Headscratchers / Ocean's 8

• Debbie wants an all-female crew to take advantage of women being Beneath Notice...at the Met Gala, where women are always the centre of attention with their elaborate dresses. If Debbie had said that women come under less criminal suspicion than men, she'd be right, but she didn't say that; she said women don't get looked at twice.
  • For the majority of the heist, they weren't wearing elaborate dresses. They were disguised as catering staff, and didn't get looked at twice.
  • Even Rose and Debbie, who do spend the heist in fancy dresses, are two women in dresses amongst hundreds of other women in dresses. Many of those women are well-known and famous. Debbie's more than likely correct that barely anyone is going to spare them a glance considering who else is at the Gala.
• The theft of the Toussaint was noticed as soon as the necklace was returned to the Cartier vault. How long will it take to detect the substitution of the Crown Jewels?
  • Probably less quickly (after all, the Cartier necklace was the big-ticket item, the rest under far less security), if it happens at all. If it does happen, there's likely to be a chain reaction as everyone starts examining their own pieces, but by that time the jewels will be impossible to find since they will have already been fenced.
  • It depends on how long the exhibit is up. It's a loan, so they were examined for condition reports and photographed before they left their original museum, a condition report was likely performed by the Met itself on arrival, and unless something has to be switched, or something is suspicious, they probably won't be examined closely again until they are being prepared for the shipment back to their home institution and again on arrival. Depending on how close the substitutes are to the originals, condition wise, and how much the various collections managers/registrars know about precious jewels and the jewelry, it may be noticed at this point, when it returns home, or not at all. I think it is likely they would notice when preparing them for shipment, because it's unlikely that the copies have the same conditions overall, since they're based on a scan of the top side of the jewelry.
• It's very possible this was explained and I just missed it, but... how did the Banksy painting end up in the Met? I assume the team had something to do with it, so they could get the security company to change their settings, because otherwise that'd be one hell of a Contrived Coincidence, but was it ever explained how they did it? (Also... does this mean Banksy is a friend of Debbie's? Honestly, that wouldn't surprise me much.)
  • They do seem to be just a quick sleight of hand bit. Plus, as the head of the security company explains "we're trying to keep stuff in, not out."
  • Perhaps one of the girls is Banksy.
  • They show a shot of a woman keeping her face somewhat obscured by pretending to have a cold. The camera pans from that woman to the one who distracts the security guard in the room. Since the supposed Banksy was placed near a very famous large piece, maybe the cameras were focused on that and they had enough room to place the piece without being caught.
    • The "woman keeping her face somewhat covered by pretending to have a cold" is Debbie Ocean herself, and she's clearly holding a parcel big enough to be the "Founding Mothers" portrait
• How is Rose going to explain this to the IRS? She owed them MILLIONS suddenly being able to pay them all that money is going to throw up even more red flags when they ask where the money came from....since it's the IRS they have access to her tax returns and know exactly how much she should have, and undeclared income is illegal in its own right.
  • Most likely she'll do it over the course of several years, laundering the money through her new fashion lines.
  • Designed the dress for Daphne—>Back into the fashion game—>some front company(the crew's disguise) invest her a load of money(part of her cut)—>open a new shop and start a new fashion line—>season by season , laundering the rest though business , and pay IRS what she own.
• Why bother breaking up the Troussaint into individual pieces to be worn out. Why not take it out with Yen and the other necklaces intact?
  • So that Debbie could frame Claude. She had a lot of different motives.
    • Only Lou and Debbie and Amita knew about the theft of the crown jewels; the rest of the ladies would have been asking how the Toussaint got out if it had left with Yen.
• The crew go to significant effort to make a 12ft dead zone around the toilets. But apparently it's possible to get the camera blocking equipment into the main exhibit room without being seen somehow.
  • The camera blocking in the main exhibit was (basically) putting a photo in front of the camera that would show the empty exhibit. It's not exactly high tech, and they're using it to hide that there's people in a room that's supposed to be empty. The bathroom hallway had at least one person in it the entire time, there was literally no way to block the camera without setting instant massive suspicions about why everybody in the hall suddenly vanished. Different situations.
• Why did no one ask anything about the women who suddenly show up out of nowhere, just after the 'diamonds' have been found?
  • It's a very big party, and there's lots of people ^note The Met Gala has a guest list of 650-700 individuals. Also, they're walking out, after the diamonds are found. At that moment, there's no active threat and people aren't on their guard.
• More importantly, when did Amita and Constance get changed and have their hair done? And wouldn't the outright vanished Met Gala staff be under far more suspicion than Tammy ever would've been?
  • They're staff. Presumably a third-party caterer hired for the night. It's unlikely the staff roster gets intensely studied. The only staff member who was anywhere near the bathroom was questioned. From an investigative perspective, no one else on the staff could possibly be involved in the theft because they're never close enough to Daphne, the bathroom, or the blind spot when it happens.
  • As for Amita and Constance, we don't know how much time elapses between the recovery of the fake necklace and the girls leaving the Gala. They could have ended their work shifts, snuck away, changed and done their hair, then slipped back in with time to spare.
• Why didn't Tammy fall under any suspicion once the theft was discovered? She was the one who "discovered" the fake necklace—wouldn't she be the obvious suspect for having made the switch? Obviously someone in the dining area had to be in on the heist to plant the fake necklace, and she'd be the logical choice because she "found" it. But she isn't mentioned as a possibility, even in passing. (while we're at it, after all the trouble to fix the bathroom cameras, how did they guarantee the cameras in the dining area wouldn't pick up Tammy pulling out the fake necklace?)
  • Unspecified on-screen, but it's possible that spot was chosen as the place to "discover" the necklace because the angle of the cameras would obscure Tammy's legs behind the fountain as she took out the fake. The guy from the security firm says that the cameras are pointed at the art moreso than covering every angle of the floor, so while she wasn't totally out of sight, she was likely obscured enough for their purposes.
  • Who says she wasn't? (off-screen, anyway) While the above guess about the camera angles for the fake necklace plant is probably correct, Tammy is also on-camera at the Gala the whole time (and probably used a staff bathroom without the blank spot just in case). Just like Debbie, this gives her a perfect alibi - the cameras prove that she isn't anywhere near Daphne at any point. She's wearing the exact same style of earrings throughout the whole event, the originals probably designed and made by Amita beforehand for that reason (the security guards aren't going to be able to tell the difference between crystals/zircons and actual diamonds by eyeballing her). Her false identity for the event planner job was deliberately made to hold up under police scrutiny, and if I remember rightly she wasn't involved in fencing any of the diamonds, probably in case she was under police surveillance.