Why do the horsemen bother passing the item from one to another while being searched?
In Now You See Me 2, the main characters need to steal a card from a secured vault. At some point, each of them is searched for the stolen item and each performs a nifty collection of tricks to keep holding on to it without the searcher realizing:
What confuses me is that each of them then passes the card to another "horseman" just as they finished confounding their searcher. Then, the new horseman now has to go through the same song and dance again to avoid detection.
What's the point of this? Obviously, it looks cool, but is there an in-universe explanation? Why doesn't the first one just hold on to the card after he managed to be searched without the searcher finding it? Why pass it on to the next horseman?
Best Answer
Just my take of course :
Each of the horsemen is subject to not just one search, but two. There is the initial frisking, but that is followed by the "magic wand" detector. The second is the more worrying, since anyone carrying the card when they are "wanded" would be detected.
So Daniel, who we see being searched first, after being frisked is then being stepped away some distance to be "wanded" - so he HAS to get rid of the card while he can, otherwise he'd be too far and/or surrounded by guards to pass it away (see 2:00).
The others realise the same, and that their only safety is to stick close together as a group - if one of them gets separated with the card, they'll get detected when that one is "wanded", but two can pass it between them.
So they're all weighing multiple factors - how separated are they, who is currently or about to be frisked, who is likely to get taken away to be "wanded" next, where are the guards, etc.
It is this multitude of factors that leads to the multiple card passing.
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