#NOT me ever in the past 16 yrs: time to see what [dae notice this] / hypotheses / theories other people have

[unproduciblesmackdown]

non post here just collecting current thoughts abt the [what's up with atlas' death and the unlikely connection of mitzi and mordecai through some shared secret relating to it] mystery specifically

firstly i'm tending to presume that mordecai did just shoot atlas; he definitely knows that mitzi did Not, "she didn't shoot anyone"....which also i suppose does not necessarily mean that mitzi didn't kill him. it's possible she did, or mordecai did, or someone else did, and by some non [noscoped by mordecai] method, but that mordecai and mitzi then coordinated in covering up how he actually died by, say, quickly staging some kind of other scene, including shooting him while he had only recently died. but really the mystery here is like, what exactly would these two feel so aligned in cause about. doesn't seem like, say, mitzi could've just paid mordecai to take atlas out, b/c mordecai would either not want to do it Or he actually would, in which case why not do it himself, and earlier, since he was at lackadaisy for surely the better part of a decade. it could've been like "with our combined talents imagine how nearly competent we could be" with mitzi having some kind of key knowledge to plan this heist (murder) or something. but it would still require an Alignment between them of wanting him dead Now, and, y'know, why

their particular similarities that we know of, imo, are that they're probably about the same age (supposing mitzi's around thirty / early thirties) and that they're sort of especially Materially Beholden to atlas and more directly, individually collected by him (versus, say, zib saying he's a collected stray because he'd stay around if mitzi did. he's also a saxophonist which is lower stakes than your new wife or your new guy to kill other guys)....neither mitzi nor mordecai seem to posthumously dislike atlas, but naturally mordecai's barely indirectly commented and it seems to me like mitzi regards atlas fairly symbolically, as the potential for her situation to improve, or at least be as good as it was during lackadaisy's heyday. she may have affection for him abstractly, and we also know via mordecai that the marriage was distant enough before atlas died that mitzi didn't live with him and things had Visibly Deteriorated. it sure seems plausible that mitzi might kill him to inherit things, and turned to mordecai for his expertise in a) doing that & b) perchance making it look like an accident / covering things up, but he evidently didn't want to stay on at lackadaisy No Matter What, i.e. if mitzi was running it instead, and why agree to this, it seems very unlikely he'd do anything just for mitzi's sake or the sake of being paid to do it by her, he has to have his own motivation. and it's possible that, despite plausible positive feelings about atlas still (who did also like, throw him right into mortal perilously dangerous work w/little experience lol, mordecai happening to be immediately good at it or not) he could've, like mitzi could've, still wanted to be less beholden to this one particular person, and achieved that by just killing him lol....but even if their feelings Aligned on that matter, there's a few wrenches, like a) how would they realize this alignment. they're probably not having heart-to-hearts. they're both very close to atlas (at least professionally, for mordecai) and it would be very bold to go "would you happen to wanna kill this guy too" either to his wife or his right hand gun hand hook car door man.

there's also the fact that: viktor is Also someone very limited by his being beholden to atlas, pretty much positioned as close to atlas as mordecai since they were partners, and maybe has the added bonus of seeming marginally more Approachable than mordecai, plus that like, being thirteen years older and beat up on more, maybe if you were looking for an accomplice you'd figure that "idk do you want to retire" would also make him marginally more likely to get aboard murder plans if you're just trying to Find someone to help with that who you don't know would already want to. but he also disagrees with the idea that mitzi is particularly vulnerable / isn't herself at least somewhat dangerous, which seems like something he Might have any knowledge about beyond "idk i just get that vibe," like, did he get to be privy at all to whatever went down there. &/or led up to it.

what seems to be implied here, and makes more sense, is that there was some specific event that both mitzi and mordecai consider to have been unfortunate / undesired / things going wrong, and that involves mitzi enough for mordecai to blame her / her to refer to it being her fault, although she may not necessarily agree. (and does "perhaps i will / not to discount your culpability" imply mordecai Also considering himself culpable. whether that goes beyond "if anyone actually shot him, it's mordecai")

but while maybe there's not much love lost between these two, neither seems to like completely hate the other. civil enough one-on-one here, does seem like mordecai would be negatively affected if viktor had died, "very little interest in defending her" is not "no interest" nor "less than no interest and one can imagine mordecai is being both precise and accurate about what he means, and to exit this car chat by advising mitzi fix the conspicuous bulletholes is, in fact, helpful; he's probably not actually interested in / intending to personally dismantle lackadaisy or anything, and makes sense if mitzi's lashing out just a bit while they discuss sore topics (again, seems neither of them Wanted to have to kill atlas either, so what was the specific impetus....) and also they did just have Lackadaisy's Big Night involving foes that have guns while they (almost entirely) don't, thanks to mordecai's transference of those....which, like, did he just do that himself, or was it on order from marigold....either way, seems more like a nudge like Retire Bitch to everyone there, rather than an effort to sabotage them That perilously

there's also this compelling material

not interpreting Bonus Material as the strictest of canon, in some cases more obviously [not at all] than others, ft. generally more of a light tone / elevated humorousness....but also the not obviously complete jokes ones perhaps not Not canon contradictory, either. a) i want to see the shopping trip and b) fascinating how they are outright discussing that mutual Material Beholdenness to atlas. but a couple of other points arising

one being that i was racking my brain like "whaaaat are the usual Murder Mystery Motives" and then landing on "money" wherein like, besides the theory of "what if mitzi just wanted to inherit lackadaisy, while still Actually Married to atlas despite that maybe circling a drain / maybe atlas, being warned about something by asa, was going to get rid of lackadaisy from his inheritable estate," it also occurred to me like, mordecai originally got in hot water as a bookkeeper, which leads me to presume that he may have been embezzling (though maybe he was the fall guy for someone else's embezzlement, or maybe even some third or fourth things, not even involving embezzlement at all) which, if he was, was presumably for his family, whom he left money for (though he also maybe had to skip town too quickly to retrieve it anyways). and there we see that mordecai may have also been bookkeeping for lackadaisy, too, which i'm going to interpret as perfectly canon backstory. i guess this isn't exactly so different from previously mentioned ideas/elements like "both of these two are aware how beholden they are to this one specific guy, and would like to be less so (through embezzling??)" and "this could be about mitzi wanting to inherit lackadaisy much sooner than later (or not at all)" like, still wanting more of some resource atlas has sooner than later (or not at all....see questions of how much mitzi could have been legally considered to Directly possess while atlas was alive, such as, money) with the same kinds of questions raised of like, how would they realize they aligned on this. there's also a question of like, Would mordecai be moved to elevate the flow of funds here versus just whatever he's already paid, though he'd (maybe) already done that in that original bookkeeping gig for whatever reason. but that may have been more time sensitive and motivating if it was indeed at least in part for his family. which i suppose it could still be Now w/the theory of him just turning around and doing that again. wherein i suppose the idea here is just that they're both in on it, and maybe atlas finding out about it / suspecting too much is such a potential impetus like, whoops, well let's kill him :/ hypothetical 2 for 2 lack of embezzling stealth lol

the other more tangential idea here is just that like, well who knows, maybe mitzi and mordecai Did talk / have tête-à-têtes / an unlikely friendship or friendly acquaintanceship going....again that like, even as professional mostly enemies now and with no especial warmth evident between them, they also don't seem to hate each other even though they Could, even when it comes to this secret re: atlas's death that they're both unhappy with....a lot of writing this stuff out is just how it helps get ideas together lol and not lose entire threads / have derailed trains of thought. like maybe mordecai Would do something mostly for mitzi's sake, if evidently at all begrudgingly. and i suppose the other way round could be considered, i.e. if mitzi would begrudgingly commit to helping kill atlas for mordecai's sake, which still seems the less likely arrangement

oh wait Also i sort of rotated freckle & mordecai juxtaposition, as not being entirely dissimilar, see for one: their having the ideal time the one occasion they were in the same place, that is, completely declining to interact with each other at all lol....but i'm presuming the Mystery of freckle's secrets & backstory are a bit less deep than this more central atlas murder secret, and my interpreguess is that freckle accidentally(? probably.) killed someone(? or almost did. or whatever.) probably his dad(? family tragedies....his hat is still on the premises....) and rocky took the blame, which i'm guessing is out of just being the effective older sibling / pretty close. so i was just half wondering like, well what if mordecai killed someone too rather than being in shit over embezzling. maybe! and how this ties in is that i'm also considering, like, maybe any of this has to do with that Past that mordecai has. the arbogasts were saying atlas Settled Some Of mordecai's pursuing grievances....maybe Lackadaisy Embezzling could be about settling even more via financial payoffs. or something. just a potential troublesome loose thread

there's also the Mystery of "what's marigold bothered about. is what's changed there being this lawful prohibition agent you can't pay off and could somehow shut marigold down longer than ten minutes. and who's in charge of marigold" which is relevant b/c the mystery to me is that, where we leave off in the comic, mordecai is Very Motivated by "how does it figure in re: atlas's death" still and at this risktaking crossroads about it wherein he's clearly positioned at odds with marigold. what are the important things called into question. if marigold knew how atlas died, what would they even do about it. is the problem "well mordecai how do i know you won't also shoot Me, the mystery owner of marigold," seems like something he could expect to be more directly confronted about rather than [what, if marigold knows more about atlas's death and is Just displeased with mordecai about it, they're gonna either Not say anything about it or just try to get rid of mordecai by giving him this hands-on work where he Might be killed?] like, just kill him, And the fact we know the prohibition agent drago Was planning to meet with gracie grombach (and his lawyer, presumably the guy mordecai hatcheted to death just the other night at the start of things) for real, so there's actual reasons to assign him these killings....seems like it's more about things Missing to us as readers about Why they felt they had to begrudgingly kill atlas, what their further mystery connection is / what that impetus was....

oh and back to that [very tangential] tangent re: how i wouldn't have figured mordecai and mitzi interacted much But Maybe They Did, i also before now was assuming that, at least b/c mordecai's business was either in the most dangerous &/or most mathematical work at lackadaisy, he wouldn't have interacted much with ivy, who would've been all of around ten or so when he started there. the pilot specifically illustrates the results of his history with lackadaisy by having him entirely refrain from taking the shot when aiming at her, which i'm also sort of [bonus material]esquely interpreting as "not comic canon noncompliant," but at first i was like, well, like how viktor is protective of ivy / playing concerned patriarch as she puts it, and we know he has a daughter maybe around her age, we also know (from bonus material) that mordecai has younger sisters, including one feasibly also around ivy's age. or just that if you've known someone since they were like 9 or something, you're still reluctant to shoot them. but now i'm Noting that a) most everyone else who's been around awhile, mitzi, viktor, even rocky, has commented on mordecai, but ivy hasn't, which may be a bit Mysterious, and b) in her nightmare sequence moment, she sure not only has this Concept of him, but interacts with him in the dream

which might not mean anything really, but sure might imply she'd talked to him readily enough before, and does also serve as a bolstering / reminder of the idea they'd have interacted, especially since there's the entire factor of "if she was interacting with viktor, this would probably involve all the more mordecai adjacency" like well, interesting, noted, etc

oh and it has to also be mentioned how i'm supposing that also what the savoys are saying about mordecai and atlas, via indirectly framing it by discussing how maître carrefour Already Knows mordecai, can be taken as accurate / is not going to be contradicted. so there's how mordecai seems to resent being called the kind that turns on his partners on a dime (while the savoys Probably had a more uncomplicated departure from their earlier associations. though maybe if marigold knows mordecai was involved in atlas's death, he's Also been hired rather than having been shot, in a stroke of generosity)....and then there's the very broadly relevant description of how, once you take that one path laid out for you, you're Obliged To Him Only, Always, the other paths gone forever....the way pretty much everyone involved was in a place with especial vulnerabilities and limited options at the start, and taking one available path left them kind of trapped there / unwilling to get off of it b/c otherwise they're lost again. what might have motivated a couple of people to snuff out their would-be guiding light, when it's not as though they now act as though they'd clearly found some better one....there's also the fact that serafine characterizes their diable as having a hot temper, wonder if that application could be overlapped with atlas too....and it just handily circles around for rooting for this dream team w/mordecai & the savoys; whether the latter anticipate Not sticking around with marigold forever; the fact that it would be quite a surprise if they do assume that for the first time mordecai is, in fact, just having fun tonight; that mordecai sure may be lost in the dark in-between crossroads rn. rooting for them to stay friends no matter what one way or another. mordecai's as much of a wild card as anyone at this juncture really, keep being wild cards together

meanwhile mordecai not knowing what's going on but laying out some of the confusion is helpful but like, well then we definitely are confused too

i'll say too....really i have to imagine that there Is some bigger missing piece in the [Why] of mitzi & mordecai's murder secret that one could only guess at at best, but i think of this as an effort to kind of feel out the shape of What's Missing thusly, figuratively. and this has been an extensive "i dunno" without any epiphanies falling into place along the way but hey lol, laying it out....if marigold already knows about the How atlas died, namely, if mordecai specifically carried it out, you'd think that if nothing's come of that already, he's fine. or maybe he just wants to Know anyways, though it seems as or more risky to Not kill a guy he's supposed to as marigold's professional killer....he says he's not sure if he knows important Things he thought he knew, plural, unsurprising if there's more than one such important thing we definitely don't know, but suspecting that his concerns might have to do with the big mystery Why they killed atlas, which might also align with how mordecai's reacting to asa saying he warned atlas of [something/s] before his death, which sure doesn't otherwise necessarily imply he knows anything about the death itself. and then mitzi, who should also be in the know, is still asking "how does it figure in" re: connecting his death & if asa Did warn atlas of something....i sure don't know either, and you two have so much more info lol

and Does rushing water count as a clue? cue me trying to zoom in on an illustration to see if the silhouette of a figure reflected in mordecai's glasses could be atlas (don't think it was, or that it'd be a Key Clue dropped thusly anyways) like hell i dunno yeah maybe the rivers are relevant somehow in secret ways, that'd fit, but again only guesses. oh and hey, why would mitzi and mordecai have any kind of gun handoff? maybe as like, a burner revolver lol. i always end up going Shruggg at mysteries but i am enriched by rotating them anyways, especially when it's so tied to character here, and when they're not the only thing relevant to ongoing story so it's just intriguing rather than simply frustrating / stifling to not have already solved them / not the only point of interest. e.g. who Knows why mordecai's having his off the shits saturday but it's so fun that he is. good for him (ultimately) (probably) (hopefully)