The Missing is back next week!

[HarryPottersMagicWand]

For those who loved it last time, will you watch after the let down of the ending? (Well I felt it was a let down, don't think there was a proper conclusion at all and still room for doubts as to whether he was still alive or not).

I loved it though and will definitely be watching the next series. I've seen the trailer and it looks very very good. Julian (think that was his name) is still in it. Looks like it is based on JayCee Dugard/Elizabeth Fritz type cases where they have gone missing as children and reappeared years later.

Cannot wait!

Thanks Blondes. I was looking for one, but thought it was in the Guardian, couldn't find it

Ollie's yellow scarf was such a big thing in the first series. It really can't be a coincidence that Alice/Not-Alice's mum put a hand knitted yellow scarf around her neck. I wish my tired brain could figure out the symbolism between the two scarves. Anyone have any theories?

I think it might just be one of those things, like Easter eggs just not hidden (can't recall the name of them). It's no actually meaning.

Yeah, just a nod for the fans.

I didn't watch series one but enjoying this series.

Could the blood on the floor been from a traumatic birth? Rather than any murder/suicide?

Wonder why so many theories on here mention paedophile rings, last series as well as this? It's such a hackneyed story line, I hope they are wrong again.

Alas - tie a yellow ribbon...

I haven't a clue what's going on

Blonde by name blonde by nature 😬

WHy hasn't baptiste asked for a DNA test when Alice appeared?

Or Alice's mum asked for body to be dug up and DNA if she is convinced Alice is alive

The turtle story was kinda scary. Obv a threat and Alice made it clear she recognised the army stone man

I thought Alice was going to die in the shed that first night due to hyperthermia and why brother felt guilty

But obv not

Thank god for this thread / why on earth are there many threads now 😱🙄 and the online explanation I found

Looking forward to next weeks episode

I'm still really confused about so much of this. And I think we're meant to be.

So, Sophie was abducted from near Paris in 2002. A yellow camper van is associated with her disappearance. Sophie is 10/11 years old and has a French father and an English mother. So would (presumably) have spoken both languages fluently.

Not long after she disappears Sophie's mother commits suicide. Sophie's father clearly blames Baptiste (the investigating officer) for her state of mind, but we don't know why.

In 2003, Alice, an 11 year old English girl living in Germany with a history of conflict with her family and playing truant from school is abducted / disappears. A yellow camper van is associated with her disappearance but this is not known to the police. Alice and Sophie are pretty much the same age and so alike that they could be sisters. Oddly the two abductions are not linked.

One of the girls turns up in 2014 claiming to be Alice and to have been kept with Sophie. No DNA test is performed as Alice's family say that they recognise her.

I think that the evidence (finger tapping, mother's suspicions) is that the returned girl is Sophie not Alice. For some reason therefore Sophie must not have wanted to return to her own family or to see them. Maybe some kind of abuse or were her family involved in her disappearance. Could that be a motive for her mother's suicide? Perhaps Sophie's mother found something out that led her to assume that Sophie must be dead and that she and / or her father was responsible.

Sophie can only take over Alice's life if Alice remains hidden. Did Sophie do some kind of deal with her captors? Sophie only seems to have led the police to the hiding place many days later. Was she giving her captors time to escape, get rid of evidence and move Alice?

When the returned girl who pretends to be Alice talks about Sophie she says that she was confrontational and argumentative with the captors. This behaviour seems more like the 11 year old Alice that we saw than the nervous fidgeting Sophie on the video we saw.

The hospital say that the returned girl has given birth, yet she denies it to Alice's mother. Is this because true Alice has NOT given birth, Sophie has. In pretending to be Alice, Sophie has completely taken on Alice's story so denies the birth.

Sophie dies (somehow) on 22/12/14 still playing the role of Alice, so is buried as Alice. Only Baptiste and Alice's mum believe that Sophie lies in the grave. This means that Alice is still, potentially, alive.

Henry Reed's father is said to have committed suicide but Henry doesn't believe this to be true. Was Henry's father killed? Who by? Was it because he knew too much.

Could the Roger Allam figure be pretending to have Altzheimer's so that he doesn't get bumped off too? He clearly has warned / threatened the returned girl to keep her mouth shut.

Emily, fab post highlighting all the things we are wondering about. Makes it much clearer! Can't wait for next weeks episode!

I don't understand how the return of a missing girl after a decade hasn't resulted in a media frenzy.

Excellent synopsis Emily
I wonder if the Brigadier was faking dementia too
I think Henry Reed is the dead dad, and Daniel his son?

Re the yellow scarf - there is quite a lot of yellow in this series. I'm pretty sure that it is not hand knitted though - which is either a production error, or deliberate - Gemma's comment that Alice knitted it being a complete lie to trick "Alice".

I still can't buy the fact that if Alice is indeed Sophie (which it looks like the plot is pointing to), wouldn't you like to think you'd recognise your own DD 10 years or so in the future? Sure they would have changed physically and mentally but I'd like to think that looking into their eyes I would KNOW if it was my child. Not to mention things like birth marks, chicken pox scars, double crown, moles etc. Or am I just over- thinking this?
I can't believe a DNA test wasn't done.

Absolutely, Bellini! I would also know my DD's feet and toes. So intrigued how they will continue to deal with this issue next week...

So interested as well now in the fact the brigadier might be faking the dementia. Can't wait til next week.

Could they be identical twins, adopted separately at birth? Or at least one of them was adopted? Which would mean the abductor had to know they were sisters, or the fact they were both abducted together would be a coincidence of massive and unbelievable proportions.

I thought that because I've seen Twinster and that's real life but then I guess when discussing the Dns baptiste would knowxsopjie was adopted or Eve would have stated it as a reason for not getting dna. I doubt that both families would be covering up that they adopted a child

I doubt that both families would be covering up that they adopted a child

Unless they were illegal adoptions? Although that sounds unlikely. But what if one of the families paid a surrogate, who when she realised she was expecting twins decided to sell the second baby to the other family? And the first family only realised later? Although that doesn't explain why they were both abducted, unless that was by the birth mother who later regretted giving them away and wanted the both back. Aldi lady perhaps?

Thinking aloud here rather than offering likely explanations!

I doubt they are twins. Think that would be a bit too far fetched.

Gemma mentioned that the brother goes to the grave and I'm sure she implied that her and the dad don't. I think the dad doesn't out of guilt, he obviously couldn't save her in the fire and Gemma doesn't because she doesn't believe it's really her daughter. Only her and Baptiste think this, therefore she is working secretly with him to prove it, hence the "they would think I am mad" comment. How Daniel Reed fits in, I don't know.

I doubt it's a paedophile ring, it's too obvious and that's what they hinted at last time and it was nothing like it. I reckon it's something to do with the army but cant figure out what. They seem to be featuring a lot. Dad is Army, he's shagging Army pal who was pregnant, her dad was Army who seems to know Alice, Butchers wife/Aldi woman is ex Army, Henry Reed killed himself/was murdered and something to do with Army as he kept diaries until Iraq, his son was in the Army and knows something about it.

They wouldn't get Sophie's dad to come and identify Alice/Sophie. Her family think it's her, she is saying it's her. It would be a huge thing for Baptiste (who officially has nothing to do with this case) to basically turn around and say she is lying and the family are deluded.

I thought they could have been twins to start with, but surely if they were adopted - even illegally - the parents would mention this to the police as a possible motive? You wouldn't care about how much trouble you got into if it meant potentially saving your child.

ArmyPaedophile ring

Well, I hope not, that is such a clichéd storyline.

Yeah I really hope it's not a paedophile ring, that's just a rehash of series one.

It wouldn't be a The Missing thread without screenshots. So throwing mine into the ring, as awful as it is Sophie does look as though she could possibly be pregnant in the video. And they do seem to pointedly zoom in on her stomach. But then I seem to remember something similar with the mother in series 1 and it turned out to be a red herring.

Maybe she was being abused before she was abducted, Baptiste found out and (mistakenly?) accused her father, and that's what led her mother to kill herself.