Number 6 was a Plant: Many Happy Returns

This blog post spoils the identity of Number 1.

The introduction to this series of posts considering the theory that Number 6 didn't really resign and was a 'plant' in the Village may be read here: https://culttvblog.substack.com/p/number-6-was-a-plant-introduction

I am going conveniently to ignore the main difficulty in understanding this episode, namely the bizarre way the Village is suddenly empty, to consider other aspects of the episode from the Number 6 was a plant perspective. I think the only explanation which makes any sense of the sudden disappearance of the entire population, inmates and warders, is that it is a heavy hint that Number 6 *is* in some way the Village, or a hint in advance that he is actually the Number 1 he has been dying to identify. However you understand it, it is an utterly bizarre sequence in an already bizarre series, and is actually probably impossible if you think of the logistics of getting everyone out of that impenetrable Village.

The problem of the empty Village aside, this episode gives Number 6 further golden opportunities to arm himself with photographic and other evidence of the Village's existence and to go back to Blighty to blow the whistle on what he has discovered.

And that is the point at what we reach the essence of this episode: what he discovers is that the authorities back home are in on the Village, and in fact his life in London has been thoroughly erased from history. He has, in fact, been treated as if he has resigned and been consigned to the Village for safe containment for the foreseeable future.

I am therefore of the opinion that this episode is further evidence that while it is possible Number 6 didn't really resign and decided to investigate the Village, his mock resignation wasn't prompted by his superiors, and was probably his own idea. This episode makes clear that while he was unaware of the location and nature of the Village, the men he automatically goes to for validation and action of his findings were very clearly aware of it. I would suggest that Number 6 acted on things he had heard without a mandate from above, and that he may not have been as senior as I have been making him out to be, because he didn't need to know about the Village.

In fact this episode also suggests that the Village has been behind his life in intelligence and behind the British state from the word go, in the sort of symbolic way McGoohan loved. There are two points in London where we see Number 6 on a ground surface or floor reminiscent of a chess board, and one of them is the hallway to his own former home (I am indebted to the Free for All podcast for this insight). The chess board as the symbol of the Village's moving people round and expecting them to follow certain arbitrary rules, was already there in his life, he just didn't know it.

I am perhaps being slightly unreasonable given the long hard journey before the exchange with Mrs Butterworth which wouldn't have left him up to much, but he really should have been suspicious of her. I do not believe that anyone would welcome an unkempt man smelling after a lengthy journey and claiming to be the tenant of their house, into their home and bathe them and feed them. You would ring the constabulary. And who the hell moves into a house already furnished and full of someone else's belongings without at least moving things around? The whole encounter has got Village written all over it. However, from the perspective that his intention was to appear to resign and investigate the Village he had heard about, he has discovered the nature of the fictions that the Village will also set up to ensure he stays resigned.

So to summarise, I would conclude that Number 6 was unaware of the extent to which the British establishment was invested in the Village and thus his staged resignation would have been his own idea with no mandate from his superiors. The events of this episode reveal the extent of this investment to him and also the ways in which the authorities (whether of Britain of the Village) can set up elaborate fictions to keep him disappeared. My conclusion would be that this episode can be read from the persepective that Number 6 is a self-inflicted plant.

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