unforum

[3tp]

well, at least tim's alive. and jessica.

[chickenguy12]

Yeah though it seems an unpopular opinion I really liked the ending, and besides not knowing what the Ark is, I feel staisfied.

[LJonesy]

Satisfied

[awakeasaurusrex]

Another reason to end it here: from around season 2 onwards, Jay's investigation wasn't really about discovering the truth behind the Operator - it's been about tracking down the fate of various people drawn into the loop of unhappiness created by the Operator's invention during the filming of Marble Hornets. At the end of season 1 he decided to try and look for Alex; once he found Alex, he got drawn into a search for Amy that was a huge deceit by Alex. (Why didn't Alex just straight-up kill Jay? Well, I imagine part of it was due to a desire to draw out other affected parties like Tim.)

In the course of that, though, Jay brought in Jessica, which Alex hadn't planned for. With Jessica infected, Alex realised he had to take down them both, and perhaps as a result gave up on his plan to use Jay as bait for Hoody and Masky (ironically, this happened at just the time that Masky decided to intervene). When Jay had his amnesia, his next step was to try and figure out what had happened to him and to work out what Jessica's deal was; when he'd pieced most of this together, he and Jessica planned an escape, but Hoody and Masky intervened to get Jessica out of there first. That put Jay on the road of trying to track down Jessica, with his interactions with Tim being the basis of that. When he found apparent evidence that Jessica was dead, he lost his shit at Tim and went on a full-on revenge path against Alex, but he got unlucky and died.

OK, bit of a long recap there, but you get the point: there's more or less no point from the end of season 1 onwards that Jay's primary objective was actually looking for the truth about the Operator (or the Ark, for that matter). In fact, he'd explicitly given up on that by the end of season 1, only to be dragged back in by the events of Entry 26. So with Jay's last piece of unfinished business settled, it makes sense for Tim to draw a line under the thing.

(Incidentally, writing that recap made me think about Hoody/Masky/TTA's motivations. Tim seems to genuinely believe that he and Brian were controlled by the Operator when they were in that state, and if you assume that their agenda was to keep the infectees alive and spread the Operator's disease it makes a lot of their actions make more sense. It helps explain why Tim apparently kidnapped Jay and exposed him to the Operator in Entry 19/Return - upping the dose - and it also seems to explain the abortive assassination attempt they tried against Alex: on the one hand, they knew that Alex was a threat to the other infected, and so they presumably thought taking him down was the best way to ensure that people survived to spread the disease, but on the other hand from the Operator's POV it could be that an infectee is an infectee and he didn't approve of the assassination attempt, not least because collecting bodies seems to be the Operator's other motive - note that he doesn't show much fussiness about which bodies he collects, infected or bystanders don't seem to matter on that front - and Alex was helping that along even if it was at the cost of hurting the infection.)

[sp103]

After some reflection time I'm ok with the ending.

We all sorta knew this type of ending was to be expected. Sure, I would of liked a little more explanation on a few items I'll list below, but ambiguity is OK to an extent. I think we all knew-even if we wanted them to or not-they were not going to go over the top to explain the Operator. This was a very big puzzle piece that we were left up to put together. Rarely did we get a straight answer ever (Confirmation Brian was Hoody was one of those exceptions).

Someone brought up a great point-This was barely an ARG in its true sense. Sure TTA videos had some codes in them, but they didn't turn it into some out of control ARG fest like their counterparts at EverymanHybrid and a few others. Also they didn't expand the story out of the comprehension of a casual view (Tribe Twelve).

My base theory is Tim was infected by the operator since birth-he burnt down the hospital but eventually got the disease under control to a point. In order to survive the Operator turned to others to continue to exist-Alex's natural aggressive ways was perfect for the Operator. TIm kills Alex in a dual role reason-to protect Jessica and himself.

Here are a few questions I would of love to know:
*After alex moved did the operator continue to haunt him-or was his appearance in #26 the first time he reappeared after a few years?
*Was the Operator in Alex's birthday party real? I believe he was introduced by Tim to the Operator first in #12 and was not haunted by him until that point.

[lonsumtravlr]

[awakeasaurusrex]

[FossilizedSauce]

[SignerJ]

[twistedpuppet]

I'm going to state how I feel about this entry. I will not defend it. You can read my post, or not read it. I just want to post it.

I do not feel that this entry is meant to go in a different part in the timeline. Most of the entries past the reviewing of tapes is meant to happen in "real time." By "real time" I mean in regards to the events in the series itself.

I think it's a fitting ending. A tribute to a friend, a "boomer will live" moment with Jessica being shown to be alive and well, and the implied intent to leave everything behind.

I'm a lover of stories. I liked this story and I was pleased with the ending.

[Monkah]

The Ending: Nutshell Version

Why is Jessica still alive?
Tim purposefully tampered with video evidence to make it appear as if Jessica was killed. However, she remains entirely oblivious after the memory-wipe back in Season 2-- in short, she's not infected. The only cure is to forget, and The Operator makes that pretty easy with memory erasing-- if only they weren't fighting so hard to remember.

Did Tim end up killing Jessica?
There's a large amount of evidence pointing towards it. Why else would Tim meet with Jessica, coincidentally after Alex tells him that the only way to end T.O. was to eliminate all of its victims, while KNOWING he's still infected w/ the coughing? During the scene itself, the high amount of static + coughing, a sign of Tim going Masky/Proxy-Mode, can clearly be seen. When in Masky-mode, Tim has a tendency to be violent- as seen in the entry where Jay goes looking for Tim and gets violently attacked as a result. After the otherwise unexplained static/jumpcut, Tim seems to have an expression VERY similar to Alex. Blank, cold, straight-faced-- almost exactly how Alex was after his killings. In addition, some claim to hear sirens in the background.

Does Tim end up killing himself?
It's lightly implied. A forest (likely Rosswood Park) can be seen in the direction that Tim's driving. While perhaps he may simply be driving away from it, he's coincidentally rather near it-- whether or not it's coincidence that Tim seems to be heading in the direction of Rosswood Park is up to the viewer, although Tim's suicide makes sense if Jessica was truly killed.

What was with Tim keeping the mask with him? Is Masky-Mode real?
There's a strong amount of evidence pointing towards Masky-Mode being real, such as Tim attacking Jay in Rosswood Park when Jay goes looking for him.

Tim may have used the mask for other purposes, though, we can't really know for sure. However, Tim throws away the mask at the end of the series-- because has nobody left to kill, going under the assumption that he killed Jessica.
What is The Operator? Why didn't we get a conclusion with that?
Marble Hornets wasn't about The Operator.

The point of Marble Hornets was to show the characters in response to The Operator and the various other stresses (such as being creepily stalked by Brian, the apartment fires, etc.) taking place in their lives. The end goal for Wagner was to develop the characters fully-- not create some action-packed story. While a lot of you are complaining, I don't think anyone here would actually be happier if Tim found the 'Operator-Remover Sword' and did some hocus-pocus to make everything happily ever after.

In the end, Marble Hornets wraps up the characters it created rather nicely. The ending is as close to 'everyone dies' as possible, mainly because at least one survivor has to exist to upload the entry. However, the fates of the main characters are made rather clear, this entry concluding Tim's story (as well as Jessica's as an additional bonus) in Marble Hornets.

Why does Tim say "Everything is fine." at the end of the entry?

"Everything is fine" is likely used as a way of showing Tim coming to acceptance with his death. Obviously, while some people appear to entirely miss it, nothing is fine-- yet Tim being at peace with death allows him to say so.

[Cyan507]

[Malckeor]

People keep saying that 87 is the final entry, and I can see how this could be so after reading everyone's interpretations and theories on both uF and Reddit, but I find myself not...sharing this feeling.

OOG:

[Wolfboy702]

If this is the end then I can honestly say I'm happy with it, save for one thing. Did Tim kill jessica after that coughing fit?!?!

If there more entries to come however then bring it on!

[onetruepurple]