3.14 Speculation
So the thing that is standing out most to me is the fact that we've heard nothing about the third choir in the competition. We've always gotten something. This leads me to believe that maybe the third choir is from Dave's school, and maybe they're not competing because of whatever happened.
We've also seen from both performances they've released that something goes down between the Warblers and New Directions. First, rage fandom-wide over Blaine and Kurt applauding for the Warblers along with all of New Directions, including Santana who was unarguably the angriest. But now, we see Sebastian and the Warblers applauding for the Troubletones. So yeah, obviously we are missing a piece--but of course fandom will rage until the episode shuts them the fuck up--with regards to something bringing these two choirs together.
On top of that, we see Sue in the audience looking very touched by the performance.
So I'm thinking what goes down in the beginning of the episode kind of makes a lot of people step back and reevaluate what's important. With it being the winter finale, it's a good point for them to a) wrap up a lot of dangling threads, and b) begin new plot points for the last eps of the season.
Also, I think we're going to get far more Blaine scenes out of this episode than we might be expecting... Mostly because I don't see them just jumping into an episode about him without some build up.