Ok I said I wasn’t going to post this until @sarashouldbestudying had finished watching the show because of spoilers. However, I can’t take the sadness. So just, you know, don’t read it until you have watched Gauntlet. Oh and @violetfaust you said you wanted in on the theories, so here they are 🙂
I have said a few times I’m not a Rush/Mandy shipper but I can still think of several happy ending’s for them. I’m just going to throw these theories out there and you can pick one/all/none for a fix-it for canon if you want to do that.
Right so my theories of how they can still be together and be happy …
1) Stasis pods
There was this episode of Stargate Atlantis, season 2, episode 9 ‘Aurora’ where the team found an Ancient ship drifting in space. On board they found the entire crew in stasis pods.
McKay found that if they entered a stasis pod then they could interact with the crew. All the pods were linked to a sort of simulation and the crew actually weren’t even aware that they were in stasis, they weren’t aware of how much time had passed, they were just happily living out their lives.
Destiny has already shown that the technology has this capability. Young experienced the simulation feature in the season 2, episode 6 ‘Trial and Error’ when he wasn’t even hooked up to anything. Mandy and Rush have already interacted via the chairs. I know that Eli locked up Mandy’s program on the mainframe but I think Destiny is self-aware and can undo whatever it likes.
When they go into stasis in Gauntlet (and yes this is where spoilers come in so please read at your own risk) they hope that they will be in stasis for three years. However, if Destiny drops out of FTL before reaching the next galaxy and just drifts there, it could be a thousand years. Rush and Mandy could live out a hundred simulated lifetimes.
2) Cloning technology
Mandy’s consciousness is stored on Destiny’s computer. In the season 6, episode 3 ‘Descent’ of SG1 the team are on a crashed Ha’tak. To cut a long story short they basically rescue a server shard before the ship explodes, which contains the consciousness of Thor, one of the Asgard, previously presumed dead after the events of the season five finale.
A few episodes later Thor re-appears in a new body. That was how the Asgard lived, they transferred consciousness between clones. Well Ba’al had the cloning technology. There is nothing to stop them from finding his facility, taking Mandy’s DNA (and DNA can survive centuries after death) and creating a new body for her and then downloading her consciousness from Destiny into the new body.
They don’t actually even need to use Ba’al’s tech either. They ran into clones on Atlantis. Carson Beckett was brought back to life thanks to a clone. In the season 3, episode 2 ‘Misbegotten’ Beckett is temporarily captured by Michael (one of the wraith) but he’s rescued and nobody thought anything of it. Until Beckett gets killed in the season 3, episode 17 ‘Sunday’ and then in season 4, episode 18 ‘The Kindred’ they raid one of Michael’s facilities and find Beckett! He says that he has been a prisoner for 2 years and basically “why didn’t you come find me?” and then they discover that he’s a clone.
He didn’t even realize he was a clone. He is still alive, still working for the Atlantis expedition. He was even the one that piloted Atlantis home from Pegasus in the series finale, so he’s trusted as well. No idea what they told his family, like “yeah we told you he was dead, that he had been blown up, had a funeral but yeah sort of not completely dead” or maybe Beckett just had to deal with being dead on Earth and not able to call his mom or anything. Ok, that’s sad. They were really close and everything.
The technology is out there.
3) Replicator technology
This is similar to the above theory but with a different example backing it up. That of Dr Elizabeth Weir. On Atlantis eventually there evolved two different forms of human-form replicator. One form was the standard replicator, and the other was basically flesh and blood but with healing nanites.
The cloning theory relies on them finding a facility that they don’t have, or potentially might have already been destroyed by someone. It is also a bit of a leap as if they did that for Mandy, then what’s to stop that from doing that for a ton of people? Slippery slope etc.
However, they have already taken Elizabeth Weir’s consciousness from the Atlantis computer and put it into a human-form replicator body. McKay did it and everyone yelled at him because he wasn’t supposed to and actually this didn’t end happily because Weir is drifting in space, effectively in suspended animation because they didn’t trust the replicators she had with her. So they tricked them into walking through a space gate and being in the atmosphere freezes them, rendering them harmless.
The rules on Atlantis are fairly fluid though and it’s not like Rush has ever been one to play by the rules. If he went ahead and did it, bringing Mandy to life, what are they going to do then? They won’t kill her, they might contain her for a bit but I mean these are the people that took a first prime (Teal’c) and put him on the frontline team. They didn’t let him leave the base unaccompanied, or live off base, until season 8 but he was allowed to live his life otherwise.
The same could be true for Mandy. She would have to live on Atlantis with Rush perhaps but would either of them argue about that? The IOA would think it a punishment and they would both secretly be laughing because best assignment ever!
4) The Chair
Mandy existed in Chloe’s mind, so did Ginn and they sort of traded control. Until they sucked the other two into the computer, giving Chloe her body back. What if they come across another colony of their descendants? Mandy is a very gifted scientist, that’s why Camille traded places with her for a month when they needed to fix the FTL drive back in season 1, episode 16 ‘Sabotage’ and would arguably be a very useful person to have.
In a greater good type scenario, somebody could volunteer to swap with her. Their mind would live within Destiny’s computer and Mandy could download into their body and have it for her own. Now, there is a ton of moral problems with this and I hesitate to list it as a theory. I really do not like it at all, I have the same distaste as I do with the stones. The whole body swap thing really creeps me out.
However, they have the technology and it is feasibly possible so it goes on the list.
5) Planet Builder Aliens
They didn’t really get bodies, they only managed a temporary fix of the crew left behind. However, they had power and it’s possible that maybe they could craft some kind of body for Mandy. I mean we so little about them, about their capabilities, about what their goals are. Who were they? Where did they come from? What is their history? etc.
We just don’t know enough about them but I list them as a possibility because they were advanced. They were also clearly curious about Destiny or they never would have sent the crew back. Joseph Mallozzi on his blog said that they intended to do more with them if the show hadn’t been cancelled. I also think that they would never have brought Mandy and Ginn back via Destiny’s computer if they didn’t intend to do something with them.
6) Alternate reality
Alternate realities are sometimes linked to time travel. For instance take the season 1, episode 8 ‘Time’. The reality that is the ‘home’ reality for our crew was the third one. The first happened and everyone died, the second (the one the episode followed) was influenced by the events of the first. Then the final reality, was influenced by the second.
I always found it quite sad that I expect everyone celebrated that they lived, that they ‘finally got it right’. I mean Rush actually says something along the lines of “next time we might not be so lucky as to get three attempts” or something like that, which glosses over the truth of what happened. They didn’t get three attempts. Those previous two realities – they happened, and those versions of them died. They were just as real, they had the same lives, the same hopes and the same dreams. They were just unfortunate to be reality one and two, not the final reality three.
However, alternate realities don’t have to be linked to time travel. I mean it’s the multiverse theory. For every decision made, go right or go left, a new branch of reality is created and then events unfold from that point. It’s the very basis of ‘what if’ fanfic. It takes a point in time and then creates an alternate reality from that point.
With time travel in the season 2, episode 12 ‘Twin Destinies’ we saw time travel again impact upon our reality, maybe us reality four or possibly five on the list (depending on if you count going back 2000 years, and going back 12 hours as merging into the same reality). Anyway, I’m still a little bitter that we didn’t get to keep double Rush for more than an episode because double Rush! What’s not to like? However, Telford came back to life via this method. His alternate self made it to Earth, where his current self got killed on alternate Destiny. That’s the point I’m trying to make.
The problem with time travel though is ok say Mandy went forward and not back, she wouldn’t have died and instead would have disappeared on her trip forward. Just like Sheppard did in the season 4, episode 20 ‘The Last Man’ when he went forward thousands of years into the future. She can’t go back and into our reality either because she’s dead. It’s a bit like what Rumple says ‘Dead is dead’.
With alternate realities she wouldn’t be exactly the same person. A bit like how there was alternate geeky Carter and Daniel in the season 8, episode 19/20 ‘Moebius’ of SG1. At the core they were the same people but they had been shaped by different experiences. In this example Carter had never joined the military but she was still brilliant, still brave and still very attracted to one Jack O’Neill.
There are many different ways of travelling between realities. Carter did it in season 10, episode 13 ‘The Road Not Taken’ of SG1 using an Ancient device built by Merlin. That device wasn’t supposed to do that, it was an accident during an experiment. Also on SG1 there was the quantum mirror first discovered in the season 1, episode 19 ‘There but for the grace of god’ and of course my personal favorite the alternate reality drive built by our very own SGC. McKay claimed credit for it in the season 5, episode 4 ‘The Daedalus Variations’.
Imagine this, an alternate reality, has the alternate reality drive and thinks that they are back in their reality. They gate to Destiny. I have several theories as to how there could be relatively easy travel between Earth and Destiny but that’s for another post. Anyway, but after they get to Destiny they realize ooops – not their reality. Rush is very surprised to see the Destiny gate spit out Mandy and of course then they are trapped because Destiny can’t dial back out – not enough power.
She could still be the same person inside but her reality is a bit different for some reason, I mean obviously something would be different or they wouldn’t have the alternate reality tech.
I have some issues with this theory too because aren’t you just replacing someone then with a copy of them? Isn’t that a bit wrong somehow? Not sure.
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Actually that’s all I can think of right now. I thought I had more theories but I’d never actually written them down. Besides I think I’ve rambled on long enough, especially about alternate realities and time travel. They are very complex plot devices but used correctly they can be awesome.
I mean – double Rush, what’s not to like?
So yeah anyway, this is kinda off the top of my head. There may be more ways but none I can think of right this second.
There is hope.