Very nice post.
The only thing is that in the last animation the trajectory of Theia between L4 and Gaia seems a bit unnatural. I guess it would not orbit around a fictitious center of gravity the way it does in the animation.
Looking forward to your next post!
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Great question @irelandscape. In fact, the only thing that makes sense for now is that the impact had happened. We can't even be sure whether what caused it in the first place. And due to this, we can't be sure about the extent to which Theia's orbit was disturbed. Some just guessed it was Venus and made further calculations which could possibly result in a crust-shattering, core-merging direct impact.
Plus the planets were not yet properly alligned in orbits as they are today. If we scale the time of 4.6 bilion years to 46 years of our life, 100 million years seem like the first year of our life. Solar system must have been a chaotic scratching, yelling, biting, pooping, crying baby back then, lol.