Alternatively, how would you describe Cinderpelt? How about Cinderheart?

These pairs share something in common.

In each case, supposedly, one cat is a reincarnation of the other.

It's not a regular phenomenon for cats in the Warriors world to die and be reborn as different cats.

In fact, the two examples I mentioned are just about all those that exist.

But both sets contain prominent characters,

and the connection the cats in each pair have to each other is given significant attention in their stories.

And unfortunately the ideas presented in these story arcs don't fit into the world they are in, and don't even match with each other.

On one side, we have Cinderpelt and Cinderheart.

In this case, Starclan saw her life as unfair, due to her injury stopping her from being a warrior,

and reincarnated her into the kit who was born at the moment of her death,

Sorreltail's kit Cinderheart, who Cinderpelt died to save.

This premise on its own already causes issues.

Starclan, as well as Leafpool when she finds out what happened, treat Cinderpelt's life as unexpected.

They believe she was meant to be a warrior

and was stripped of this life when she unexpectedly got her injury and was forced to become a medicine cat instead.

We can take the fact that her life changing course was unexpected as mostly true.

We were given indications such as her misinterpretation of the Fire Tiger prophecy

that she wasn't born with the destiny of being a medicine cat.

But even allowing for that, there's still the problem that it was Cinderpelt's life.

No one forced her to be a medicine cat.

She wanted to help out and Yellowfang offered her the position because she was good at it,

and they enjoyed spending time together.

She did have a terrible injury, but other than that

the only heartache in her life was when Starclan decided to tell her she would die, and not let her tell her apprentice:

the apprentice who, mind you, was being told by Starclan to run away with Crowfeather.

She lived happily as a medicine cat except where Starclan intervened.

If she had a choice in the matter, I don't think she would have wanted a reincarnation.

This isn't helped by the details of the life she was given.

Cinderheart may have a passing similarity in personality to Cinderpelt, at least when she was an apprentice,

but she's definitely a different cat, living her own life.

Of course this becomes obscenely clear when Cinderpelt's spirit leaves Cinderheart's body but even before that,

Jayfeather had the ability to go into Cinderheart's mind and find Cinderpelt as another entity wandering around in there,

giving Cinderheart flashes of knowledge and memories she wouldn't otherwise have.

Cinderpelt wasn't given a second chance at life,

she was made into an observer for another cat's life until she was set free and allowed to go to Starclan.

This situation didn't hurt just Cinderpelt either.

Cinderheart got a leg injury similar to Cinderpelt's, twice, and without Jayfeather's help, she might have also not become a warrior.

If Cinderpelt's injury was so unexpected,

and this reincarnation was meant to give her a second chance where she could become a warrior,

why did destiny still pull Cinderheart into leg injuries that threatened her future?

Maybe Cinderpelt's spirit influenced her destiny to make the two she-cats more similar?

It's anyone's guess.

But it is almost certain that if Cinderpelt wasn't also in her body, Cinderheart wouldn't have gotten that injury,

and she definitely wouldn't have had a breakdown and felt she needed to become a medicine cat and break up with Lionblaze.

Yet another problem exists when we take into account that Starclan had the ability to give second chances at life

for cats whose lives were unexpected and unfair.

Even if it turned out to be a horrible method,

if Starclan thought this would give warriors a second chance, why is this the only time they used it?

Cinderpelt's life was fairly happy by Warriors standards.

Why didn't they reincarnate Longtail,

who was blinded and forced to retire despite proving his loyalty over and over to Thunderclan over Tigerstar?

Why didn't they give Snowkit a second chance?

He was born deaf and killed as a kit.

That sounds like a much more unfair life than what Cinderpelt had.

Starclan's reasoning doesn't make any sense unless they had some ulterior motive for wanting Cinderpelt specifically to live again,

and if they did, that never became apparent.

But maybe Starclan is just incompetent and couldn't do reincarnation correctly.

Maybe if we look at the other case, with Jayfeather and Jay's Wing, it won't bring as much pain to the lives of the cats involved.

Well, that is technically the case, but this version of Warriors reincarnation has a different problem.

Instead of one cat having far too much influence over the other's life, in this case neither cat has any impact on the other's life.

In our chapters with the ancients we learn that Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Dovewing

are reincarnations of Jay's Wing, Lion's Roar, and Dove's Wing respectively,

but what does this mean?

Dove's Wing and Lion's Roar are completely different cats from those they will supposedly reincarnate into,

and all we know about Jay's Wing is that he had some sort of close relationship with Half Moon

and that he was training to be a Sharpclaw.

Of course the three cats they are paired with are the three prophesied cats with superpowers in Firestar's time,

but as the ancients they were,

they didn't have any special abilities and weren't treated any differently from the other cats there.

In the present, the only one of the three that even knows about the ancients is Jayfeather,

and even he isn't directly affected by what is supposedly his past life.

We don't have any spirits leaving bodies,

no flashes of memory they couldn't otherwise have,

no desires or personality traits that seem to stem from the ancients that share their names.

So what is the point of reincarnation in this case?

Well for Lionblaze and Dovewing, the answer seems to be...uhh...nothing.

But it is technically possible that Jayfeather needed his past life in order to connect with the ancients through his stick.

Of course, when he does arrive in the past,

he still has no access to the memories or personality of Jay's Wing, whatever they may be.

He had to learn what a sharpclaw was, that some of the ancients fished around the lake,

that they voted to make decisions, and that he had a relationship with Half Moon.

If Jay's Wing was there at all, this should have been common knowledge for Jayfeather,

and he should have been able to slip into the role easily,

like Cinderheart being able to spontaneously describe what badgers were and be afraid of them despite never seeing one.

Where Jay's Wing is when Jayfeather is in his body is something of a mystery,

especially since we know he didn't come with the ancients to the mountains after Long Shadows,

and instead only appeared again when Jayfeather went back to see them once more in Sign of the Moon.

It's my personal headcanon that Jay's Wing is already dead when Jayfeather goes back the first time,

since some of the ancients do comment about how long Jay's Wing was down there and how they were afraid he wouldn't make it out.

But in that case, Jay's Wing would be little more than a body for Jayfeather to puppet, rather than a whole other life he has inside.

This does, as a side note, make it a little strange for Jayfeather to fall in love with and romance Half Moon,

since, whatever connection he and Jay's Wing have, they are definitely different cats,

and Half Moon is never made aware of which one she was speaking to, or which one she fell in love with initially.

But this is never brought up as a problem in canon,

since, like Cinderheart's situation with Cinderpelt, Jayfeather's relationship with Jay's Wing is described with the term:

“reincarnation.”

In Warriors the term “reincarnation” is used in a...strange way.

I won't get into any real world religions but going by the basic dictionary definition,

reincarnation is a term for the situation where a being is birthed again into either a new body or any other form of life.

The being hasn't fundamentally changed,

and they don't replace any spirits in the new form they take.

They simply change their form and begin a new life.

Warriors does not use reincarnation in this way, in either case.

In Cinderpelt and Cinderheart's case, two separate beings were made to inhabit one body,

with the former retaining all her memories and still being a full grown she-cat even when Cinderheart's body was still a kit.

Cinderpelt has no physical control over the body they share though, and can only share some of her memories with Cinderheart,

which might have also inadvertently forced her into some of the same life situations as her predecessor.

In Jayfeather and Jay's Wing's case,

two separate beings lived at completely separate times with no similarities or connections

other than the former being able to inhabit the latter's body in the past.

No memories, feelings, experiences, or otherwise are exchanged between them

even when they might have shared the same body at the same time,

and the reincarnation seemed to have no effect on either cat's life, as far as we know.

The differences might be explained away by Starclan not being as capable as whoever reincarnated the three,

but even in the best case scenario, what is the point of reincarnation in this world?

At best it does nothing for either party

and at worst it hurts them both and keeps one of them from the relaxing afterlife they are entitled to.

I'm not sure reincarnation is an accurate term to use in the case of Warriors

given how the different incarnations are so clearly different cats,

but it is the one we're stuck with,

and as long as no one in Warriors ever brings up a reincarnation again,

maybe we can move past how strange and often creepy it can be in this world.

Thank you for watching, and always remember that

badgers are scary! ...I-I've never seen one but still.