But in terms of the film, it’s not quite clear is Sue looks exactly like Elizabeth used to.
Maybe she does, but if so, why does nobody recognise that the fitness model taking over the workout show that Elizabeth used to lead, looks exactly like a younger version of Elizabeth.
Maybe they do, or perhaps this is just don’t to the very superficial world that Sue and Elizabeth are shown to exist in.
The likes of Harvey played by Dennis Quaid are shown to be shallow to a next level level and it may just be that he doesn’t really remember Elizabeth after she’s out the picture and the name Sue is a enough of a disguise Superman Clark Kent style that the shallow Harvey doesn’t even see past.
But there is also the possibility that Sue doesn’t look exactly like Elizabeth did when she was younger.
So, what could that mean?
We don’t actually know what this ‘substance’ is and it’s not impossible that they are just using the users of the Substance to grow an independent separate person within the user who isn’t in fact a younger version of the older person.
But we do know that even if this is the case, the young person and the older one do in fact have a shared memory. Is it absolute and complete? That is debateable. Because if nothing else, there is a lack of continuity of both the younger and older version being able to work on the same page to the complete same goals.
So some level of understanding or thought process fails to carry over.
So it could be that the new body isn’t a younger version of the old body,
but that the technology of the substance allows the older mind to be hosted in this young vessel.
And maybe the young vessel needs to be grown out of the older one so there is greater compatibility.
So that the mind of the older person isn’t rejected by an otherwise random body.
Like how having a heart or liver transplant will work better if there is the same blood type.
But if they are the same person and the idea of being one is that they have to share one mind across two bodies, how could the scenario of there being two of them active and conscious at the same time happen?
Maybe this was a first-time freak of nature, or maybe there is always the risk that this could happen, but when following the rules properly the non-active body is purposely kept sedate.
We see that the older one tries to break the chain and attempts to kill the younger version.
She does this again, not by just ignoring the younger version, but by using an incomplete dose of another fluid that will break the connection and kill Sue.
Realising that she would then never be Sue again, and because Sue let the older version rot for several months, Elizabeth is trapped in a hunchback haggard body…Elizabath panics and revives Sue…and this is where there are now two of them.
How could this happen?
We can assume that if Elizabeth had used the full dose of the termination fluid that Sue would be dead and not able to be active again,
but it is likely that part of what this fluid did was break the connection between the two of them and circumvent any forced rule that the two cannot be active at the same time.
So, if this is the case, how could there be two of them active if it’s meant to swap the consciousness from one to the other?
Maybe the substance does actually clone your personality and artificially keep one on ice. And maybe the stabilizer fluid is a way where updates can be shared across. Like having two laptops where you periodicaly both access the same cloud storage.
It seems to me that Elizabeth, as the original is the physical hard drive or server and that Sue is like updating a document on your laptop on holiday.
It’ll still send back the data to the main hard drive which is Elizabeth.
So, in theory, if the termination fluid didn’t fully do its job, it may have separated Elizabeth from Sue, and allow them to run independently.
It may be that the substance actually spawns off a second being with a shared hive mind and that the younger one is something more of a daughter than a clone.
Let me know what your theories are on how the substance works in the comments section.
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