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Jossed Theories
Parker may be The Mole, and part of Carroll's cult.
She's not at all forthcoming about her past as a cult investigator, and, at the end of the second episode, she gives Carroll a copy of Edgar Allan Poe's complete works, but something else definitely passes between them, leaving each with a sly little smile. Time will tell.- It gets trickier: In the next episode, she appeared genuinely surprised to learn that a cult member's wife was also a member.
- And another twist: She was part of a cult as a child, and her parents are still in it.
- Jossed. She's killed by being Buried Alive, and there's no evidence she was ever part of the cult.
Like above, Mike Weston is the The Mole.
Weston, who is the Carroll expert, was there with Agent Riley as he was laid dying from the stabbing. Its possibly that Agent Riley would be able to survive from a wound like that, given how Made of Iron the characters are. When Hardy left to catch two of Carroll's cultists, Weston smothers Riley, either a rite of passage or as a Mercy Kill. He even looked shocked when Hardy comes back.- Yeah, shocked and stunned because a co-worker and friend just got murdered. But Riley didn't have any blood on his face, just on his neck where he'd been stabbed — and if Weston had smothered him, either with his blood-covered hands or with the towel he'd been using to staunch the wound, there would definitely be blood on Riley's face.
- Looks to be Jossed; there'd be no reason for the cult to kidnap and torture him if he was one of them, and neither Carroll nor Roderick gave any indication of it being an act or part of the plan.
- Unless Joe recruited Mike specifically to be Ryan's sidekick - every good hero needs one, and Joe wants to make Hardy's story into an epic one after all. Maybe he's not supposed to have any contact with anyone else from the cult and give them no help until the final act. There was after all Rick, who seemed concerned solely with Claire, so maybe Mike is the same for Ryan, only in even deeper cover. Yeah, I know it's far-fetched.
- That's all assuming the entire plot is going according to Joe's plan. There is every indication that it isn't, that things are starting to go wrong.
- Appears to be ultimately Jossed by the season finale.
Joey is Hardy's son
That's the great secret behind the plot: Carroll knows that Hardy slept with his wife, with Joey as the result.- Its already been said that Joey was born before Hardy met Claire and Carroll, so Joey being Hardy's son is impossible.
- Barring a sudden twist, consider this one Jossed.
Mike won't survive the season intact, if at all.
Face it: He's that lethal combination of competent and cute that makes him the perfect target, both in- and out-of-universe. Plus a recent promo shows him in Joe's clutches while Ryan watches helplessly, which just screams "last-episode shock death".- Seems to be jossed... for now.
- Jossed. He survives the season.
- Unfortunately, Parker's not so lucky.
Carroll is not going to survive the first season.
He's going to be killed, either by the FBI or Roderick. But the cult will continue with him as a martyred figure, and may even splinter into rival sects or factions.- Seems to be confirmed... for now.
- They did find the body, or parts of it. The FBI was confident enough in their ID that they let the news announce he was dead. Did everyone just forget about the scene with the girl watching TV in the restaurant?
- That only means they found parts of him. Which is even creepier, really.
- The season two promos pretty much Joss this outright. After all:
Hardy: The greatest trick the devil ever pulled- *switches to* Carroll: -was convincing the world he did not exist.- Although the Followers do seem to have split into rival factions. There are at least three separate groups still out there, including Emma's, which is laying low.
Emma and Mandy will have a confrontation
- And it's going to be epic.
- Jossed. Both Emma and Mandy were killed by other people before any confrontation between them could happen.
Confirmed Theories
Olivia's fate.
She will either be ordered to commit public suicide, suicide on her own terms, or be murdered in defiance against Carrol. It will most likely be the first two, seeing Carrol is practically manipulating into destroying her life.- Partially confirmed — Carroll does kill her, but not because of defiance. He just didn't need her anymore.
Joey will be the Spanner in the Works that brings down Carroll once and for all.
- Joe's already having trouble with the fact that Joey didn't immediately warm up to him, so there's probably something to this.
- Confirmed, in a roundabout way. There were a lot of spanners.
The season finale shall have Carroll undergo a Villainous Breakdown of epic proportions.
And by bad, I am talking Azula bad.- Confirmed by Episode 13.
Season two will focus on a new group of followers.
Namely, people who didn't join up with the main group in season one, and the followers who scattered in episodes 13/14. Lily Gray will turn out to be a Follower
- And she will be a member of a splinter group that will try to kill Ryan as revenge for killing or not Joe Carrol
- Confirmed. She's also Mark and Luke's mother
Claire Matthews isn't dead.
- She's in hiding. Remember, Mike's the one who told Hardy she was gone. Mike's the Witness Protection guy. He helped her disappear.
- Confirmed.
Season 3 and Beyond Speculations
The great plan involves Carroll turning Hardy into a great detective so that he can twist him into becoming a great villain.
Carroll will fill Hardy's team with his followers who's goal is to help Hardy and become his followers. The idea is that Hardy will become this great hero for 'stopping' Carroll and his followers only for Carroll (and his followers) to reveal that Hardy is supposedly the true mastermind (his team revealing themselves as cultists, statements showing how Hardy seemingly figured improbable things out, etc). The end result is that Hardy is both disgraced and perhaps pushed over the edge such that Hardy must become what Carroll wants him to be in order to win and stop Carroll - that is, Hardy is imprisoned and must recruit his own illicit following to fight Carroll's.- That would be agonizing but really great.
At some point, Carroll is going to break The Fourth Wall.
Maybe in a season or series finale, he will address the audience directly and give them a You Bastard! speech. It will go something like this:- "Well now, did you enjoy that? I hope you have. And now you've seen the point of my greatest work. These people have died, some of them horribly, for your pleasure. I have killed, and I have made others kill, all for your entertainment. You have enjoyed the drama I have created, you have tuned in faithfully, you have clamored for more...and in so doing, you all have become my accomplices. You have played your part admirably. And now the play is done. Draw the curtain and ponder what you really are. Good night."
Carroll plans on and actually hopes to lose.
He said he wanted to make his story more conventional after all. What could be more conventional that the Good Guy winning. He is just stringing things along to make them as dramatic as possible until the climax where is lets Hardy bring down everything he has built in the most dramatic fashion possible.- And if you define "winning" as "achieving one's goals", then by definition Carroll can't lose.
- Turns out "dying without achieving one's goals" counts as a loss after all.
- Except he never died. He just hid for a while and then decided to figure out how to get a new group of people to kill for him. Although, to be fair, the original loss was never actually part of his plan, by all appearances.
- Turns out "dying without achieving one's goals" counts as a loss after all.
Hardy and Carroll are working together.
- In the last episode, it will come out that, for the last ten years, they've concocted this whole hero-and-villain story that they want to act out in the grandest of ways, with Hardy pretending to be the good-guy cop.
The Big Bad of Season 3 will be...
- Mike Weston. He will have finally been driven insane by everything that's happened to him, and will become the kind of monster he's been hunting. Hardy must be called out of retirement to put him down, and much Angst will ensue.
General/Other
The show's creators are Tropers.
Although they'd probably never admit it.- Oh they'd admit it. Then they'd probably kill you.
Mike is Emma's brother.
They look a bit alike. They could be long-lost siblings, or something.- Given what we've seen of her backstory, this seems unlikely.
This series is going to become a Deconstruction of villianous organizations in general and Religions of Evil in particular.
By showing that such an organization would collapse under the weight of all of its assembled dysfunctional personalities.- This makes a lot of sense. Even the most seemingly competent and level-headed members of Joe's organization are severely damaged people below the surface.
- For the second season, we might even get a Decon-Recon Switch as Carroll rebuilds his cult following the aftermath of season one, learning from his mistakes.
- It certainly seems like we're heading toward a civil war between Carroll and Roderick.
- Confirmed, although it didn't last long.
Mark and Luke aren't twins
- They're quadruplets. There's a Matthew and John out there somewhere too…only they're perfectly sane.
Eliza is Nina Sergeevna Krilova
- She used her ambition and talents for infiltration to rise in the Bratva, eventually becoming a high-ranking operative in America, and developing a flawless American accent. It is unknown how she survived being shot in the head for treason, but that's one of the less remarkable survivals in this series.
