3 Mind-Blowing Theories About The "Serial" Finale

We might have cracked this thing wide open.

Anyone with earbuds is currently obsessed with Serial.

Getty Images/iStockphoto Eugenio Marongiu/Courtesy of Serial / Via ThinkStock

If you haven't heard it, you've definitely heard of it. The This American Life spin-off podcast, Serial, has become a national phenomenon by methodically unpacking a true crime story, artfully told through individual chapters over a period of weeks.

It's a tangled web.

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Over the course of 11 highly addictive episodes, host Sarah Koenig has spun an intricate web of teenage love, lies, and tragedy, with a cast of suspicious players whose contradictions are revealed like clockwork to generate an almost unbearable amount of suspense. With only one episode remaining, it seems unlikely that the finale can untangle this highly complex real-life murder plot.

Or can it? Let's look at the clues.

Courtesy of Serial

Notice how the podcast's own logo isolates each individual letter, almost as if they're trying to thematically convey that the story is told in parts, right? Unless that's just what they want you to think.

Where else are individual letters of a word isolated? When they're the beginning of an acrostic. These three compelling theories suggest that the real truth has been hidden in plain sight all along.

Theory No. 1

Courtesy of Serial

In a case with no murder weapon and a baffling dearth of physical evidence, finding the shovels allegedly used to bury Hae Min Lee, could break the case wide open.

Presuming that Jen and Jay actually cleaned them before disposal, the inexpert evidence-tampering of two inexperience teenagers might be no match for 15 years of advancement in forensic science.

Unless... this is just another red herring.

Theory No. 2

Courtesy of Serial

Think about it. Why haven't we heard from the family of the victim? Why is the brutal murder of a teenager being sensationalized to the point where it feels more like a movie than a family's loss?

And isn't it suspicious that most of the key players are people of color in working-class Baltimore, but most of the listeners are white iPhone owners with the disposable income to donate to NPR? Like so much about this case, it simply doesn't add up.

Which brings us to the most compelling theory of all...

Theory No. 3

Courtesy of Serial

How can Adnan and Jay both be telling the truth when they contradict each other? How can the payphone exist and simultaneously not exist? Our best guest for tomorrow's Serial finale: Sarah Koenig gets on the mic and explains that reality as we know it is a series of interconnected tunnels of perception, weaving in and out of existence in an infinite web of quantum uncertainty.

After all, a what is a podcast but an electronic signal triggering vibrations on your eardrums? At the end of the day we might find out that Serial was literally just all in our heads.