Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of John

There's something like seven or eight exact textual parallels between John 11 and John 20. So John just calls her Mary and makes her extremely similar to Mary Magdalene. And that may be why people as far back as perhaps the gospel of Mary, but definitely Hippolytus of Rome, the mannequians and Ambrose, third, fourth centuries. But then if she's the one who confesses Jesus as the Christ, that means that the person who gets the central Christological confession also gets the first appearance of the risen Jesus. That would just make her a central character and an authority figure in early Christianity that might have been just a bit too much for this gospel.