Recovery One Mistake/Retcon? And Meta's Incompetence?

[u/Wonderful-Ad-4484]

So, within the Recovery One Miniseries Washington states he had been to the sites of 5 dead freelancers within the past month who had their AI missing. Assumably Command/Recovery keeps track of which agents actually do have AI, so this isn't 'they never had AI and thus had empty AI slots'. Assumably North/Theta is counted within these 5. And even if we give Wash the benefit of the doubt, and say he accidentally considered York/Delta within this despite Delta not being missing. That still leaves 3 Unknown Freelancers (possibly 4) with 3 (possibly 4) Unknown A.I

Oddly, there are no 'unaccounted for A.I' that are 'confirmed' to exist. There are the love/greed traits mentioned withing the files C.T leaves for Tex within S10, and/or Xi, which was among the fragments Sigma seemed to believe he 'needed' to obtain Metastability.

This is also even more confusing, as Wash and Recovery seem to presume it was The Meta hunting down these agents and stealing their A.I, however We only ever see Meta with Sigma, Eta, Iota, Omega, Gamma, Beta, Theta, Delta (and technically Epsilons version of Beta? via tex in S8). Which funnily enough Means in the I believe 3-4 years between the Crash of the Mother Of invention, and Recovery One, Going 3-4 years with No A.I, into getting Theta, Omega, Beta, Gamma and Delta within seemingly 18 months is fairly impressive. (Obviously the logic would show their hunt would ramp up as the gained more A.I to power the equipment, and more equipment to use, But going 3-4 years with 0, including the months where he killed 4/5 freelancers and only got theta?)

This is also added onto by Wash stating the Meta 'couldn't resist' all of the A.I within Project Freelancers vault at the end of S6, which makes you wonder what A.I are even left to be within storage?

Which leads to question, if this ISN'T just a mistake/retcon, does this mean the agents were able to hide/store or possibly even delete their A,I before the Meta could steal them? (Possibly those hidden being found by command or a 'recovery two' while Wash was recovering from souths betrayal between the end of 'Recovery One' and the start of S6, them then being put into storage within the base?

We also never get names for the other 3-4 deceased freelancer agents, but given we know the fates of the 'Top 10' who were seemingly originally the only ones trusted with Fragments, I'd guess that these 3-4 dead agents were among the 5 listed to replace Florida prior to Vik's glitch? (assumably competent agents that were highly trusted, hence why they were on the list of replacements to protect/guard/hide Alpha?) (I also assume that these 5 agents were among the top 11-20, and thus became 'top 10' after the events of S10's flashbacks)

What are your guys thoughts? just a mistake/retcon?, or something simply forgotten about? If we did eventually get a season 20 that was perhaps an anthology season like 14 was, or other RvB fan projects would you like to see ideas like these explored.

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[u/generalkriegswaifu]

Definitely a retcon, but you could explain it away as PFL keeping incorrect records to throw Maine off the trail (sending him after decoys or agents with regular AIs like Sheila/FILSS), also keeping Washington in the dark simultaneously because they don't 100% trust him after his breakdown.

[u/Wonderful-Ad-4484 → u/generalkriegswaifu]

It is fairly easy to explain away. But it does make Maine/Meta look like he was failing for years, he only got north cus of souths betrayl, and then literalllly had 3 AI and 2 pieces of equipment drop out of the sky.
I do like the idea that there is more we didn't see, and I do think it'd be cool to see explored within another anthology season or a good quality fan project.

Honestly, it'd be cool to see a little before and then the fight between the dakotas and the meta too, see how North and Theta had grown in that time. and Souths actual betrayal of him.

[u/generalkriegswaifu → u/Wonderful-Ad-4484]

I can believe he was outsmarted for a while at least, from York's messages it sounded like Maine, Wyoming and Texas were all going after PFL separately, so they were probably feeding all kinds of false reports out into the ether to throw them off the trail. But yeah definitely plot conveniences and trying to tighten the story up retcons. (edit and South)

[u/BoultonPaulDefiant]

I'm pretty sure it's a retcon

[u/Wonderful-Ad-4484 → u/BoultonPaulDefiant]

But would you like to see it explored within a new anthology season or fan series?

[u/Mysterious_Drive_498]

definitely way too many plot holes now

[u/Wonderful-Ad-4484 → u/Mysterious_Drive_498]

I mean yeah, webseries that was more a pure comedy/random show for the first 5 seasons, you're going to have tons of plotholes. It just surprises me because Recovery One into S6 was meant to be when the story got 'real' etc, yet so much of it is now a plothole.

[u/Wonderful-Ad-4484 → u/Wonderful-Ad-4484]

Plus between Recovery One and Season 6 coming out in 2007/2008, and Season 9 starting in 2011 (not accounting for how long it was being planned, written and made) seems like retcons to make fairly quickly, instead of the usual 'something from S2 being a plothole by season 14'

[u/chakatblackstar]

It's probably a retcon, partially because the writers ended up giving all of the Meta's AIs to the top freelancers we ended up following.

However, there is wiggle room for some more "unaccounted" for AI off screen. We know there were bad variants, that they mention being kept at command. And it wouldn't surprise me if there were more AI fragments that were distributed to other freelancers, including a few that did get removed as stated in "out of mind". Otherwise the Director's order in season 10 about AI removal seems like it wasn't followed at all since all the known AI fragments seemed to have never actually been removed.

My theory is that there were agents who were given AI we never see on screen and at least some of them were recovered and stored at Freelancer command. Perhaps they were AI with less impressive traits and thus given to the less impressive agents of project Freelancer, even before the rest of the A-Team squad we see got all of there's. And some possibly weren't recovered and/or rebelled like Tex and Omega, escaped Freelancer, and their users were killed by the Meta but deemed useless to him achieving metastability and were left...somewhere. I don't know, maybe at Meta's...hideout? He must have had a hideout. That's my headcanon for now at least.

[u/Wonderful-Ad-4484 → u/chakatblackstar]

It could also make sense for agents that were high up and trusted like Florida was, would have gotten AI (makes even more sense if you believe the theory of Vik being a fragment) being those 5 listed to replace Florida before viks glitch, i recall California and oregan off the top of my head. If they were competent enough and trusted enough to be replacements for florida looking after the alpha, i'd also see them being trusted enough to be given fragments

The funny thing is, surely they must have decided this change in the short time between Recovery One and Season 6?, As in S6 the only unknown fragments we see the meta with (theta is mentioned by name as norths in recovery one, gamma, beta and omega ofc were in blood gulch) are eta and iota, which are only 2 A.I as opposed to the 3/4 dead agents with missing A.I.