One thing my friend Roxy @the-sound-and-the-furry had brought up with me on call following us listening to the TMA finale was the distinction between the titles of the two series', and how telling it could be. We know the Eye to be an entity not inclined towards any sort of direct action or interference - the dissonance between this and Jon's behaviors during the series being one of the main tells that he's not strictly in association with the Eye - and the title of Archives lends itself to this as well. What has happened has already happened, and you're a mere observer of it.

The title of Protocol, on the other hand, is a very proactive title, as Roxy pointed out. 'Protocol' is based around a simple question:

"What do we do if X happens?"

Within a week of this conversation, Roxy shared the following with me.

So I think this is a really sexy theory, and positing the idea of "is this the universe we came from, the next universe, or perhaps the PREVIOUS one" I think is key to answering the questions we all have about TMP.

But later on, in a similar conversation, something entirely different occurred to me.

In this instance, we were discussing the specifics of the TMA finale. Specifically, the Web's (alleged) plan and what about it did or didn't make sense. Here were my messages:

(I am very aware the Spider chose the Eye specifically for its foolish nature this is just talking about hypothetically while it was initially forming its plan).

Roxy's notions about this:

It was in the process of replying to this idea that I was struck by the larger theory.

"The Magnus Protocol".

"What do we do if there's another Magnus?"

We know the Institute at least exists in the world of TMP, so ostensibly Magnus would've been planning the same things here.

And speaking of...

I think that with the tone of Gwendolyn Bouchard in the trailer, we sort of naturally pegged her as a sinister counterpart to Elias as we knew him in the series. But it makes far more sense that she'd be a pissed-off relative to me.

(The Smirke Line doc is a separate theory doc I had created earlier in my listening to the series. Perhaps someday I'll get into it or discuss the specifics of the Web's overarching nature in other Powers' business. This is not that post, however. For the time being I think it's self-explanatory enough.)

There's also the fact that in this universe, modern technology is used to make the recordings, which given the Web's history with technology, and the incompatibility of the stories with it which created the necessity for the tapes, would suggest to me an entirely different type of plan for this universe.

I finally got the chance to go over the ARG results with some friends, and I won't say anything there particularly jumped out at me in terms of supporting or disproving this idea. But no loss is a win where I'm concerned, at least in the short term. I'm fully ready for this to be thrown out in episode one.

There was one other thought which did occur to me, though I'm not entirely sure I have the evidence necessary to support it, and it pretty much makes for just messy speculation right now. I'd be remiss if there's even a chance it's true and I didn't put it out there, though.

Throwing everything I just said about which universe we're in out the window, let's assume we ARE in the universe which follows the initial one from TMA - the one the entities were sent to.

Given that there are aspects to the Web's theoretical plan that seem confusing on paper, as well as one particular web-based episode I think didn't actually get explored further later in the show and its clues were never explained (hint: it's in season four), can we be so certain we know the ORIGINAL finale plan in its entirety?

This merits further investigation. But I do wonder if it's in any way possible that, should my idea about the Web's possible 'alternate route' be accurate, the original series was in some way meant to carry out this plan all along. That gets a bit red-string, I know. But for the moment, I'm not sure it's necessarily proven wrong. Feel free to comment or ask me about it if there are things that you think do, though. I'm very interested in unpacking this further and that's hard to do in a bubble.

Probably several other spider-based posts to come in the near future. I promise to occasionally talk about other things as well, maybe. There's several things I still haven't unpacked here that square interestingly with these ideas but I think it's too much for one post, and I don't want to go any further off the rails than I already have.