Sophie's Secret

Something you should know about Sophie and her exciting adventures that you might not understand is just how dangerous it is to be traveling through time.

In most of these adventures, Sophie is barely a whisker away from disaster and all of it ending.  Ending. 

You might think it's unrealistic how many times that Sophie gets away. But Sophie has a big ol' secret that we've held off on sharing until now and won't spend a lot of time talking about after this.  So if you're ready for the secret, buckle up!  It's a doozie.  Ready for it?

Sophie dies.  
A lot.  A lot.

In a lot of the adventures, we see Sophie running for her life. 

And a lot of those time, she manages to get away, just in the nick of time.  Because Sophie is an exceptionally awesome mouse.  As you know. 

Sophie is all about saving the world (saving the day!) 

A lot of the time by the time Sophie shows up, the damage has already been done and the rot has set in too far for anything to be done. Once Sophie figures that out, things switch from saving the world to saving herself.

But of course Sophie is also a conscientious mouse. Even so, she's always cutting corners and cutting things a little too close, not leaving herself enough of an out.  (Because: Why would she? It has always worked for her up until now.)

So each Sophie we are seeing is a Sophie who has experienced an uninterrupted string of successes in saving herself.  When you start to win all the time, you stop considering the stakes.  

So, again, Sophie dies.  A lot.
She doesn’t always get away, just in the nick of time.
Sometimes, she cuts it too close.
Sometimes, she dies. 

We wouldn't be able to tell the story we wanted to tell if Sophie simply dies, suddenly right in the middle of it.  The story would be a lot more like real life if we did.  But then the story would be over, with all sorts of hanging loose threads (just like real life).  It would end before we got to where we wanted to go. We are taking something called artistic license..

It’s just simple science that each time something could go one of two ways it, in fact, goes both. The universe branches endlessly with worlds on top of worlds on top of worlds that all started from the same point but began to differ.

So what we do is simply ignore all the times that Sophie dies and pick up at a point when the story branched in a different universe and keep telling the story from there.  

Once you know this, it is easy to spot.  You can start to see it for yourself.

Take, for instance, this series of pictures of Sophie running away from danger.  They are all Sophie and all show her running away from danger but there are little differences if you know what to look for.

Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
But try.