TV Series:
Will's gung-ho bossy co-worker Jennifer McMahon is actually in the Resistance
- The head of the Resistance cell in the LA bloc complains that he expected the CTA secret police to take a couple of years from the Arrival to get to the point where they had personnel competent enough to track down people in the Resistance at the speed Will is regularly accomplishing in the series. Part of the accelerating pace can indeed be attributed to Will being an exception to the rule of lazy and incompetent officials; Beau is an example of the former: a person who didn't even live in LA got stuck because of the Arrival, and working for the Occupation counterintelligence service is the only way he can make a living, though he doesn't try very hard at it if his comments to Will are any indication.
- However, if Jennifer McMahon is as enthusiastic and motivated as Beau is not, why hasn't the CTA had more success already? Conclusion: McMahon purposely chooses to chase down leads that she knows won't go anywhere, but the CTA clearly values perceived loyalty above actual capability, so they don't place much weight on her lack of results, and a lot more on her ideologically-correct behavior. As with Will, though, the right kind of protective camouflage can hide a double agent.
- As of "Geronimo", she seems unusually shaken by Phyllis's death and more than a bit nervous around Will. She also reacts very vehemently when he point-blank asks her if she's the leak in the local Homeland Security office.
- It's revealed she has no law enforcement, intelligence or military background. She worked for a corporate data collection firm before the Arrival.
- This implies that since she's enthusiastic but not an experienced investigator, the CTA (and by extension, Snyder) care more about perceived loyalty than concrete results, until pressure starts coming down from above to get said results. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both had serious problems with this in real life, since political connections and ideological correctness could matter more than being good at one's job. That all being said, it's probable this WMG is Jossed. McMahon doesn't show any real sign of trying to block the investigations into Geronimo or Broussard.
Beau is sympathetic to the Resistance
- Beau doesn't even want to be in LA, since he didn't live there but was stuck when the Arrival happened. As such he punches the clock at the CTA, but doesn't seem to be very ideologically committed, though he's a good cop and investigator when he wants to be. Ending the Occupation would let him get back to his home in the boonies of California, so he has an incentive to at least look the other way in an investigation if the personal cost to him is not too great. The Resistance's hard-and-fast "collaboration is betrayal" stance could be costing them quite a few undercover agents who want the "Hosts" gone, but have no other way to apply their skills and so presumably be eligible for food rations and housing.
Snyder will join forces with the Resistance through Bram
- Snyder has to know his credit with the Hosts is pretty shaky, and he might fare better with the opposition. Because Bram wants to get out of the labor camp, he has an incentive to help Snyder clean things up. Therefore, Snyder will ultimately make contact with Will, offering his services as double agent. Will will either start a new Resistance cell or manage to get back in touch with Broussard to reactivate the old one.
- Zig-zagged. Snyder and Bram part ways after the labor camp is destroyed, and with the new proxy being truculent about going along with his boss's orders, Snyder has a chance to become proxy again. Later, he faux joins the Resistance but is in reality still trying to collaborate with the Red Hats.
The aliens are actually benevolent
- The world seemed very well prepared for the arrival since apparently contact was made before the '70 at the initiative of humanity. And we saw that after the arrival, Earth now have a world government with enough power to decide which bloc is eradicated or not. Maybe the Hosts were contacted by bad people who manipulated them to believe that humanity will die if people aren't parked in blocs. The Hosts lend their technology to the 'caring people' and the world is took over by the worst kind of humans.
- The Disproportionate Retribution that the aliens engage in could thus be explained by some of the higher echelons of the would-be collaborators insisting that the Hosts need to take a firm hand, when the Hosts themselves are not particularly inclined to violence.
The "Hosts" are winnowing humanity to extract colonist-slaves for a long-term project
- Blocs are being emptied out, with a select few humans who fit certain biological and psychological criteria being sent up to space. The rest of the humans who don't match the criteria are either killed or sent to The Factory. This filtering of humans on a broad scale is likely meant to leave the Hosts with a select population of humans resistant enough to handle space travel and whatever the environment is on the destination planet.
- Possibly confirmed as of Season 3. Blocs are being repopulated, apparently selectively with emphasis on placing humans who believe in the Greatest Day, and the Hosts appear to be using earthpeople to make bioweapons against unspecified enemies.
Novel:
Bernadette Oslo is Eddie’s descendant.
- Eddie muses to himself that he’s asexually fond of Oslo despite the way she’s treated him so far, he finds her vaguely familiar without the ship-bred characteristically high cheekbones, and her exact position in the ship’s ruling council is never explicitly defined. Take into account that nobody knows what a Community Planner is, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that Oslo is Eddie’s great-plus granddaughter who remains with the committee even though her official role in the cabinet is unclear and her original purpose is basically redundant. Since Eddie was shot prior to having sex with his assigned partner, this adds some Fridge Horror as to how his sperm was extracted.
