Oliver March Continuation — Deceiving Directions-154
The newest chapter of Purple Hyacinth, as of 1–31–23. As this is my ongoing theory about the identity of the leader of the Phantom Scythe, obviously there’s going to be spoilers.
Here’s part one of the current four. Have fun perusing my red-string board.
Enough rambling, here we go.
Another chapter opens as the masked Leader and his Apostles discuss their loss of Devil’s Den and what they might do with their last shipment of weapons and nitro coming tonight, for which they changed the time and location again. (This point will come up later)
They mention some new guy being more competent than Redcliff, as well as plenty of spies in the NSA, starting with it’s — something. It’s what? We’re not told.
Speaking of spies, another thing they discuss is the fate of the Purple Hyacinth. Apparently they know about his misinterpreted mission regarding Neyra. And the fate of a certain DETECTIVE Lauren Sinclair who they know is working with the Purple Hyacinth.
(I actually have no clue how they know that, because Neyra and Bella are the only ones who seem to know the identity of both of them)
I mean, I guess the fact that she’s a detective now could be considered common knowledge at this point, but March was in the room when she was given her badge back. Also, he’s directly in charge of her now, so everything she knows for the police, he’ll know. Awfully convenient.
(besides, this proves that Lauren’s parents were the First and Second)
The Leader tells everyone to shut up because the Purple Hyacinth and the Detective are instrumental to his plan, which may be true, at least in the Purple Hyacinth side of things.
I don’t think, (if it really is March), that he’ll be able to kill Lauren. Because no matter how cold-blooded he might be on other matters, I think Lauren will remind him too much of his daughter and he won’t be able to do it.
March is shown later in the chapter as the APD wait to intercept the last weapons delivery. He mentions his own work with the NSA as one of the officers who successfully infiltrated the Phantom Scythe over the past several weeks.
So why when the Phantom Scythe so easily rooted out all these spies before, are so many suddenly getting through. I’m not sure if specifically mentioning March is a mislead, or an actual clue at this point.
Anyways, somehow he’s been informed of the last-minute location and time change of the delivery. Whether or not he’s fed them the real one or the decoy is unknown at this point because I cannot pay for fast-pass.
This story is so full of double agents. You never really know whose side some of these people are on. And with all the stuff I mentioned in part 3 here, it’s a really hard to believe March is on the side of the APD.
Actually, I’m almost certain this will be the decoy mentioned earlier in the chapter. If March really is the Leader, he’ll need to ensure this last delivery runs smoothly, since all his other stuff has been captured.
But we’ll have to see.
This ends my wild rambling on chapter 154, but I just had a tangent thought.
I can’t actually remember which chapter it is, but we get a (1 month later) panel at the end of said chapter. And I remember it very well because no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t not read it in the Spongebob narrator voice, and it bothered me so much because it was a very solemn “if I had only known then what I know now” kind of (1 month later) panel.
Basically, Lauren and Neyra are both in Kieran’s cave, presumably alone. The only thing said is from Neyra. “He’s dead”
Now since it’s in Kieran’s cave, we’re supposed to presume it’s Kieran, and from the talk of the Apostles in this chapter, we are still supposed to presume. And it still may very well be. (Though I hope it’s a fake-out because I will die if it’s not. Also, I just can’t see them killing off Kieran this early), so I’m proposing a theory, March.
Another fake-out of course. He needs to get out of the APD to take on his job as the Leader full-time during the course of the revolution. And he’s been with the APD his whole life pretty much. What better way to avoid suspicion than faking your death.
If it ends up being him who “dies”, my absolution of his identity of the Leader will rise to 98.62%.
Also, I don’t want to seem like I’m just grasping at straws here. I’m also still quite receptive to the idea that the Leader could be Dakan. Though there’s not nearly as much possible evidence to this one compared to March. And I’ve mostly ruled out Tristan. Definitely ruled out Stefan (Will’s dad) and Queen Lisbeth.
The reason I think it’s either March or Dakan, maybe Tristan, is that with these kinds of mysteries, the reveal of the Leader has to be some big thing. It will have to be someone Lauren, and by extension the audience, cares about. If it just turns out to be some John Doe, it’s not going to mean anything.
My whole theory started with Hecate’s backstabber prophecy back in chapter 70. Lauren’s blind to something that someone who’s close to her is doing. She can’t stop them, but her reaction to it is the thing that will change everything.
Someone close to her, especially one who she doesn’t even really think about, being the Leader of the Phantom Scythe could be just the thing.
In part one of my theory, we learn that March is more like Lauren than even Lauren knows. In part two, we learn that he’s closer to Lauren’s family than we or even she has ever thought about. And in part three, we learn that he knew about the Snapdragon and at least insinuated their destruction at the hands of the royals. We also learned his loyalties don’t exactly line up with the APD. And now in part four, we have learned that he has successfully “infiltrated” the Phantom Scythe.
Personally I don’t believe his little speech about how it isn’t hard to convince them that police officers are fed up with the situation. It’d be pretty easy to infiltrate an organization if you were already the head of it.
Part five is here now. I guess we’re going part-per-episode for a while.
