I think the "young" look is just a result of the blur and lighting, and perhaps the tight pulled-back hair. But you can still see hints of her nasolabial folds (which is a term I had to look up just now
) in page 1384 and she still has the gargantuan tits so I think this Elena/Aphrodite is intended to be the same age as we've seen elsewhere in the comic.
Yeah, I don't think the dream sequence is a dream that happened "in the past". I think Elena is having a dream that she's Andrew again being punished by "Aphrodite in the form of Elena", which triggers a memory.
So a flashback within a dream sequence. Like last time.
Something to note is that in the flashback, Andrew has woken up and is apparently well aware that he lost all their money. In previous pages, whenever they brought up the bad thing Andrew did in the past, the implication was that something bad happened, and Andrew's excuse was something along the lines of him not being aware of it and it not really being his fault.
This flashback seems to show that he's very much aware. Also, him being woken up by a call from Marina is interesting. Either she's on travel, or they're engaged but they don't live together. I suppose she could have gotten up before he did, left, and then found out they're broke and is now calling Andrew... But if Andrew knows he got scammed, then that's a crappy way of telling the person you love. I'm sure this will be spelled out for us, but for the sake of speculation, I'm interpreting this limited scene as:
Andrew lost all their money. Somehow Marina forgives him for this later, so he must have a hell of an excuse.
Andrew is aware all their money was taken. For him to be aware but also have a reasonable excuse would imply to me that he got scammed/robbed. And either it happened directly to him (someone forced him directly, so he's immediately aware), or he was phished for info over time, got told last night that this was all a scam last night (was somehow able to go to sleep), and that's why he knows this morning.
Lastly, apparently the excuse is similar to what's happening now.
I guess this depends on how you interpret these words. In the middle panel, Marina asks "What would she have to gain from it? To me, this whole situation sounds a lot like that issue we had a few months ago".
When I read that sentence back when the panel first dropped, I interpreted the part that "sounds a lot like that issue we had a few months ago" to mean that whatever Andrew's claim was, it also involved someone that had motives that didn't quite make sense. The fact that the "
whole situation" seemed familiar said to me that a lot of the story seemed to be repeating. Memory loss, questionable motives, etc.
Now that we know that "issue" was apparently losing all their money (which... sounds a lot more than just an "issue", let's be frank)... Seems like it's pretty obvious what the perpetrator had to gain: a lot of money! So... rethinking my interpretation, I guess the "whole situation sounds a lot like..." part of the dialogue is actually not talking about the whole situation. It was just saying, "this is the second time you've royally fucked up and are claiming it wasn't actually your fault". Even though the fuck ups are completely unalike.
