Guess who just defeated:
Cala Maria, Wally Warbles, Piney Beard, Grim Matchstick, Sally Stageplay, Rumor Honeybottoms, Werner Warman (the rat), the Ghost Train, and the final Mosselium in the span of around 2 hours!!!
THIS GAL RIGHT HERE
When Max gets pulled into Spirit Trance again in Chapter 4, there's a better look at the background. Sand dunes and what looks like pyramids in the distance. We know that when Spirit Trance involves more than one spirit, the world takes on characteristics of both spirits, as seen with Patchworm and the Ghost Train:
Sphinxes can easily be associated with both a desert environment and pyramids, so there might be more fuel for this theory here.
Also as Max is falling after being repelled by the ghost train, right before he loses consciousness there's something on his back:
Those could be the wings of a Sphinx preventing him from becoming a splat on the ground. After all, if this Sphinx hijacking a ride is the reason Max became a spectral, and it did so to get into Mayview, what good would it do to have its ride die outside the barrier, leaving it right back where it started?
I recently read through chapter 5, and with the last two pages that have been released I noticed something that I think gives away the identity of the spirit hiding in Max. I think that whatever is in Max is a very powerful, or maybe even the leader of the Sphinxes.
First, back in Chapter 3, when BERG is speaking to Doorman, he exclaims, “ ARROGANCE. YOUR POWER IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF. RIDDLES AND WORD GAMES.” And so far, both our Sphinx of Games and Twuth have powers that manifest through words.
Additionally, BERG alludes to his faction. When we first met the Sphinx of Games he ran off saying that “the others” will hear about this. And until now that just seemed like an empty threat. When Doorman is contemplating about Max’s situation:
He says “one of the s-” Now I’m kinda grasping at straws on this one, but the freaky shadow spirit seems to be an independent entity, but we now have proof that the sphinxes are a group and it’s entirely possible that the sentence could have finished as “one of the sphinxes.” I’m thinking that this chapters gonna end with BERG kinda revealing himself to Sphinx of Twuth to get him to bug off.