The Wicker Man : there's no way the pagans got away with killing Malus

Pete, Edwards friend on the police force, was suspicious enough of this whole SummerIsle shtick to begin with when Ed told him about it that he told Ed not to go there. So a few days later Pete calls up Ed and in the few seconds before the call is dropped Ed tells Pete to help, please help!. Now that Pete knows that Ed is in trouble, he immediately calls up the FBI. In addition to this, theres the missing seaplane pilot. The seaplane pilots family are going to alert the authorities so when the FBI agents show up sometime within the next few days theyre going to find out that theres two people who went to the island who have gone missing at the same time. This will make the FBI extremely suspicious.

The pagans will claim that Ed and the pilot left together in the seaplane, implying that theyre missing because the plane must have gone down over the ocean. Due to Eds cell phone call to Pete the FBI agents wont buy this. If a plane is in trouble then the passenger doesnt call a friend hundreds of miles away on his cell phone. Instead, the pilot radios ground control. The pagans intimidation tactic of telling them they cant land here, its private property isnt going to slow them down for a single second. Unlike Edward Malus, theyre going to be a lot smarter and theyre specifically trained to conduct investigations. These are real sharp, straight-laced detectives. Theyre going to investigate everything much more thoroughly and smartly. It will be a lot harder for the pagans to get things past them. The pagans will be smart enough to realize they cant just kill the FBI agents since the only result of that will be to bring A LOT more FBI agents to the island.

The first thing the FBI agents are going to notice about the island is that its a pagan feminazi colony. Theyre gonna notice that the males are all mistreated and send other government agencies to investigate and make trouble for them over civil rights violations. Regardless of the investigation over the disappearance of Malus and the pilot, the pagans are going to get into some sort of serious legal trouble over their treatment of males. The FBI might even use this issue as a threat to get the pagans to come clean on what happened to Malus and the pilot as an alternative to the possibility of having their whole island shut down because of their abuse of the males. Just look at what the government did at Waco because of this kind of stuff. And considering the aftermath of 9/11 the FBI is really gonna put them through hell. So now theres an even more powerful FBI that would just love to give a hard time to a bunch of pagan feminazi weirdos in every way it could. The FBI is gonna violate their constitutional rights if they have to in the name of stopping pagan terrorists until it gets what it wants from them. Itll be a war of attrition that the community of SummerIsle has no chance of winning.

The FBI agents are going to interrogate every single person on the island, including the kids. The pagans wont be expecting the FBI to show up so they wont have any time to get their stories straight and will likely give contradictory statements to the FBI agents. The kids will be especially prone to this. Even if they dont get anyone to outright confess that they murdered Edward Malus or the sea pilot, the contradictory testimony will convince the FBI agents that theres some sort of B.S. going on.

If the FBI agents come across the site of the wicker man burning before its cleaned up thats going to further arouse their suspicion. Theyre going to research the history of the SummerIsle community and their religious beliefs. Theres a good chance theyll come across information on their pagan ritual of burning human sacrifices. If they did discover the burn site then learning about this pagan ritual is sure to make them very suspicious. Whether or not they find out about this pagan tradition, if they come across the site of the wicker man burning before its cleaned up then theyre probably going to examine it for human remains. If they discover human remains and are able to identify them as belonging to Edward Malus then thats game over for the pagans.

Theres a good chance the FBI will also investigate the traffic accident back in California that started all of this. Nothing about it made any sense, as I thoroughly explained in a previous thread. Theyre going to discover that there was some sort of foul play and connect it back to SummerIsle. The mother and daughter probably left some sort of trail for the FBI to follow. The female police officer from SummersIsle probably also left some sort of trail for the FBI to follow. If they identify her on the island then thats immediately game over for the pagans since shell have no believable explanation for her presence there that doesnt involve a nefarious plot to lure Edward Malus to SummerIsle under false pretenses. The FBI will grind her until she breaks.

The FBI will make life hell for the people of SummerIsle, hounding them for as long as it takes. Theyre going to keep investigating until they find more evidence and keep grilling people until someone breaks. They wont stop until they have enough to indict and convict the pagans for the murder of Edward Malus and the sea pilot.

The FBI investigation is going to mess up their economy as well. The people of SummerIsle rely on the sale of honey for their financial survival. Theyll need another seaplane pilot to continue ferrying their honey shipments back to the mainland. If all the available pilots arent already spooked by the mysterious death of their fellow pilot and the FBI investigation then the people of SummerIsle will be lucky if a malicious FBI doesnt let the word get out that it believes that he was murdered on the island.

When this movie came out in theaters it ended with Sister Willow and Sister Honey back on the mainland at a bar to hook up with more guys who could be potential future sacrifices. They removed that scene for the DVD, making the burning of Edward Malus the end of the movie. The people who made this movie must have figured out everything I explained here soon after it was released in theater. Theres no way that scene would be possible in the aftermath of killing Malus. The whole island would have been caught up in the investigation before they had any chance to start planning on how to get their next victim. Willow and Honey would both be either arrested or at least busy being questioned by the FBI before they had the chance to leave SummerIsle. Even if they could leave they probably wouldnt do so because theyd probably be smart enough to know that the FBI would follow them the entire time they were on the mainland. Theyd know that going to find the next man to sacrifice would just provide the FBI with more evidence against them.

Did you really just write that?

RustyShacklefurd made excellent points!

The FBI might find the photos that sister moss took of the burning wicker man statue thing. Even if the site is cleaned up, the forensics WILL find something. But why couldn't they just say we found a terrorist cell on this island, which made numerous human sacrifices, and just napalm the whole joint?

The plane sank off their coast. FBI divers might be able to locate it but it would require a lot of searching.
Chances are that the FBI would be able to squeeze the facts out of the children.

I would say that there is a good probability of them getting caught, arrested, prosecuted and long jail times.

Right, someone likely will be brought to justice.

here is the thing. the entire thing is that these people are religious fanatics they might never talk

actionmanrandell,

Being a religious fanatic doesn't necessarily make you immune to tough interrogation. I doubt the people of SummersIsle received effective training in successfully resisting tough, intelligent investigators from law enforcement, especially not the kids. And as I said before, the FBI along with other federal agencies could cause a lot of problems for the island that would end up making them want to talk and spill the beans about what they did. The whole point of sacrificing Malus was to save their honey-based economy. If the government sufficiently disrupts their economy in the course of investigating the disappearance of Malus and everything else wrong with their island then there's a strong chance that the people of SummersIsle would be willing to spill the beans to the FBI and sacrifice several of their members to the legal system for the requisite punishment in order to save their economy.

You put way too much logic into this movie.

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Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that I'll be over here looking through your stuff.