The Sting is a con on the audience, and the control-agency gap is where the trick lives. The audience perceives Hooker's control collapsing from Act III onward — the FBI closing in, forced betrayal, both men "shot dead" — bottoming at 2. But Hooker's agency is consistently moderate-to-high because he is executing a plan the audience cannot see. He chooses to stay in the con, chooses to trust Gondorff, chooses every risk. The final reveal doesn't just spike control from 2 to 92 — it retroactively explains why agency never fell as far as control did. The audience was the mark, and the gap between the lines is the distance they were conned.