The mystery at the heart of Picard

More than halfway through. Six episodes down, four to go. So many questions.

Who are Dahj and Soji? Who created them? Where? Why? Who killed Dahj, and why? Why didn't Dahj and Soji know what they were? What's up with Soji's dream? What was going on when she called her mother? What are Narek and Narissa after? Are they Zhat Vash? What do the Zhat Vash want? What does Commodore Oh want? What did Oh say to Agnes? What activated the Mars synths? Why does Rios make holograms that look like him? Why did assimilating Romulans break the Borg? Why are Romulan ex-Bs so screwed up? What does Picard's Data dream mean? Why did Agnes kill Maddox? Just how corrupt is the Federation?

I've tooled around the Internet a fair bit reading people's theories, and I've lain awake nights trying to come up with my own. None of them put all, or even most, of the pieces together, but they generally seem to run along one or more of these lines:

• Maddox made Dahj and Soji to uncover a Federation conspiracy (or Maddox made Dahj and Soji to destroy the Romulans).
• Agnes made Dahj and Soji, and just let Maddox think he made them.
• Lore made Dahj and Soji for his own nefarious purposes.
• Soji is being fed new programming via phone calls with her "mother."
• The Romulans created the Borg and have been trying to destroy them ever since, and that's what the Zhat Vash are for.
• A faction of the Federation, determined to destroy the Romulans, created synths to infiltrate them and engineered the Mars attack to undermine the evacuation effort.
• The Romulans are synths created by the Vulcans ages ago as slave labor, and they rebelled, like the Cylons. (Yes. This is a theory on the interwebs.)
• Oh told Agnes something so horrible that she had no choice but to kill Maddox. Or Oh mind-melded with Agnes and implanted memories and/or instructions. Or Agnes is a synth and Oh activated her.
• Picard knows Agnes isn't what she seems. He's playing her.
• Narek has his own secret agenda, separate from his sister's.
• Soji is the next Borg queen.

Etc etc etc. It's all over the map, really. If there is one convincing unified theory, I'd love to hear it, but I haven't yet.

But there are a few basic pieces of information that everyone seems to ignore, but seem to me to be key:

The Data factor. Dahj seeks out Picard because he represents safety to her. Clearly, that has to do with Data, whose own programming has somehow affected her. Maybe that could be explained by the presence of B4 at the Daystrom Institute; through it, some part of Data's programming got transferred to the sisters. And while their association with Data implies that Dahj and Soji are on the side of the angels, it's possible someone interfered with their original purpose and they no longer are. Or maybe this is actually all about Picard, and Dahj and Soji are just bait for a trap set by someone who knows Picard can't  possibly resist helping Data's "daughers." But then there's the whole matter of Picard's dream poker game, and Data's hand of five queens. Data is central to this mystery, and no theory that doesn't include him is sufficient.

The Narek factor. We now know specifically what information Narek and Narissa want from Soji: her planet of origin. And we know why: because there are a whole lot more synths there. If so, could Maddox have possibly made them all? Seems unlikely. Is she from a planet full of future Borg queens? Possibly. No matter who these synths on the mystery planet are, it sure looks like, whatever was going on at the Daystrom Institute, it wasn't Maddox just making a couple of Data knockoffs. I lean toward the idea that Agnes is a synth from that planet, who may not have known her own nature before Oh activated her, but who was programmed to...alter Dahj and Soji? Fix them? Stop them? I don't know. But one thing is certain: If Soji and Dahj are from a planet with two red moons, they're not from the Daystrom Institute. They may have been brought there to be repaired or upgraded with Data's parts (or his shittier cousin's, B4), but they didn't start life there.

The Borg-are-victims factor. Picard's realization that the Borg are victims feels like a big clue, not just to his character arc, but to the big picture. It telegraphs the idea that we have to see people and their actions in context in order to understand them, and that there is often more to the story than meets the eye. It seems highly likely that at the heart of the season's mystery lies the secret of the Borg -- more specifically, who the power behind them is, who's pulling their strings, who victimized them -- and that the answer lies in ancient Romulan history.

I hope the final explanation actually manages to pull all these threads together -- but these are an awful lot of threads, and there aren't many episodes left this season. I really hope it's better than the resolution to Disco's first season.