#the setup here for bucktommy angst is unmatched regardless and istg if tim minear doesn't take it

[tevanbuckley]

why i think maddie kidnapping 2: electric boogaloo could be a fakeout.

first, if you listen to athena's "and it looks like he took maddie with him," line "maddie" is very clearly spliced into the middle and when we catch the tail end it doesn't look like athena's in the madney house (+ it's the wrong time of day)

then, in the clips from dispatch josh says "we've got a possible hostage situation," and maddie tells him "I got his location," so either; the killer is calling 911, these two shots are from entirely different scenes, or, the killer is targeting men.

as people have already pointed out, the person chloroforming maddie has long, black, curly hair (very similar to abigail spencer's hair fwiw) and if you listen closely to the scene of athena and cop-whose-name-i-forget, to me it kinda sounds like they've trimmed "she's" in to "he's a damn serial killer" (side note: are we really still doing *gasp* tHe KiLlEr Is A wOmAn!?!? in 2024/25?)

so if not maddie who?

option 1: nobody. the whole thing is a fake out. in the newest interview tim said 8x09/10 has "a thriller story that Maddie and Athena are going to work together on," maybe the killer is just knocking her out to steal evidence or smth.

option 2: chimney. the obvious choice since clearly something is going down at the madney house, and it would be a nice(?) parallel to maddie's og kidnapping. except we had a 'chimney is missing' plot less than a year ago and if I squint it looks like chimney might be who athena's calling. (yes, i know both of these could be meaningless but let's just go with it for a second)

so option 3: buck. he's the only other person who would reasonably be at maddie & chim's at night — it's also arguably more plausible than him getting abducted from his high rise loft with a doorman/security — plus, tim has been talking a lot about buck going through it, he almost seems gleeful about the amount of pain he's set up, and it's been a while since buck had a near death experience.