I don’t know how wild a take this is, but I was thinking about how it’s kind of weird to make the Web sentient at the end, since it’s really one part of a fear soup and all that. Why would only one part of it be able to plan and think? Fear doesn’t plan anyway. It isn’t rational. 

The Fears are shaped by humans, like how since Jonah and Jon think of the Fears in Smirke’s 14, that’s why the ritual is that way. (I can’t remember if I saw this somewhere else or not, but it’s possible.) How we think of them sort of defines them. 

And the Web is all about manipulation and being controlled. So its avatars probably assume they are being controlled, carrying out some greater plan to widen the crack and all that. 

But what if it’s not? What if it’s just…their collective unconscious? (Not necessarily specifically Jung’s collective unconscious, but maybe.) Like a Ouija board where people move the ring (?) to the letters…subconsciously? Because the avatars thought they were being manipulated, the Fears reflected that and it made a sort of…well, web between all of them. Throughout the centuries, all Web avatars planned this great plan to escape to other realities. 

I suppose this weird idea implies that It Really Was Them All Along, which makes it scarier, I guess. It’s scarier if it was Just Luck All Along, because it’s like a landslide where every choice just pushes you irrevocably down a path of life. There’s no puppetmaster; it’s just you and everyone else and everything else. 

I do want to note that it’s possible this fits into ”theories that can’t happen and would fit into red-string retrospective week”.