The Uneasy Alliance in the Original Magnum P.I.

Higgins, T.C., Rick, and Magnum are an odd bunch of fellows, and here’s a fan theory to explain why Robin Masters is a character on the show—until he isn’t.

First, we’re told that T.C., Rick, and Magnum became friends during the Vietnam War and that Higgins is the estate manager of Robin Masters’s Hawaiian property. In the earlier seasons, Robin is presented as a real person who is simply never fully shown on screen. As the series progresses, however, he is discussed less and less as a tangible human being. Eventually, in the series finale, Higgins tells Magnum that he is Robin Masters—before later muddying the waters again. The whole thing can be dismissed as a plot device neatly sewn together at the end of the series, except there’s just too much room for theorizing.

My theory is this: Robin Masters was a real person who was killed by Higgins and Magnum shortly before the events of the series began.

Magnum was the compound’s resident security expert, while Higgins managed the property. Together, they conspired to kill Robin Masters and gradually allow Higgins to assume his identity. T.C. knew what was happening and probably had some role in disposing of Robin Masters’s body. This could explain how T.C., a relatively young former soldier, managed to acquire his own helicopter business. As for Rick, Higgins may have allowed him to run the club in exchange for his silence about the Robin Masters situation—and perhaps for access to Rick’s underworld connections whenever particularly nosy people needed to be discouraged from asking questions.

Then there’s Magnum. Magnum frequently had visitors at the estate, yet conveniently, they never seemed to be people who knew Robin Masters personally. Magnum and Higgins may even have encouraged a constant rotation of houseguests as a way of maintaining the appearance of normality on the estate while providing themselves with fresh aliases, witnesses, and potential scapegoats. This might also explain why neither Magnum nor Higgins stayed away from the estate for particularly long periods and why neither maintained a long-term romantic relationship with someone who actually lived on the property.

There is another possibility that makes this theory considerably more scandalous: it isn’t entirely beyond imagination that Magnum and Higgins were romantically involved.

Perhaps that relationship was even the catalyst for Robin Masters’s removal. Imagine a lonely former naval officer and a far-from-home estate manager spending enormous amounts of time together, gradually becoming accustomed to the finer things in life. Their relationship could have given them both the motive and opportunity to devise a nefarious plan that would allow them to maintain the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed. For all we know, they planned the whole thing while intertwined in each other’s arms.

The series ends precisely when the Robin Masters problem has effectively disappeared. Higgins can finally assume the identity without attracting much suspicion. On the day of Rick’s wedding, with the estate full of visitors, Magnum and Higgins have their famous conversation about Higgins being Robin Masters, almost as though they are deliberately cementing the story semi-publicly. Suddenly, their strange domestic arrangement makes a little more sense.

It could also explain why, no matter how heated the arguments between Magnum and Higgins became, Magnum was never actually fired. Nor was there much permanent staff around the compound who might have noticed inconsistencies in their story. Oh, those lovebirds.

The theory holds together surprisingly well—as long as you completely discount the much simpler possibility that Higgins created Robin Masters as a pen name.

There is at least some circumstantial support for treating Masters and Higgins as separate people. Robin Masters supposedly has a well-known public persona, while Higgins presents himself as a comparatively frugal homebody who generally keeps out of the limelight. That discrepancy could actually have been useful. By remaining obscure for years, Higgins could eventually emerge publicly as an aging Robin Masters without too many people being able to say with certainty that he wasn’t the man they remembered.

Then there is an even more far-fetched possibility: perhaps Magnum, P.I. itself was an extraordinarily well-integrated piece of communist propaganda aimed at Western society, with Tom Selleck—the soldier turned actor—there to throw everyone off the scent of the troublesome truth.