- Warning: Major spoilers ahead for "1899," Netflix's new series from Baran Bo Odar and Jantje Friese.
- The season one finale of "1899" ends with a major reveal about the show's true setting.
The season one finale of "1899" — Netflix's new steampunk sci-fi series — ends with a massive twist about the 19th-century ocean liner setting.
Turns out, the journey you've seen unfold across eight episodes is actually taking place in a massive virtual simulation.
Warning: Major spoilers below.
The final minutes of '1899' season one take place aboard a spaceship
Episode eight builds up to the reveal that Maura and Daniel used to be husband and wife and they had a child together named Elliot. Daniel has been suspiciously lurking about the ship and making impossible things happen because he (and Elliot) are trying to help Maura escape the simulation she's trapped in.
Maura — who can't remember anything before being on the ship until Daniel tells her about their shared past — believes her father must be the controlling genius behind the virtual reality program.
According to Maura, the simulation was created by her father because he was obsessed with running psychological experiments. But her father says that Maura is actually "The Creator" and has everyone trapped inside a simulation she designed with Daniel.
When Daniel finally managed to hack into the computer system running the simulation, he changed the coding of certain details in order to prevent the simulation program from simply restarting with everyone's consciousness inside. Daniel's hack enabled Maura to break out of the ship's virtual reality setting, almost like Morpheus' ability to wake Neo up in the real world in "The Matrix."
When Maura opens her eyes, she's standing in a strange chamber in a spaceship. The other people who were on the boat with her are there too, but still unconscious and plugged into their individual pods.
There are several hints that the space setting is just another simulation, including the destination coordinates
Maura (whose hair is cropped short in this new space setting) looks out the window and sees that she's on a massive ship hurtling through space. Then a computer beeps to life, and Maura reads a series of messages on the screen.
"PROJECT PROMETHEUS," it starts. "Survival mission to 42.042340 -44.375760."
The message says there are 1423 passengers and 550 crew members aboard the spaceship. It also says the date is October 19, 2099 — two hundred years into the future from the oceanliner's setting.
So is this really a jump into the real world? Is Maura actually living in 2099? Maybe. But we think it's much more likely that this space setting is simply a new layer of the simulation Maura and the others are stuck in.
For starters, the coordinates listed as the ship's destination lead you right to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Earth — right along the route that the ships were taking in the oceanliner simulation.
Then there's the repeat name of Prometheus. That was the name of the virtual reality ship that the characters were on prior to the voyage on the Kerberos.
Prometheus is the Greek god credited with gifting fire to humanity — a symbol of knowledge and culture and the precursor to technology. But Prometheus did this in defiance of Zeus and was punished for eternity. The legend says he was tied to a rocky mountaintop where an eagle could come every day and eat his liver out of his torso. The god's liver would replenish overnight, so the torment could begin again the next day.
This concept of eternal, looping torture is directly paralleled in "1899" with the virtual reality simulation. The main cast of characters on the boat are either tormented by one another or tormented by their painful memories that include child loss, murder, sexual assault, and other abuses and betrayals.
It would make sense if the dream-like flashbacks people had on board the Kerberos ship weren't their literal experiences, but instead just a 19th-century-themed version of their real-life stories. Perhaps in season two, we will see a similar set of plotlines play out, just this time within a new simulation designed to look like the future.
The mystery of why any of this is happening remains unresolved — for now
In episode seven, Daniel told Maura that she had "wanted to forget" and "get rid of the pain" when she asked why she couldn't remember ever having a child. Then in episode eight, Daniel tells Maura that the child's room beneath the gravestone where Elliot was had been the first simulation they built together.
It seems likely that their real child, Elliot, died in real life and the emotional fallout from that led to the creation of the simulations.
The themes of the series seem to echo other iconic sci-fi works like "The Matrix," "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind," "Inception," or even "Maniac" — the one-season limited Netflix series about people who sign up for a pharmaceutical trial and wind up experiencing simulations of their traumatic memories mashed up with various time period settings.
In episode eight, Maura's father says everyone "on the trip" came there "because they made the choice to forget their past." He doesn't specify if the trip he's referring to is tied to the simulation — either on the ocean liner or potentially now in space — or a reference to where all the characters are being held in real life.
Her father accuses Maura of fooling everyone and being the only person who can get them out.
Daniel also conveys a sense of urgency to Maura, implying that if she can't break out of the simulation then something dire will happen to the real world.
"You have to wake up or there will be nothing left to wake up for and your consciousness will be trapped in here forever," he tells Maura.
There's also the question of Maura's brother, who seems to be behind it all
Everything seems to come back to Maura's brother, Ciaran, who Daniel says has somehow hijacked Maura's creation.
"Your brother, he took over the whole program whilst you were in here," Daniel said. "He's been controlling everything [...] This is so much bigger than you think. You have to wake up. You have to stop him, or everything will be lost."
Fans will have to wait until Netflix greenlights a second season of "1899" before we can learn any more about Ciaran and what reality actually looks like within this puzzle box of a sci-fi show.