?
How The Purple Flowers Could Cure the Sick
Since the purple flowers in Sweet Tooth appeared at the same time as the H5G9 virus and the hybrid babies, it's safe to assume that they're somehow linked to the microbes that Birdie was experimenting on in her lab. All three phenomena could even be caused by the same microbe having different effects: causing sickness and death in humans, causing genetic mutations in fetuses during pregnancy, and also causing mutations of plant life. Birdie said that the Sick and the hybrids are two sides of the same coin; the purple flowers could be the coin's edge.
If the purple flowers do indeed come from the same source as the virus, a possible treatment for Rani may have been staring Adi in the face. Before learning about Birdie's research and Gus's origins, Bear believed that the hybrids and the virus were the planet's natural way of healing from the destructive influence of mankind: whittling the human population down to a fraction of what it once was, and creating hybrid animal-human babies that can live in harmony with nature. While the Great Crumble may have been triggered by a team of scientists in a lab rather than by Mother Nature herself, parts of Bear's theory could still hold true.
The purpose of the Sick may have been to bring the human population back down to a manageable number, while Sweet Tooth's purple flowers could save humanity from becoming completely extinct. Dr. Bell's temporary treatment for Rani was made by using extracts from the pineal gland and bone marrow of hybrid children to create a "Secret Sauce" that staves off the Sick. If the virus, the hybrids, and the flowers all come from the same microbial source, then the flowers could provide a more permanent cure. Alternatively, the flowers may hold the secret to creating a vaccine that protects the remaining human population from the virus.
Why The Flowers Being The Cure Would Be Perfect
The purple flowers secretly containing the key to curing the Sick would fit perfectly with Sweet Tooth's themes of the healing power of nature, and the destructive power of mankind. In their search for a cure, both Dr. Bell and Dr. Singh turned to the cruelest possible type of research: vivisecting live hybrid children and destroying an incredible new species for the sake of preserving humanity. It would feel out of place with Sweet Tooth's narrative if Dr. Singh did successfully find a cure by cutting up the poor hybrids at the Preserve. It's more likely that Dr. Bell was unable to find a cure simply because she was looking in the wrong place.
While Sweet Tooth is overall a pretty uplifting take on a post-apocalyptic world, all of its darkest elements come from humankind's mistreatment of the natural world. The hybrids are shunned, experimented on, and exterminated because people falsely believe that they spread the Sick, so it would make sense if humanity's belief that Sweet Tooth's purple flowers are toxic was also false. And there would be a certain poetic irony if nature was offering up a cure for the Sick right on people's doorsteps, only for humans to destroy and burn it as soon as it appears.
What Sweet Tooth Season 2 Revealed About The Purple Flowers
The hallucinogenic properties of the purple flowers were deeply explored in Sweet Tooth season 2, when Dr. Singh exposed Gus to the flowers, after learning from Gus what happened when he fell into the field of them in season 1. Similar to the effects of LSD or psilocybin mushrooms, the flowers caused Gus to get extremely vivid visions about his past, as though he was inside the memory. With Dr. Singh talking him through the jarring experience, Gus managed to recall memories from when he was a baby, leading Singh to return to Fort Smith and discover the research of Dr. Gertrude "Birdie" Miller.
After the zoo is attacked by General Abbott's enemies and Rani decides to leave Dr. Singh to his obsessive quest of finding a cure, Singh tried to end it all by going into the room of purple flowers. Instead of dying, he passes out from the effects of Sweet Tooth's purple flowers and experiences something similar to what Gus went through. To the doctor's surprise, he was unharmed, which means that the flowers didn't have a toxic effect on him for whatever reason.
What viewers might've missed from these scenes is that Gus, under the influence of Sweet Tooth's purple flowers, saw the plants separate into red and blue flowers at some point during his visions. This implies that, like Gus and the other kids at the Preserve, the flowers are hybrids as well. It's entirely possible that Dr. Singh and General Abbott's men were looking at the wrong hybrids to find a cure.
The Purple Flowers Cure Theory Will Be Resolved In Season 3
If Sweet Tooth's purple flowers really are the key to curing the Sick, this is something that could be explored further in Sweet Tooth season 3. Places like the Valley of Sorrows and the town covered in purple flowers are considered no-go areas, so they could actually be hiding something. Perhaps communities of formerly sick people are living in these towns, or perhaps hybrids are using them as safe havens. One thing seems certain: there's more to the purple flowers than meets the eye.
Do the flowers cure the virus in Sweet Tooth? If someone in the post-apocalypse is smart enough to have the real answer to this question, then they're likely clever enough to keep it a secret from the rest of the world for their own safety. Indeed, any of the several warlords ruling the remnants of humanity would have no qualms about using the cure as a weapon — as shown in General Abbott's entire character arc. The HSG9 cure being so abundantly available may also threaten the power held by people like Mrs. Zhang, which would be extremely dangerous for anyone who figures out that the purple flowers hold the secret to a cure.
In any case, with Sweet Tooth season 3 supposedly being the last installment in the series, the truth is only several episodes away. In fact, in season 2, Birdie also found Sweet Tooth's purple flowers near the corpses at the site of the first expedition that encountered the deadly microbes. Like Dr. Singh, Dr. Miller may finally start looking for a cure at the direction where nature itself has been so obviously pointing. Whether the purple flowers are just a MacGuffin or the cure that the world has been looking for, it will hopefully be revealed in Sweet Tooth season 3.