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A lot of people were originally upset about the way The Prisoner ended, but as Patrick McGoohan himself said, it's not to be taken literally. Some lords of the Occult Underground have taken this interpretation a step further, saying that there was either somebody in the Occult Underground on the production staff, or somebody in the Invisible Clergy was sending a message.

The first interpretation suggests that Number Six begins in the real world, and is thrust into the Village which symbolically represents the path to the Invisible Clergy. In The Prisoner, he is attacked by ideological nemeses trying to cause him to misstep. Number Six remains resolute and maintains his identity (and archetype, possibly being something like the Masterless Man or the Rebel). At the end, when he is finally granted station and control in the Village — the final test before Ascension — he rebels and destroys the Village and its handlers, thusly maintaining his connection to the archetype and ascending as shown in his escape from the Village to the larger world and the open sky.

The second interpretation is that the Village is not the road to the Statosphere; it is the Statosphere. Number Six is some ascended archetype going through his own business and attempting to defend his seat in the Invisible Clergy. Devotees of this explanation claim that the four major symbols representing the Statosphere appear in the show — the chessboard, the palace (Number Two's home with its stately dome and internal command center), the sky (also represented by the domed command centers which oversee all of the Village), and the ocean off the island's coast — while additionally claiming other clues noted in the show. Those who support this theory claim that the show ends with Number Six's ejection from the Statosphere, his trip to the House of Renunciation in Fall Out, and his return to Earth at the very end.