It would have to have been one of the characters we know, or a new character. Assuming it was one we know, the list is as follows:
Skinner
Trumball
Mavis
Tony (suicide)
Asian chick
One of the wives
Raymond
Tom
Edward
Henry
We can eliminate the wives I think, due to lack of access.
We can eliminate Tony committing suicide, as there was no setup or that whatsoever.
I'd say we can eliminate Skinner. She could have called out that Edward was broken at any time, so the only way she did it would be if she wanted to maintain the current status quo, or as was suggested, thought whatever new method had come up was too risky. The reaction is too extreme though, especially when she wanted Edward, whose life was in danger more by Henry swithing during a mission than anything else.
I'd say it wasn't Trumball or Mavis, for all the reasons already stated. Either would have no reason to want the status quo to continue, and if they did, had far more easy means of accomplishing it.
A nice twist might be if the Asian chick's new programming got borked, a la Dollhouse, and she got pissed at having her original personality wiped, and decided to take revenge. I think this is unlikely purely for TV reasons, but it's a possibility.
Raymond could have wanted to move up to being the #1 agent, but it seemed like he had plenty of missions as it was, and would care more about the dangers of Edwards unreliability than anything else, so I'd say he's not really a good suspect.
Tom is only really a possibility if they planned on having Raymond/Tom to be having the same difficulty as as Edward/Henry, and Tom happened to flip and know about the fix, but wanted to just be Tom. Seems a bit unlikely though.
Edward is also a possibility, if, and this is a big if, they wanted to add to the plot that Henry was reaching a point in his life where he was actually starting to enjoy Henry's family time. Perhaps he was starting to wonder how his life would have gone if he had not joined Janus. He figures he finally killed his parent's killer, so maybe he doesn't have as much reason to want things to go back to how they were. And maybe he was sort of enjoying "training" his new protege, Henry.
The problem with most of the potential suspects above, is that they can all either be eliminated outright, or they require new plot elements that weren't in at the time the show got canceled, which leaves only one suspect.
Henry had access. And although I thought his reasoning was logically a little shaky, he actually stated that he wanted to maintain the status quo, which gives him motive. The only other problem is that it would seem unlikely that he would kill someone in cold blood, but that actually works in it's favor in TV-land. And they set it up to look like they discover the body right after the conversation where Mavis tells Henry he has no choice. But Henry would have been crystal clear on how that conversation would end before it occurred, so he could have anticipated it, and done the deed beforehand.
All that being said, if it was Henry, then that character would lose his "likability" and his everyman vibe, which would cause the show to jump the shark, unless the writers had some other tricks up their sleeves.
So I think if they had more time, the smart play would have been to set it up to look like Henry did it, at least for a few shows. Start adding little bits that point to Henry, and then yank the rug out and have it be one of the other possibilities above, hopefully using that time to also set it up.
Anyway, my guess is Edward. Or Bugs Bunny. Bugs just never struck me as right in the head.
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dhnia
12 years ago
I can't believe it took almost 2 pages before someone mentioned Edward as a possible suspect.
Logically, H/E would have the most to lose or gain from the procedure. Everyone else would have gained from the transformation. Skinner, Mavis and Raymond would have their Edward back. If Trumball had wised up to their deception, he would also gain from having Edward back. It makes no sense that Trumball would kill Tony over H/E or even Mavis for their screw up and even the deception.
I think when Edward realised that Tony could isolate Edward over Henry in H/E, he also realised that the reverse is possible, that is the procedure could also isolate Henry over Edward. Thus it would be possible to terminate him....and just like Paula (asian chick) he could be eliminated and only Henry would emerge.
I still think it's Edward over Henry that killed Tony. But there is a small chance that it was actually Henry instead. The whole episode was about Henry getting over his morality of killing someone. He wasn't able to do it when his own life was on the line....but got close to it when the lives of many children were on the line. Maybe he was able to kill Tony if the lives of his family was on the line....but that's just my speculation based on the where the plot line was heading.
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