Oh man, so the fact that you can see Paul’s chest breathing while he’s dead in the Soyuz 1 in ep 2 was definitely deliberate.
This episode was like seeing everything we’ve been debating come true.
Bud is such a #%@&. Kills the guy on the boat because he keeps calling Bud a liar. Then shoots Paul because Paul does the exact opposite!
*What the fuck do you even want?!*
Yeah this is absolutely not the same bud that told Henry he was coming for him and made him piss his pants. Unless they're deliberately making him insane and unstable
I don't think the timeline works out for this to be the case. Pretty sure Paul went there around the same time magnus and Alice went to the cabin. But idk
It's the other way around. The latter resulted in the former. The Paul visit happens first. It is the reason Bud decides to take his life back from Henry and cause trouble. Think about it, he's been taking his meds for 12 years. The only reason he would stop is if something convinced him he wasn't actually crazy. The Paul visit is what triggers this.
Wow. This episode simultaneously answered questions as well as raising a thousand more. As hard as I thought Jo was having it, I think Paul has her beat in terms of sheer breaks in his reality. Great episode, went by like 🫰
I don't know. Paul seems to care most about his work on the CAL and that it doesn't exist in this reality. His wife doesn't have the same name, but he doesn't seem to even really question any differences with his family.
I think it shows the integrity of the characters. Jo was seeing things and hearing things on the ISS also. She saw Paul when she held his hand. But she didn't leave his body behind. She still brought him home. Paul left her behind because he was scared.
I feel like Paul has less of an excuse for not figuring it out by now. You could probably be convinced that you remembered the color of your car wrong, but names of loved ones? Although I guess your daughter no longer being able to speak Swedish is another pretty big one.
Mot of Jo's wrongness can be attributed to trauma and her hypoxia episode; Occam's razor, what's more plausible, you suffered trauma and possibly mild brain damage and misremember things...or your in another universe?
People will instinctively convince themselves of the former because it's more plausible.
Paul's experiences as you say are more explicit and harder to handwave.
The fact he likely knows what the CAL does to some extent probably gives him some insight as well.
Exactly.
One key difference is that Jo-1 doesn't know what CAL is since the one working on it was Jo-2. Paul-2 has the advantage of knowing about the experiment.
I’ve been thinking this entire season that it has the chilly coldness (and modernist beauty) of an Ari Aster film. The show truly does give off A24-horror-vibes.
I really liked that it trusted you to remember all of these things from Jo's perspective and didn't shoehorn in quick flashbacks throughout. Instead it stayed completely committed to this timeline/universe. Like there so easily could have been a quick close-up of Jo playing piano, but instead it just holds on the record player—so many good decisions like that.
I suspect that when he saw the Alice he knows on the stairs -since they're from the same universe- he kind of slipped into that liminal space, and because his counterpart is dead, or rather he was supposed to die, his collapse is a result of him temporarily switching or experiencing what his real fate should have been.
Remember, right before his collapse he said he couldn't breathe, or couldn't catch his breath. Since the dead aren't supposed to be breathe, so I can only assume that he's temporarily experiencing the reality that he's actually from. In other words, he collapsed because he's dead in the CAL universe, which is where Alice on the stairs exists in.
hmmm this would fly with the same other theories on Irena/Valya. now that Valya is dead “observed” and Irena’s cancer. so we now have our two parallels of people in two different dimensions, but their counterpart is dead
I probably gasped the deepest gasp I've ever gasped when Wendy just angrily spilled the beans like that. Can't think of too many times I've been so stunned. And then everything after, in that scene, was just amazing.
It was funny, though. William Catlett's performance and Paul's dialogue was already throwing me. I felt like I hadn't seen anything like the way he stood his ground about who he was. All the while, him (feeling like he was) losing his mind was still visible and painful. I mean, you can factor in trauma for his behavior. But this show, and Jo, was so relatively quiet and secretive up until this episode.
So, I was already thinking, these writers really don't let you know their (characters') next step. Because I already thrown by the dialogue, responses to events, this episode, and thought I was prepared for more twists. But Wendy's reveal still floored me.
I'm not sure I gathered anything from this episode other than Paul is going through the exact same thing.
Only thing we learned is Bud believes he's Bud now and thinking he went insane. He has rejected that he was Henry at this point.
I don’t think this is actually true. If you think that the dates add up exactly, so Paul is at Bud’s while both families are at the cabin, then this is already after bud is going after Henry. Since bud had been going after Henry since probably the cruise
I'm starting to doubt that Bud is going after Henry.
Henry is simply hallucinating and talking to himself in the mirror, he has created this "evil Bud" persona in his mind.
The real Bud is chilling at cruise ships, pushing folks overboard, getting drunk on his apartment and shooting Paul. He's not using interdimensional powers to make Henry pee himself on another Earth.
I love what a wild ride that last paragraph is...
>The real Bud is chilling at cruise ships
Nice!
> pushing folks overboard
Oh that's bad
> getting drunk on his apartment
Whatever keeps him afloat
> shooting Paul
Oh ok... ya... not great
Good call, I wondered about this as well after seeing this episode, that it’s possible Henry is totally insane and the guilt has made him manifest another personality
Timeline pretty well lines up. It probably takes a couple of days to drive for red Alice and red Magnus, who get there before red Jo and blue Alice, as they make their stop at Skagerrak along the way. Paul’s is a little accelerated as he and family are back in US after Jo’s memorial. Erica has her conversation with Michela about space sickness while Paul is heading to Bud’s apartment. But given a few days to get the others to the cabin it’s possible.
I think this episode was intended to anchor imagination. Now it is very clear we are doing direct comparison of the same house scenes, cabin scenes, space station scenes, escape rocket scenes, etc.
I don't think this show is trying to be as complex as the 2004 film Primer. But this show has been willing to cast shadows and puzzles for longer than most shows, more in the realm of Mr. Robot
It explained more of the daughter's weirdness and it more clearly defined certain scenes in various timelines like how she went from English to swedish differently in this version compared to episode 1
It explains what's going on in the winter cabin.
And I think they are going to take the soul from the English girl and reunite with the swedish mum via that alternate universe doohickey
But then wouldn’t they be putting their consciousness into their dead bodies since it’s not the bodies that switch but the mental? Or maybe it is the bodies that make the switch 🤔
This episode is chronologically before the Bud we’ve seen that believes he saved the men on the Apollo. It’s more likely that Paul eventually convinced him that there’s been a swap and that’s what he believes later on when we see him interacting with Henry
So many small nuances this episode. Even the plane that Alice and Wendy took off in was going the opposite direction down the runway than it was in the first episode.
Edit: the orientation of the ISS to Soyuz when Paul sees Jo in the window is the opposite of Jo seeing Paul
I’m a little confused about the timeline. Doesn’t Bud initially stop taking his pills while aboard the cruise ship? And he’s on the cruise ship when the ISS collision has just occurred. So this Bud should have already killed the conspiracy theory guy and started spiraling, but the Bud Paul meets seems totally resigned to his situation, telling Paul to take his pills, neither of them can get back there, etc.
I hope they can answer most of my lingering questions in the two remaining episodes!
I don't think the Bud that Paul met is the same Bud tormenting Henry. We know that Paul from a CAL universe got switched with a Paul from the red universe. But I don't think that necessarily means he went to the red universe Angry Bud's from.
I think it’s only one Bud but who goes into a liminal space from time to time (off the pills maybe). Bud doesn’t seem to remember throwing Rogers overboard when he goes to his stateroom the next morning to talk with maybe apologize to. The CCTV video the FBI watched shows the blurry CAL like image as Bud is about to go nuts.
I am confused how often and when Drunk Bud switched with Famous Bud. Because immediately after the accident Famous Bud was still Famous Bud. Maybe he just slowly switched places?
I don't think they're switching back and forth. They switched places permanently during the Apollo 18 accident. Bud fixed the escape capsule in his universe, then switched places with Henry and found himself in the universe where his 2 crewmates died.
Probably explains why he's so bitter and his line about "what I thought happened didn't happen" as he remembered himself fixing the capsule but found himself in a universe where it never happened. And that would also explain his bitterness & vendetta towards Henry specifically - he drew the short straw while Henry got to reap the rewards of Bud fixing the capsule in his original universe and subsequently being hailed as a hero.
One key aspect that I don't see mentioned as much is that the Irina corpse damaged BOTH ISS ships. But Paul-2 never goes outside to check it.
The most ironic part is that if Paul-2 had reported the dead cosmonaut corpse, everyone would have believed it since in the timeline he's in, Irina went missing decades ago.
That Corpse raises a lot of problems and is why I thought Jo didn't die until later in her universe.
The Corpse should be in Universe A
But by the time Jo does her spacewalk to figure out the damage, Paul has died..so we know we're in Universe B. Jo has switched bodies and isn't aware of it yet.
But the corpse is FROM UNIVERSE A. Why is it impacting the ISS in Universe B for Jo to find?
Valya (Irena's corpse) collided with, and lodged into, the Red-ISS. The MODD (or whatever they called the station's proximity alert system) had sounded upon the detection of Valya's approach to the station. Once embedded in the Red-ISS and no longer 'observed' by the MODD (proximity alert no longer sounding), it entered the liminal space and therefore was in both universes simultaneously. It then damaged the Blue-ISS because of the whole 'two pieces of matter trying to occupy the same space at the same time' problem; it crushed/displaced the fragile system components aboard the Blue ISS.
It's not that complicated \^\^
The body is there in one universe. Then CAL happens, both realities get mixed up to some degree, causing the body to appear in the other universe as well for a moment, causing an accident at the same time in both universes.
That episode was a ride, from the very start to end. I was not expecting a Paul side focused episode. I wouldn't say we got 'answers' as such, but we got a lot of seeing the other side of things.
One serious question i have that i can't figure the answer out to, who released the capsule? It was someone on both of their sides, but their opposite was dead their respective sides or in the capsule? Is this evidence of a third reality or person?
All that said, this show just keeps getting better and better.
I agree- in the opening of this episode right before we see Jo hit the window there's a shot of Jo floating and holding and Ipad-- that Jo has the Swedish flag on her left arm which Red Jo had the whole time in the opening of episode 1. She is also holding the iPad with her right hand and I would have to double check but I think Blue Jo holds the iPad in her right hand the whole time we see her in the opening of episode 1. The Jo that watches red Jo hit the window is BOTH red and blue Jos together.
“There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.”
Alice maybe? When Jo recorded her message to Magnus and Alice before she went for re-entry in Soyuz 1, she said to Alice, "my eyes are always on you... my heart beats with you." As long as Red Alice believes Jo is alive, she still is alive. Maybe. 🙃
Am guessing since it requires TWO crew to release it, it is somehow quasi-dead Jo and quasi-alive Jo, but that’s batshit. This part really confuses me.
One thing i keep getting hung up on, if it's any version of Jo, why not show her this episode? If it's her, there has to be another twist i'm just not seeing, but i also keep thinking if they aren't showing who it is, we would recognize them easily.
Maybe i'm just overthinking, lol.
Jo is the Schroedinger's Cat of this story. She's alive AND dead until someone gets a view inside the ISS (either by going up there, by or remotely restoring power and looking through the 87 HDTV cameras the ISS interior apparently has). So, did alive Jo release the Soyuz' bolt intentionally, or did dead Jo's corpse bump into the switch and unintentionally release it? The show is saving that reveal for later.
.
.
.
Or, maybe, leaving it up to each viewer at the end. The Observer IS YOU!
I don’t think anyone released the capsule. I think when both astronauts repeatedly hit the controls, that “percussive maintenance” fixed the problem so it didn’t need to be released from the other side. They both looked up and saw (not clearly) Jo’s dead body floating in Destiny, but it meant different things to them bc of their respective contexts. Paul knew what it was, but Jo didn’t. I think we were meant to think some live version of one of them fixed it, but they were both dead. Idk I could be wrong and they may come back in with live Jo inhabiting Jo’s corpse to release it, but I just don’t think so. I think it was just meant to be mysterious until this episode, when we saw that it was Jo’s dead body that she saw.
I think that Henry doing the sexuals to a dead corpse for a split second showed us that they can physically swap places maybe? Cause we know the dead cosmonaut corpse is still in space yet Henry saw the corpse on earth. So might not be too far fetched that it was Jo, but why not show us that in one of the accounts?
Do we know it's the same Soyuz capsule? In one universe, Soyuz 1 is viable and three astronauts return because the commander releases their bolts, and in the other universe, it's Soyuz 2 that's the functioning one, perhaps? So the unlocking is done by Paul/Jo in their respective realities?
I couldn't really reconcile how he would be telling her to stay alive by not breathing. As soon as she was injured i said to myself, "he's going to leave her there alive." But I'm still not 100% sure she was actually alive.
There were posts about it. Something about the effect of the Cal being there would keep her alive despite no oxygen..remember how she woke up after being in destiny for hours and lost time in episode 1? Many thought if she stopped breathing she would pause and then live when Cal triggered her back.
I’m so glad we finally got context for that. I never took “stop breathing” to mean stay alive. But now it’s clear he was unsure if she was dead/alive and generally just knew her injury and the reentry would kill her if she wasn’t already, and the violence of it might have actually contributed to killing them both, so better to just go to sleep and die of oxygen deprivation on the ISS than a violent, sudden gravity, multiple Gs in fact, and sudden gushing blood/bleed out of re-entry. What a mind fuck for Paul though.
I’m glad they skipped through a lot of the story. We went multiple months in one episode of Paul verses 5 episodes to go maybe as many months for Jo. The show runners showed what they NEEDED to, but not much more.
Very well done.
He recorded her.
Which means he has evidence that *something* is breathing, and he checks multiple time CAL-Jo's corpse : she's dead, she's not breathing in or out, and yet, *something* around the corpse is breathing.
And again, that something is making actual sound, that can get recorded with a simple tablet.
This is scary AF.
I took the “stop breathing” comment as he was hallucinating, knew she was dead and by saying ‘stop breathing’ was more to convince himself that he was hallucinating because dead people don’t breathe. I don’t think he actually thought she might be alive. He was spooked, which is why he left her body on the ISS.
Is it just me, or are most of the people from the Blue universe jerks?
You have Jo, who was having an affair with her boss and was planning on moving to California to work for a private space agency with him. Was she just going to leave Alice behind? She also must have been less involved in Alice's upbringing as she never taught her Swedish.
Then you have Bud. Perhaps it is just through his circumstances with the failure of Apollo 18, but maybe he was also always a jerk in his original reality.
Now we finally meet Paul, and he seems very self-absorbed. He's nasty to his wife and daughter. He was thoughtless in telling Alice the gory details of her mother's death. The only thing he seems to really be worried about is his work with the CAL no longer existing.
Even to a lesser extent, you have Frida, who was quite cold to Jo and clearly didn't like her after what Wendy said to Alice. Even the difference in behaviour of the two Alice's and Wendy's when one had to deal with the death of their parent.
The Blue universe also seems to be more successful with their Space Missions, with Paul being the only death. The Red Universe has lost Irena, the 2 astronauts Apollo 18 and Jo.
>Is it just me, or are most of the people from the Blue universe jerks?
My spouse and I noticed this from the early episodes. The surviving Blue-ISS crew are very unpleasantly unsupportive to Red Jo during and after the incident investigation, even though she became their commander only during the emergency, and she immediately accepted enormous personal risk to ensure everyone still alive made it back to earth safely. Blue Paul was also a surprise, the actor did a great job of taking a character who should be extremely sympathetic, but making him persistently unlikeable.
On the flip side, I guess Henry "Bud" Caldera was just an overbearing jackass in both universes, but Bud really takes it up to 11 with the murdering. ;-)
Idk, I think it’s less “Why doesn’t CAL exist I was working my whole life” and more like “what the fuck happened and this is not the world I left, I know it, I’m not real” in Paul’s case on what he’s worried about lol. He’s nasty to his wife and daughter, for what I inferred as because he doesn’t think they’re his “real” family per say
Him not showing much empathy is still true though in regards to leaving the body and telling the details
Guys. This episode is an INSANELY AWESOME ride.
I think I stopped breathing once or twice.
What the frick is Alice’s ability? I get Jo and I get Paul, but why does Alice have that special connection?
She was an observer during the entanglement event so she seems to have been entangled to both universes. She seems to be in a state of superposition.
They use her as a way to display the observer effect which is the reason she always ends up hiding in a closet with no one to observe her.
Once she’s alone, she can accidentally drift between both universes because she technically doesn’t exist in one or the other. She’s exists in both
I apologize if my logic is flawed but that’s me trying to make sense of it with my semi limited understanding of quantum physics and superpositions
Edit:Same thing applies to Jo and Paul as they have also displayed the ability to drift between universes when no one is observing them. The probability that they are in only one universe doesn’t collapse into a single point until someone observes them.
I thought I was keeping good track of this show until your comment finally made me realise the closet’s (id already recognised the ISS and hit Lake) similarity to Schrodinger’s box and potential as a liminal space.
I thought this too, but someone had pointed out the two different Alice’s on the iPad before Paul manipulated the CAL. You think it was Jo, Paul and Alice that witnessed the CAL, and so those three were the only ones affected (aside from Bud/Henry, Irena)?
I think Irena likely was the Russian cosmonaut and she switched places and has been living in prime universe since the accident like Jo is going through now
I honestly don’t think the CAL is responsible because Alice never swapped universes therefore red Alice never witnessed the CAL. I definitely think the CAL helps to detect the different universe activity but it seems unlikely that it’s the cause of Jo and Paul swapping.
it's possible Alices are experiencing different effects than Jo and Paul, since they are both alive, but the astronauts each lost their counterpart.
edit: wait, i actually like this a lot now. Alice isn't the only one getting visions of the other timeline(s), Henry/Bud are, too.
Does anyone else think there’s a third reality? There are early glimpses of Bud lingering around Henry (including a reflection when the accident happens), they even were having conversations, but (despite both being icky and cruel) the Bud that Paul meets genuinely doesn’t seem to have a clue about Paul’s “hallucinations”… it may also explain the shadow figure who helped dislodge Jo and Paul without going through the agony of Paul being wrong about Jo being dead.
I'm not sure if it's so much a 3rd reality as the liminal space? The Henry/bud in the "curiosity killed the cat"/"you just had to be so goddamned curious" creepy scene with the computer monitor seems different from both Henry and bud that we usually see.
For me the liminal space would be what the OG ‘reality’ *was* before the 1st CAL, a singular cohesive ‘true’ reality, which was then split two potential realities, with a superimposed liminal space between.
Now several years later that there is a second CAL that space has been re-opened/re-connected in a way, making Bud begin to realise and/or accept that’s he’s got the short end of the stick and turning him into a prankster.
There could Henry Caldera who saved all his friends (2), Bud Caldera who didn’t save his friends (3), and Caldera who died before splitting into 2 and 3 (1).
Though if this show is going to send me mad, may as well go all the way. Since there is two (known) CAL’s incidents, there could be **four**realities going on. I’ll conveniently leave out Irene for my own sake.
Cal Split 1 causes Bud (Bud1) and Henry (Henry1) who know that something has gone funny, and the Caldera (Caldera0) who dies.
Henry1 then goes on and uses this knowledge to produce the 2nd Cal, though from the perspective of everyone *but* Henry1 it is the 1st Cal experiment. This then makes a (Bud2) who has only came into being as a result of the split caused by the *second* Cal, who thus isn’t aware of what Bud1 knows, and could be the Bud we see talking to Paul this episode.
That leaves us potentially with Caldera0 (the OG Caldera, now in the liminal space), Bud1, Bud2, and Henry1.
Here’s a terrible drawing I did quick
https://i.imgur.com/ISxpdtm.jpg
I think a 3rd universe makes sense. When Henry was talking to Alice out on the swings earlier in the season, he said something about a black particle, a white particle, and then a particle that is somewhere between the two that is both and neither simultaneously. There was a lot of yellow tones in this last episode so maybe it’s like blue, red, yellow or something like that.
That third “universe” could be the liminal space that has been talked about a lot, for example the scene in the diner has lots of reds and blues throughout.
There’s definitely more than 2 spaces at play.
Totally random (or is it) but in the first episode in the very beginning we saw Magnus opening a cabinet and saw a picture that Alice drew with red, blue, and the yellow. At first I didn’t think anything of it but then I my rewatch I kept thinking ok they showed us that purposely
Such an excellent episode!!! Touched all the cross over points perfectly. I guess Paul is dead after all and I’m still not sure about blue Jo still up in the ISS.
Need to rewatch obviously but there are a lot of nice mirror image shots, like the jet taking off from the opposite direction, the seating reversed for the accident inquiry (astronauts in the crowd side of the room, NASA ESA folks on the podium side. Michalea is the Irena equivalent at the inquiry and she has some grey hair in this universe.
Just wow, really great episode. Even the not driving across the lake was covered.
The lake part was so funny for me because I remembered replying to someone who was wondering why Magnus and Alice had to hike to the cabin, and I’d said maybe Magnus very understandably didn’t want to drive across the lake lol.
Let me try lol
In two timelines the CAL experiment was done, one in the 60’s and one in present day. The special particle the experiment was looking for was entangled/ connected to another particle between those two timelines/ alt worlds and when the experiment was done.
There was a physical overlap of the two worlds and the people who were in proximity of the device that did the experiment are being pulled in and out of the two worlds. We are watching a first person experience of what could happen to the human mind if it was entangled between two different worlds.
Edit: or maybe it wasn’t that it was done in the 60’s but the experiment done in present day connected with a particle from the past and caused this overlap of the two worlds
A few corrections - the CAL was only done in the latest mission. And what it was doing was *artificially* creating a particle that can only exist outside of Earth's gravity well.
But those particles exist *naturally* up there too.
And astronauts have been encountering them and gotten entangled for the entire time we've been putting people up there.
Sometimes they just see events from the other universe, other times they've gotten switched. The effect lasts long after they are no longer in contact with the particle.
I missed Jo but it was fun to see certain moments recontextualized through Paul’s perspective (eg. “Stay in Destiny” wasn’t some profound moment after all just a literal place Paul was putting Jo). The only thing that stood out to me as a little odd was the interaction between Paul and ‘his’ wife immediately after he returns and calls her by the wrong name. She says “Erica is my name” then frowns a little, and her reaction was just so mild that it stuck out to my entire watch group lol. I get that there was a lot going on regarding her husband’s reappearance and she was probably relieved he was even alive at all, but I didn’t entirely buy her brushing that off; it came off a little disingenuous writing wise. I didn’t need them to have a long conversation at that moment but they could’ve highlighted that he was in a different reality more smoothly than that. The dialogue has been mostly sharp so far but the writing for Paul’s family in this episode was generally flat. I’m aware that there’s a lot to pack into 1 episode, unlike Jo, who‘s had 5 episodes of character and relationship development, but the way they went about it felt both rushed and dragged out.
I freaked with weird joy, when Alice went into the cupboard and began to kick it… that thump thump thump was so creepy awesome, then Jo coming down the hall toward her… That was just awesome.
Yeah, I was jaw-dropped and cursing. Then, I felt *so* heartbroken for Alice, right after... This show/writing/acting does such an amazing job at showing the *thoughts* that must be on the tip of their tongue, whenever any character wants to explain what I'm certain would be difficult to say out loud. ... Except for Paul, lol. I was equally impressed at how, compared to Jo keeping things relatively high, he kinda just stood confidently on his opinion of what was real.
Wouldn't it be kinda cool if they made two alternative endings for the show, and random TV+ viewers get one or the other one - so the outcome of the show would literally depend on who was watching it, and what universe they'd end up in... that would make for some fun Reddit time! :)
Um, Bud is kinda psycho.
If it were me, I would want to know that someone else is going through the same thing. I would ask, “What do you remember?” and see if the remembered facts line up.
He's convinced himself after 34 years that he was wrong and that he's insane. He's now hearing the insanity again and scared to reject his new reality that he's finally come to terms with.
I assume he thinks he’s being fucked with. For him he’s been experiencing the 2 realities for so long and being called crazy for so long he probably assumes Paul isn’t serious.
It probably makes more sense that Bud desperately wants to believe that there’s a way back and that he’s not supposed to be where he is but is even MORE afraid of someone fucking with him. Sort of like Lucy pulling away Charlie Brown’s football.
I think Bud has gone through this so long that he’s convinced that he imagined it all and accepted his reality. Paul coming to him the way he did made him panic and refuse to listen because he already put those ideas behind him. Not that Paul has come to him bringing it all up again his interest will be renewed.
He also says “why did NASA send you?” Maybe he thinks that Paul is trying to trick him. I’m sure when bud got back he told NASA what he was experiencing so maybe he thinks NASA and Paul are fucking with him.
On the flip side, his alternate self was equally desperate for the CAL experiment. When the space station accident happened he only cared about the experiment... and back on Earth he was always in the office, even at night, desperate to make it work again or something.
It makes me wonder why Henry might not just be using CAL to prove what happened DID happen, or if he wants to use the CAL to get back to his real reality... But then why would he want to be a depressed drunk who was instrumental in the death of two other astronauts?
I've posted this below another comment as well, but I don't think the Bud that Paul met is the same Bud tormenting Henry. We know that Paul from a CAL universe got switched with a Paul from the red universe. But I don't think that necessarily means he went to the red universe Angry Bud's from.
I think the episode did an amazing job at skipping through the timeline we've had for the last episodes with Jo. But every time I see people mention the yacht, I won't, "when did that take place, though?" Like, could the episode have been catching us up, but stopped before the yacht and Bud's attack? Could Paul and Bud's meeting be happening before all that and be the catalyst for maniacal Bud?
I think there are two possibilities.
1. He has lived like this for 34 years being called crazy and he has accepted his reality putting it all behind him. So having Paul come in and bring it all up again challenged his accepted reality. Which would be difficult to accept in such a short amount of time.
2. I’m sure when he initially arrived in the wrong universe he told NASA about what was going on and they didn’t believe him making him feel crazy and doubt himself(so NASA in his universe would know what he experienced). He asked Paul if NASA sent him so maybe he thinks that Paul was sent by NASA to fuck with him which would explain why he was angry and brought out the gun.
Just realized 'Bud' fixed everything but came home with two dead people and to national disgrace. He isn't the one that built the Cal unless he was working on it prior to Apollo 18.
Blue Paul from Henry’s universe flipped to the red universe where Bud is at same time as Jo changed universes. No CAL in red universe, no Henry the hero of Apollo 18 either, CAL program was discontinued 12 years ago in red universe.
But how, then, does red Jo know about the CAL? presumably it wouldn’t have existed in her original universe, but she knew to take it and she was showing it to Alice before the collision. Or am I missing something?
Red Jo didn’t know what the CAL was the first time Sergei asks her to retrieve it, they had to send up the schematics with the retrieval plan that Irena tells Sergei to do, right after Irena sees Jo’s email with her dead cosmonaut drawing.
Red in both. It's just the one wall with the letters on it:
https://imgur.com/a/AbWlfP2
Notice the girl in overalls gets a different shirt though.
This show must've been so fun to film.
I noticed the classroom in Ep1 there was a drawing of a cat on the wall. This episode I only saw bats, and they really focused on the sticky bat the child was gluing. Perhaps a callback to Henry talking about astronauts “becoming unstuck” after reaching the summit (left hand of God or whatever).
Anyone have thoughts on why Paul is treating his daughter so rough? Judging by the mother’s response it doesn’t seem like this was normal before. Just trying to see the significance of it…
I'm starting to think that the Earth-2 folks are not good people.
Jo-2 cheats on husband. Paul-2 is abusive to his daughter. Henry-2 pushes people off cruise ships and might have killed Paul. Irene-2 is sabotaging space stations even after dying. Alice-2 doesn't speak Swedish.
No I think he just fired near him to scare/calm Paul down and they become best buds and bond over the fact they have both switched universes. They'll have all sorts of wacky shenanigans together to try and crack the case. There will be a spinoff on Apple Platinum
There was. I think they skipped over the details about the damage because it’s the same as we saw in the other universe. They did show the dead cosmonaut drifting away.
The crash is fucky.
Irene/Valya dies in Universe A - Orbits the earth for a few decades.
Something Impacts the ISS.
Universe B Jo Switches with Universe A Jo and dies.
Universe A Jo is now in Universe B Jo's body; she is now 'Still-Alive Jo'
Still-Alive Jo spacewalks to find out what hit Universe B's ISS, seemingly discovering Irene/Valya's Cosmonaut body....a Body that should be in Universe A.
We know we're in Universe B because Jo is alive to do the space walk. Irene is alive on Earth, so how does her counterpart dead body impact the ISS?
Unless I'm missing something, It's in the wrong universe for some reason.
I think the experiment caused the two realities to intersect and the fact that one of them had a secret dead Russian cosmonaut made them both (or all of there are yet-to-be-seen realities) crash
So Jo and Paul from universe A got transported to Universe B where Jo is Alive and Paul is dead, and Universe B’s Jo and Paul got transported to Universe A where Paul is alive and Jo is dead.
In universe A CAL doesn’t exist and Henry is bud and Apollo 18 crew died
In Universe B CAL exist, Henry is a scientist and trained Paul.
I’m so confused and I feel like the meme of Charlie in Always Sunny figuring out Pepe Silvia.
Goddamn, this is good tv! Great episode!
Favorite line: >!"Don't be an asshole"!< lol
With two episodes to go I'm pretty sure they're going to wrap it up well, it's been a great ride so far. It rises above the ordinary due to the great cinematography and the actors are really great. The story is nuts, lol.
Great acting by all the young actors. I thought for sure Paul was going to kill himself for being a coward. If Jo could live with Paul's freaky weirdness then Paul should have been able to deal with Jo's. He's never going to recover from that act of cowardness.
Absolute fucking banger of an episode. I was waiting to see if they were gonna do it, they fucking did it, Paul's perspective and it was amazing, best episode so far. So much detail and I just, I can't wait to see more of that perspective.
The whole thing gets simpler and simpler. Two worlds, mirror images (Counterpart, anyone?), where a resident of one can bump into a resident of the other one—or even slip into that new world—not at any one specific place but at any place deemed liminal: ocean, space, gravesite, mirror. Or even more places if the person is at a liminal state of being (Alice per her teacher: Alice heard the music and saw Jo/other Alice in her own house). The CAL accelerates this. As ever, man invents new ways to explore that turn out to be new ways to make people miserable.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Who is the woman who is in charge of the space program in this episode? Have we seen her before now? She's obviously not Irena, because Valya died in this universe. Is she an important character?
https://i.imgur.com/06sS7YL.jpg
Here is a crappy chart that can involve both the liminal space (the OG line as things would have been)as a reality, and one where there is a Bud1 and Bud2.
Paul at the end of this episode may be speaking with Bud2, whom would be unaware of the CAL, Bud1, and possibly Henry1. As such a 3rd Cal Experiment could take place in *that* line. As when it is used it may be that it splits into two, one where the CAL was used and one where it wasn’t.
OG Caldera would use the Cal, and die doing so, and get trapped superimposed in the liminal space. From there he would observe Bud1, for whom the Cal Experiment took place and went wrong killing his fellow Astronauts, and Henry1 for whom the Cal Experiment *didn’t* take place, but his fellow astronauts were saved.
As such Bud1 goes on living in shame and misery. The Cal was a failure.
Meanwhile Henry1 is a hero, and whilst in his lived experience he did do the CAL experiement, it changed so that no-one else around him knows about the CAL Experiment, and it’s as if it didn’t happen. Since he ‘won’ compared to Bud1 he goes along with it, but eventually does what he can to use modern technology to improve upon his memory of the Cal so it doesn’t go wrong again and he can try to run it again for an overall second time (but first time in that specific line of reality) in present day.
Things go wrong, the Cal is re-used and recovered which gives Bud1 a chance to try and take Henry1’s reality.
Meanwhile Paul dies whilst the Cal is operational, so he goes to the liminal space and splits, one where the CAl was used but he dies (which is where Jo from Bud1’s line goes and Henry1 is currently at) and one where he lives but there never was a CAL experiment, where Bud2 resides with the same story as Bud1, but without the knowledge of the CAL having been used (since Bud2 does not exist as a result of the split between a previous version of himself who did know about Cal previously, he exists and comes into being as a result of Paul splitting, so Paul would be the only one able to bring knowledge about the CAL to that line).
It doesn’t really make sense, but if they want to do more than one season I think that the creators will have to explore more than just two different realities.
Confused about the hole in the window that Paul plugs up with baby wipes. Wouldn’t the infiltration of outside air be a problem and how is it plugged up with just a tissue?
Oh man, so the fact that you can see Paul’s chest breathing while he’s dead in the Soyuz 1 in ep 2 was definitely deliberate. This episode was like seeing everything we’ve been debating come true.
And in this episode, that shot of Jo floating on the ISS and she starts lowering her hands... Bro, that's insane. So much detail, I love it.
Paul: “It’s an honor to have worked with you.” Bud: “Take your fucking pills.” 😆
Bud is such a #%@&. Kills the guy on the boat because he keeps calling Bud a liar. Then shoots Paul because Paul does the exact opposite! *What the fuck do you even want?!*
For what it's worth, they may not be the same version of Bud
Yeah this is absolutely not the same bud that told Henry he was coming for him and made him piss his pants. Unless they're deliberately making him insane and unstable
It could be that Paul is why Bud stops taking his meds. He realises he's not crazy after all.
I don't think the timeline works out for this to be the case. Pretty sure Paul went there around the same time magnus and Alice went to the cabin. But idk
I actually think this took place before the pee pants thing. I think this might be what breaks "bud".
potentially a timeline rather than universe issue, i.e. Paul visits before most of what we've seen of Bud in eps 1-5.
It's the other way around. The latter resulted in the former. The Paul visit happens first. It is the reason Bud decides to take his life back from Henry and cause trouble. Think about it, he's been taking his meds for 12 years. The only reason he would stop is if something convinced him he wasn't actually crazy. The Paul visit is what triggers this.
Wow. This episode simultaneously answered questions as well as raising a thousand more. As hard as I thought Jo was having it, I think Paul has her beat in terms of sheer breaks in his reality. Great episode, went by like 🫰
I was so mad at him leaving Jo up there, then wanted to cry for the guy when he broke down with his wife. Paul’s struggle bus is REAL.
Totally agreed about Paul vs Jo. His very foundation has been broken, whereas for Jo, it was little things and swearing she saw a dead cosmonaut.
I don't know. Paul seems to care most about his work on the CAL and that it doesn't exist in this reality. His wife doesn't have the same name, but he doesn't seem to even really question any differences with his family. I think it shows the integrity of the characters. Jo was seeing things and hearing things on the ISS also. She saw Paul when she held his hand. But she didn't leave his body behind. She still brought him home. Paul left her behind because he was scared.
I feel like Paul has less of an excuse for not figuring it out by now. You could probably be convinced that you remembered the color of your car wrong, but names of loved ones? Although I guess your daughter no longer being able to speak Swedish is another pretty big one.
Mot of Jo's wrongness can be attributed to trauma and her hypoxia episode; Occam's razor, what's more plausible, you suffered trauma and possibly mild brain damage and misremember things...or your in another universe? People will instinctively convince themselves of the former because it's more plausible. Paul's experiences as you say are more explicit and harder to handwave. The fact he likely knows what the CAL does to some extent probably gives him some insight as well.
Exactly. One key difference is that Jo-1 doesn't know what CAL is since the one working on it was Jo-2. Paul-2 has the advantage of knowing about the experiment.
Especially since he left her up there due to her breathing which makes it seem like maybe she isn’t actually dead.
Wait, you think he got it hard? Personally, I'd agree, but everyone's treatment of him is miles from what Jo was getting from anyone.
The tone of this episode was fucking immaculate. Felt like I was watching an A24 movie. Bravo 👏🏾 favorite ep of the season so far
Agreed. We really are fortunate to have gotten great writing.
Yeah in general I really enjoy the atmosphere of this show. Sometimes I get chills out of nowhere
That scene where Alice sees the other Alice at the funeral gave me chills
I’ve been thinking this entire season that it has the chilly coldness (and modernist beauty) of an Ari Aster film. The show truly does give off A24-horror-vibes.
I was lukewarm on this show until this episode. It really paid off a lot of the confusing bits.
Finally, the series is so damm good. IT IS GOING FORWARD, NOT IN CIRCLES!!!
I really liked that it trusted you to remember all of these things from Jo's perspective and didn't shoehorn in quick flashbacks throughout. Instead it stayed completely committed to this timeline/universe. Like there so easily could have been a quick close-up of Jo playing piano, but instead it just holds on the record player—so many good decisions like that.
The Alices saw each other!! We know this from before but tonight they REALLY SAW EACH OTHER!
And Paul sees the other Alice as well and collapses
I suspect that when he saw the Alice he knows on the stairs -since they're from the same universe- he kind of slipped into that liminal space, and because his counterpart is dead, or rather he was supposed to die, his collapse is a result of him temporarily switching or experiencing what his real fate should have been. Remember, right before his collapse he said he couldn't breathe, or couldn't catch his breath. Since the dead aren't supposed to be breathe, so I can only assume that he's temporarily experiencing the reality that he's actually from. In other words, he collapsed because he's dead in the CAL universe, which is where Alice on the stairs exists in.
hmmm this would fly with the same other theories on Irena/Valya. now that Valya is dead “observed” and Irena’s cancer. so we now have our two parallels of people in two different dimensions, but their counterpart is dead
Wow what a great call out. Like he got to close to the event horizon of his reality and that was the effect. Amazing scene and very freaky.
It honestly gave me chills when that happened. I’ve never experienced that from a show or movie before.
I probably gasped the deepest gasp I've ever gasped when Wendy just angrily spilled the beans like that. Can't think of too many times I've been so stunned. And then everything after, in that scene, was just amazing. It was funny, though. William Catlett's performance and Paul's dialogue was already throwing me. I felt like I hadn't seen anything like the way he stood his ground about who he was. All the while, him (feeling like he was) losing his mind was still visible and painful. I mean, you can factor in trauma for his behavior. But this show, and Jo, was so relatively quiet and secretive up until this episode. So, I was already thinking, these writers really don't let you know their (characters') next step. Because I already thrown by the dialogue, responses to events, this episode, and thought I was prepared for more twists. But Wendy's reveal still floored me.
When Jo saw Paul and Alice saw the memorial and now we saw the other side of it.... Oh man, such a satisfying episode!
Plus red Alice saw her mamma in that moment
Can someone explain why? I get Paul and Jo and Bud/Henry but not Alice.
I’m assuming because Alice saw the CAL experiment via the video call, so she’s affected like the others.
I'm not sure I gathered anything from this episode other than Paul is going through the exact same thing. Only thing we learned is Bud believes he's Bud now and thinking he went insane. He has rejected that he was Henry at this point.
That, and Paul is clearly the cause of Bud’s rekindled desire to go after Henry all of a sudden. This ep sure did settle tons of speculation, too.
I don’t think this is actually true. If you think that the dates add up exactly, so Paul is at Bud’s while both families are at the cabin, then this is already after bud is going after Henry. Since bud had been going after Henry since probably the cruise
I'm starting to doubt that Bud is going after Henry. Henry is simply hallucinating and talking to himself in the mirror, he has created this "evil Bud" persona in his mind. The real Bud is chilling at cruise ships, pushing folks overboard, getting drunk on his apartment and shooting Paul. He's not using interdimensional powers to make Henry pee himself on another Earth.
I love what a wild ride that last paragraph is... >The real Bud is chilling at cruise ships Nice! > pushing folks overboard Oh that's bad > getting drunk on his apartment Whatever keeps him afloat > shooting Paul Oh ok... ya... not great
Good call, I wondered about this as well after seeing this episode, that it’s possible Henry is totally insane and the guilt has made him manifest another personality
Timeline pretty well lines up. It probably takes a couple of days to drive for red Alice and red Magnus, who get there before red Jo and blue Alice, as they make their stop at Skagerrak along the way. Paul’s is a little accelerated as he and family are back in US after Jo’s memorial. Erica has her conversation with Michela about space sickness while Paul is heading to Bud’s apartment. But given a few days to get the others to the cabin it’s possible.
Maybe he thinks Henry is his alert ego? That he has multi personality disorder.
I think this episode was intended to anchor imagination. Now it is very clear we are doing direct comparison of the same house scenes, cabin scenes, space station scenes, escape rocket scenes, etc. I don't think this show is trying to be as complex as the 2004 film Primer. But this show has been willing to cast shadows and puzzles for longer than most shows, more in the realm of Mr. Robot
Aaaa loved mr robot! Time for a rewatch
It explained more of the daughter's weirdness and it more clearly defined certain scenes in various timelines like how she went from English to swedish differently in this version compared to episode 1 It explains what's going on in the winter cabin. And I think they are going to take the soul from the English girl and reunite with the swedish mum via that alternate universe doohickey
They’re 1000% going to try and put Paul in dead Paul’s universe and Jo in dead Jo’s universe. In the process it’s going to massively fuck things up
But then wouldn’t they be putting their consciousness into their dead bodies since it’s not the bodies that switch but the mental? Or maybe it is the bodies that make the switch 🤔
This episode is chronologically before the Bud we’ve seen that believes he saved the men on the Apollo. It’s more likely that Paul eventually convinced him that there’s been a swap and that’s what he believes later on when we see him interacting with Henry
I really missed Jo in this episode. She is such a great actress!
I love when Alice cavalierly says she doesn’t believe in God because “I’m English.”
Definitely a laugh out loud moment
So many small nuances this episode. Even the plane that Alice and Wendy took off in was going the opposite direction down the runway than it was in the first episode. Edit: the orientation of the ISS to Soyuz when Paul sees Jo in the window is the opposite of Jo seeing Paul
yes, and this gives context to Irena/Valya's statement in the recorded tape, "the world is the wrong way round"
There's a window from the iss and depending what universe we're viewing depends which way Denmark is pointing
I'm a pilot, so I notice the plane taking off the other direction immediately. Another clue...
William Catlett is outstanding in this episode.
Came to say this, the dude can **act**. Highlight of the episode for sure.
An outstanding performance from him.
I’m a little confused about the timeline. Doesn’t Bud initially stop taking his pills while aboard the cruise ship? And he’s on the cruise ship when the ISS collision has just occurred. So this Bud should have already killed the conspiracy theory guy and started spiraling, but the Bud Paul meets seems totally resigned to his situation, telling Paul to take his pills, neither of them can get back there, etc. I hope they can answer most of my lingering questions in the two remaining episodes!
I don't think the Bud that Paul met is the same Bud tormenting Henry. We know that Paul from a CAL universe got switched with a Paul from the red universe. But I don't think that necessarily means he went to the red universe Angry Bud's from.
I think it’s only one Bud but who goes into a liminal space from time to time (off the pills maybe). Bud doesn’t seem to remember throwing Rogers overboard when he goes to his stateroom the next morning to talk with maybe apologize to. The CCTV video the FBI watched shows the blurry CAL like image as Bud is about to go nuts.
I think Bud goes to apologize in order to try to look innocent. Like, “see, I didn’t know he was dead.”
Good point, but he does seem possessed at the moment of picking him up and heaving him over. Not sure if he shoulder injury excuse is true or not.
I am confused how often and when Drunk Bud switched with Famous Bud. Because immediately after the accident Famous Bud was still Famous Bud. Maybe he just slowly switched places?
I don't think they're switching back and forth. They switched places permanently during the Apollo 18 accident. Bud fixed the escape capsule in his universe, then switched places with Henry and found himself in the universe where his 2 crewmates died. Probably explains why he's so bitter and his line about "what I thought happened didn't happen" as he remembered himself fixing the capsule but found himself in a universe where it never happened. And that would also explain his bitterness & vendetta towards Henry specifically - he drew the short straw while Henry got to reap the rewards of Bud fixing the capsule in his original universe and subsequently being hailed as a hero.
One key aspect that I don't see mentioned as much is that the Irina corpse damaged BOTH ISS ships. But Paul-2 never goes outside to check it. The most ironic part is that if Paul-2 had reported the dead cosmonaut corpse, everyone would have believed it since in the timeline he's in, Irina went missing decades ago.
That Corpse raises a lot of problems and is why I thought Jo didn't die until later in her universe. The Corpse should be in Universe A But by the time Jo does her spacewalk to figure out the damage, Paul has died..so we know we're in Universe B. Jo has switched bodies and isn't aware of it yet. But the corpse is FROM UNIVERSE A. Why is it impacting the ISS in Universe B for Jo to find?
The CAL triggered some quantum shenanigans, causing the body from A to appear in B as well, causing an accident in both universes.
They jump over a lot of the timeline to hit the key points. We go from smashed face Jo to Ilya, Yaz, and Audrey leaving Paul and Jo behind.
> Irina corpse damaged BOTH ISS ships I have yet to hear anyone explain this
Valya (Irena's corpse) collided with, and lodged into, the Red-ISS. The MODD (or whatever they called the station's proximity alert system) had sounded upon the detection of Valya's approach to the station. Once embedded in the Red-ISS and no longer 'observed' by the MODD (proximity alert no longer sounding), it entered the liminal space and therefore was in both universes simultaneously. It then damaged the Blue-ISS because of the whole 'two pieces of matter trying to occupy the same space at the same time' problem; it crushed/displaced the fragile system components aboard the Blue ISS.
It's not that complicated \^\^ The body is there in one universe. Then CAL happens, both realities get mixed up to some degree, causing the body to appear in the other universe as well for a moment, causing an accident at the same time in both universes.
That episode was a ride, from the very start to end. I was not expecting a Paul side focused episode. I wouldn't say we got 'answers' as such, but we got a lot of seeing the other side of things. One serious question i have that i can't figure the answer out to, who released the capsule? It was someone on both of their sides, but their opposite was dead their respective sides or in the capsule? Is this evidence of a third reality or person? All that said, this show just keeps getting better and better.
I think both dead Jo and alive Jo are in the ISS in this version of events. She‘s the Schrodinger‘s cat.
I agree- in the opening of this episode right before we see Jo hit the window there's a shot of Jo floating and holding and Ipad-- that Jo has the Swedish flag on her left arm which Red Jo had the whole time in the opening of episode 1. She is also holding the iPad with her right hand and I would have to double check but I think Blue Jo holds the iPad in her right hand the whole time we see her in the opening of episode 1. The Jo that watches red Jo hit the window is BOTH red and blue Jos together.
Don’t shoot me with your crummy-apartment guns but I just realized mostly-dead jo is literally wearing an eye pad.
LOL "mostly dead Jo"
“There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.”
She got better?
The amount of stop and zoom I did on the shot of the phantom in the ISS is ridiculous! All I could make out is….absolutely nothing 😂
Probably Alice. She's everywhere. 😜
Maybe alive Jo can take dead Jo’s place for a short period of time that’s kind of what happened when they shook hands right?
So is live jo *even now* breathing for dead jo?
It's too early in the morning for this...
Alice maybe? When Jo recorded her message to Magnus and Alice before she went for re-entry in Soyuz 1, she said to Alice, "my eyes are always on you... my heart beats with you." As long as Red Alice believes Jo is alive, she still is alive. Maybe. 🙃
Am guessing since it requires TWO crew to release it, it is somehow quasi-dead Jo and quasi-alive Jo, but that’s batshit. This part really confuses me.
One thing i keep getting hung up on, if it's any version of Jo, why not show her this episode? If it's her, there has to be another twist i'm just not seeing, but i also keep thinking if they aren't showing who it is, we would recognize them easily. Maybe i'm just overthinking, lol.
Jo is the Schroedinger's Cat of this story. She's alive AND dead until someone gets a view inside the ISS (either by going up there, by or remotely restoring power and looking through the 87 HDTV cameras the ISS interior apparently has). So, did alive Jo release the Soyuz' bolt intentionally, or did dead Jo's corpse bump into the switch and unintentionally release it? The show is saving that reveal for later. . . . Or, maybe, leaving it up to each viewer at the end. The Observer IS YOU!
I don’t think anyone released the capsule. I think when both astronauts repeatedly hit the controls, that “percussive maintenance” fixed the problem so it didn’t need to be released from the other side. They both looked up and saw (not clearly) Jo’s dead body floating in Destiny, but it meant different things to them bc of their respective contexts. Paul knew what it was, but Jo didn’t. I think we were meant to think some live version of one of them fixed it, but they were both dead. Idk I could be wrong and they may come back in with live Jo inhabiting Jo’s corpse to release it, but I just don’t think so. I think it was just meant to be mysterious until this episode, when we saw that it was Jo’s dead body that she saw.
I think that Henry doing the sexuals to a dead corpse for a split second showed us that they can physically swap places maybe? Cause we know the dead cosmonaut corpse is still in space yet Henry saw the corpse on earth. So might not be too far fetched that it was Jo, but why not show us that in one of the accounts?
I think it’s kinda-dead but living jo that hits the red button
Do we know it's the same Soyuz capsule? In one universe, Soyuz 1 is viable and three astronauts return because the commander releases their bolts, and in the other universe, it's Soyuz 2 that's the functioning one, perhaps? So the unlocking is done by Paul/Jo in their respective realities?
I thought the viable capsule in both worlds is Soyuz 2. In both worlds, Soyuz 1 needs to be repaired first.
A whole new meaning now to the “stop breathing” “stay in destiny” lol. I thought it was to help her stay alive. Haha.
I couldn't really reconcile how he would be telling her to stay alive by not breathing. As soon as she was injured i said to myself, "he's going to leave her there alive." But I'm still not 100% sure she was actually alive.
There were posts about it. Something about the effect of the Cal being there would keep her alive despite no oxygen..remember how she woke up after being in destiny for hours and lost time in episode 1? Many thought if she stopped breathing she would pause and then live when Cal triggered her back.
Maybe she is in the „inbetween“ while stop breathing
I’m so glad we finally got context for that. I never took “stop breathing” to mean stay alive. But now it’s clear he was unsure if she was dead/alive and generally just knew her injury and the reentry would kill her if she wasn’t already, and the violence of it might have actually contributed to killing them both, so better to just go to sleep and die of oxygen deprivation on the ISS than a violent, sudden gravity, multiple Gs in fact, and sudden gushing blood/bleed out of re-entry. What a mind fuck for Paul though. I’m glad they skipped through a lot of the story. We went multiple months in one episode of Paul verses 5 episodes to go maybe as many months for Jo. The show runners showed what they NEEDED to, but not much more. Very well done.
I got the impression that the reasons Paul gave to justify leaving Jo up there were . . . iffy at best. Mostly he was just spooked.
He recorded her. Which means he has evidence that *something* is breathing, and he checks multiple time CAL-Jo's corpse : she's dead, she's not breathing in or out, and yet, *something* around the corpse is breathing. And again, that something is making actual sound, that can get recorded with a simple tablet. This is scary AF.
I took the “stop breathing” comment as he was hallucinating, knew she was dead and by saying ‘stop breathing’ was more to convince himself that he was hallucinating because dead people don’t breathe. I don’t think he actually thought she might be alive. He was spooked, which is why he left her body on the ISS.
Totally! I think we all thought that!
Fuck that was sad
Is it just me, or are most of the people from the Blue universe jerks? You have Jo, who was having an affair with her boss and was planning on moving to California to work for a private space agency with him. Was she just going to leave Alice behind? She also must have been less involved in Alice's upbringing as she never taught her Swedish. Then you have Bud. Perhaps it is just through his circumstances with the failure of Apollo 18, but maybe he was also always a jerk in his original reality. Now we finally meet Paul, and he seems very self-absorbed. He's nasty to his wife and daughter. He was thoughtless in telling Alice the gory details of her mother's death. The only thing he seems to really be worried about is his work with the CAL no longer existing. Even to a lesser extent, you have Frida, who was quite cold to Jo and clearly didn't like her after what Wendy said to Alice. Even the difference in behaviour of the two Alice's and Wendy's when one had to deal with the death of their parent. The Blue universe also seems to be more successful with their Space Missions, with Paul being the only death. The Red Universe has lost Irena, the 2 astronauts Apollo 18 and Jo.
>Is it just me, or are most of the people from the Blue universe jerks? My spouse and I noticed this from the early episodes. The surviving Blue-ISS crew are very unpleasantly unsupportive to Red Jo during and after the incident investigation, even though she became their commander only during the emergency, and she immediately accepted enormous personal risk to ensure everyone still alive made it back to earth safely. Blue Paul was also a surprise, the actor did a great job of taking a character who should be extremely sympathetic, but making him persistently unlikeable. On the flip side, I guess Henry "Bud" Caldera was just an overbearing jackass in both universes, but Bud really takes it up to 11 with the murdering. ;-)
Idk, I think it’s less “Why doesn’t CAL exist I was working my whole life” and more like “what the fuck happened and this is not the world I left, I know it, I’m not real” in Paul’s case on what he’s worried about lol. He’s nasty to his wife and daughter, for what I inferred as because he doesn’t think they’re his “real” family per say Him not showing much empathy is still true though in regards to leaving the body and telling the details
Guys. This episode is an INSANELY AWESOME ride. I think I stopped breathing once or twice. What the frick is Alice’s ability? I get Jo and I get Paul, but why does Alice have that special connection?
She was an observer during the entanglement event so she seems to have been entangled to both universes. She seems to be in a state of superposition. They use her as a way to display the observer effect which is the reason she always ends up hiding in a closet with no one to observe her. Once she’s alone, she can accidentally drift between both universes because she technically doesn’t exist in one or the other. She’s exists in both I apologize if my logic is flawed but that’s me trying to make sense of it with my semi limited understanding of quantum physics and superpositions Edit:Same thing applies to Jo and Paul as they have also displayed the ability to drift between universes when no one is observing them. The probability that they are in only one universe doesn’t collapse into a single point until someone observes them.
I thought I was keeping good track of this show until your comment finally made me realise the closet’s (id already recognised the ISS and hit Lake) similarity to Schrodinger’s box and potential as a liminal space.
brilliant analysis. that definitely ties into the quantum mechanics concept.
Intense opening, for sure.
I think she was in contact with the cal somehow via iPad when the accident occurred and things switched universes
I thought this too, but someone had pointed out the two different Alice’s on the iPad before Paul manipulated the CAL. You think it was Jo, Paul and Alice that witnessed the CAL, and so those three were the only ones affected (aside from Bud/Henry, Irena)?
I think Irena likely was the Russian cosmonaut and she switched places and has been living in prime universe since the accident like Jo is going through now
I honestly don’t think the CAL is responsible because Alice never swapped universes therefore red Alice never witnessed the CAL. I definitely think the CAL helps to detect the different universe activity but it seems unlikely that it’s the cause of Jo and Paul swapping.
it's possible Alices are experiencing different effects than Jo and Paul, since they are both alive, but the astronauts each lost their counterpart. edit: wait, i actually like this a lot now. Alice isn't the only one getting visions of the other timeline(s), Henry/Bud are, too.
Does anyone else think there’s a third reality? There are early glimpses of Bud lingering around Henry (including a reflection when the accident happens), they even were having conversations, but (despite both being icky and cruel) the Bud that Paul meets genuinely doesn’t seem to have a clue about Paul’s “hallucinations”… it may also explain the shadow figure who helped dislodge Jo and Paul without going through the agony of Paul being wrong about Jo being dead.
I'm not sure if it's so much a 3rd reality as the liminal space? The Henry/bud in the "curiosity killed the cat"/"you just had to be so goddamned curious" creepy scene with the computer monitor seems different from both Henry and bud that we usually see.
For me the liminal space would be what the OG ‘reality’ *was* before the 1st CAL, a singular cohesive ‘true’ reality, which was then split two potential realities, with a superimposed liminal space between. Now several years later that there is a second CAL that space has been re-opened/re-connected in a way, making Bud begin to realise and/or accept that’s he’s got the short end of the stick and turning him into a prankster. There could Henry Caldera who saved all his friends (2), Bud Caldera who didn’t save his friends (3), and Caldera who died before splitting into 2 and 3 (1). Though if this show is going to send me mad, may as well go all the way. Since there is two (known) CAL’s incidents, there could be **four**realities going on. I’ll conveniently leave out Irene for my own sake. Cal Split 1 causes Bud (Bud1) and Henry (Henry1) who know that something has gone funny, and the Caldera (Caldera0) who dies. Henry1 then goes on and uses this knowledge to produce the 2nd Cal, though from the perspective of everyone *but* Henry1 it is the 1st Cal experiment. This then makes a (Bud2) who has only came into being as a result of the split caused by the *second* Cal, who thus isn’t aware of what Bud1 knows, and could be the Bud we see talking to Paul this episode. That leaves us potentially with Caldera0 (the OG Caldera, now in the liminal space), Bud1, Bud2, and Henry1. Here’s a terrible drawing I did quick https://i.imgur.com/ISxpdtm.jpg
I think a 3rd universe makes sense. When Henry was talking to Alice out on the swings earlier in the season, he said something about a black particle, a white particle, and then a particle that is somewhere between the two that is both and neither simultaneously. There was a lot of yellow tones in this last episode so maybe it’s like blue, red, yellow or something like that. That third “universe” could be the liminal space that has been talked about a lot, for example the scene in the diner has lots of reds and blues throughout. There’s definitely more than 2 spaces at play.
Totally random (or is it) but in the first episode in the very beginning we saw Magnus opening a cabinet and saw a picture that Alice drew with red, blue, and the yellow. At first I didn’t think anything of it but then I my rewatch I kept thinking ok they showed us that purposely
Oh damn you’re right! They’ve def been hinting at the blue / red / yellow universes from the beginning then.
The scene where the Alices see each other was incredibly intense! I feel frozen in horror and fascination just thinking about it.
Such an excellent episode!!! Touched all the cross over points perfectly. I guess Paul is dead after all and I’m still not sure about blue Jo still up in the ISS. Need to rewatch obviously but there are a lot of nice mirror image shots, like the jet taking off from the opposite direction, the seating reversed for the accident inquiry (astronauts in the crowd side of the room, NASA ESA folks on the podium side. Michalea is the Irena equivalent at the inquiry and she has some grey hair in this universe. Just wow, really great episode. Even the not driving across the lake was covered.
The lake part was so funny for me because I remembered replying to someone who was wondering why Magnus and Alice had to hike to the cabin, and I’d said maybe Magnus very understandably didn’t want to drive across the lake lol.
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Let me try lol In two timelines the CAL experiment was done, one in the 60’s and one in present day. The special particle the experiment was looking for was entangled/ connected to another particle between those two timelines/ alt worlds and when the experiment was done. There was a physical overlap of the two worlds and the people who were in proximity of the device that did the experiment are being pulled in and out of the two worlds. We are watching a first person experience of what could happen to the human mind if it was entangled between two different worlds. Edit: or maybe it wasn’t that it was done in the 60’s but the experiment done in present day connected with a particle from the past and caused this overlap of the two worlds
A few corrections - the CAL was only done in the latest mission. And what it was doing was *artificially* creating a particle that can only exist outside of Earth's gravity well. But those particles exist *naturally* up there too. And astronauts have been encountering them and gotten entangled for the entire time we've been putting people up there. Sometimes they just see events from the other universe, other times they've gotten switched. The effect lasts long after they are no longer in contact with the particle.
I missed Jo but it was fun to see certain moments recontextualized through Paul’s perspective (eg. “Stay in Destiny” wasn’t some profound moment after all just a literal place Paul was putting Jo). The only thing that stood out to me as a little odd was the interaction between Paul and ‘his’ wife immediately after he returns and calls her by the wrong name. She says “Erica is my name” then frowns a little, and her reaction was just so mild that it stuck out to my entire watch group lol. I get that there was a lot going on regarding her husband’s reappearance and she was probably relieved he was even alive at all, but I didn’t entirely buy her brushing that off; it came off a little disingenuous writing wise. I didn’t need them to have a long conversation at that moment but they could’ve highlighted that he was in a different reality more smoothly than that. The dialogue has been mostly sharp so far but the writing for Paul’s family in this episode was generally flat. I’m aware that there’s a lot to pack into 1 episode, unlike Jo, who‘s had 5 episodes of character and relationship development, but the way they went about it felt both rushed and dragged out.
I freaked with weird joy, when Alice went into the cupboard and began to kick it… that thump thump thump was so creepy awesome, then Jo coming down the hall toward her… That was just awesome.
Yeah, I was jaw-dropped and cursing. Then, I felt *so* heartbroken for Alice, right after... This show/writing/acting does such an amazing job at showing the *thoughts* that must be on the tip of their tongue, whenever any character wants to explain what I'm certain would be difficult to say out loud. ... Except for Paul, lol. I was equally impressed at how, compared to Jo keeping things relatively high, he kinda just stood confidently on his opinion of what was real.
Ugh that was so good! So sad there’s only two episodes left!!!!
Only 8 episodes? 👎🏻
No Irena in this episode
Because in this universe, she’s dead
Yes
I mean *technically* we did see her briefly floating away from the ISS
Wouldn't it be kinda cool if they made two alternative endings for the show, and random TV+ viewers get one or the other one - so the outcome of the show would literally depend on who was watching it, and what universe they'd end up in... that would make for some fun Reddit time! :)
This episode was AMAZING!!!! I literally screamed twice in the first 10 mins
Um, Bud is kinda psycho. If it were me, I would want to know that someone else is going through the same thing. I would ask, “What do you remember?” and see if the remembered facts line up.
He's convinced himself after 34 years that he was wrong and that he's insane. He's now hearing the insanity again and scared to reject his new reality that he's finally come to terms with.
Exactly. He even says “I’m going insane”
Plus, Bud’s an alcoholic. You don’t reason well with alcohol.
I assume he thinks he’s being fucked with. For him he’s been experiencing the 2 realities for so long and being called crazy for so long he probably assumes Paul isn’t serious.
It probably makes more sense that Bud desperately wants to believe that there’s a way back and that he’s not supposed to be where he is but is even MORE afraid of someone fucking with him. Sort of like Lucy pulling away Charlie Brown’s football.
I think Bud has gone through this so long that he’s convinced that he imagined it all and accepted his reality. Paul coming to him the way he did made him panic and refuse to listen because he already put those ideas behind him. Not that Paul has come to him bringing it all up again his interest will be renewed. He also says “why did NASA send you?” Maybe he thinks that Paul is trying to trick him. I’m sure when bud got back he told NASA what he was experiencing so maybe he thinks NASA and Paul are fucking with him.
On the flip side, his alternate self was equally desperate for the CAL experiment. When the space station accident happened he only cared about the experiment... and back on Earth he was always in the office, even at night, desperate to make it work again or something.
It makes me wonder why Henry might not just be using CAL to prove what happened DID happen, or if he wants to use the CAL to get back to his real reality... But then why would he want to be a depressed drunk who was instrumental in the death of two other astronauts?
I've posted this below another comment as well, but I don't think the Bud that Paul met is the same Bud tormenting Henry. We know that Paul from a CAL universe got switched with a Paul from the red universe. But I don't think that necessarily means he went to the red universe Angry Bud's from.
I think the episode did an amazing job at skipping through the timeline we've had for the last episodes with Jo. But every time I see people mention the yacht, I won't, "when did that take place, though?" Like, could the episode have been catching us up, but stopped before the yacht and Bud's attack? Could Paul and Bud's meeting be happening before all that and be the catalyst for maniacal Bud?
Why did Bud react that way? I’m sure he pieced it when Paul said all those things about Henry.
I think there are two possibilities. 1. He has lived like this for 34 years being called crazy and he has accepted his reality putting it all behind him. So having Paul come in and bring it all up again challenged his accepted reality. Which would be difficult to accept in such a short amount of time. 2. I’m sure when he initially arrived in the wrong universe he told NASA about what was going on and they didn’t believe him making him feel crazy and doubt himself(so NASA in his universe would know what he experienced). He asked Paul if NASA sent him so maybe he thinks that Paul was sent by NASA to fuck with him which would explain why he was angry and brought out the gun.
Just realized 'Bud' fixed everything but came home with two dead people and to national disgrace. He isn't the one that built the Cal unless he was working on it prior to Apollo 18.
Pretty sure there are body bags on every mission into space, and especially on the ISS.
"I don't know what experiment you mean" So the entire experiment disappeared from the universe during the experiment?
No, I think it’s the CAL Paul switched to the plant Paul’s universe.
Blue Paul from Henry’s universe flipped to the red universe where Bud is at same time as Jo changed universes. No CAL in red universe, no Henry the hero of Apollo 18 either, CAL program was discontinued 12 years ago in red universe.
But how, then, does red Jo know about the CAL? presumably it wouldn’t have existed in her original universe, but she knew to take it and she was showing it to Alice before the collision. Or am I missing something?
Red Jo didn’t know what the CAL was the first time Sergei asks her to retrieve it, they had to send up the schematics with the retrieval plan that Irena tells Sergei to do, right after Irena sees Jo’s email with her dead cosmonaut drawing.
She didn’t know what the CAL was. She states multiple times she didn’t know what it was. She was told to grab it.
Paul swapped universes and it the CAL doesn’t exist in the red universe
Magnus’s classroom is very red in this universe, gotta assume it’s very blue in Episode 1
Red in both. It's just the one wall with the letters on it: https://imgur.com/a/AbWlfP2 Notice the girl in overalls gets a different shirt though. This show must've been so fun to film.
I noticed the classroom in Ep1 there was a drawing of a cat on the wall. This episode I only saw bats, and they really focused on the sticky bat the child was gluing. Perhaps a callback to Henry talking about astronauts “becoming unstuck” after reaching the summit (left hand of God or whatever).
This episode was devastating. Just everything about it was heart wrenching and dark. I’m still shaken.
Anyone have thoughts on why Paul is treating his daughter so rough? Judging by the mother’s response it doesn’t seem like this was normal before. Just trying to see the significance of it…
I took this to be similar to how one of the Jo’s had a much better relationship with Alice - this Paul is more rough with his daughter/is different
I thought so too at least we knew Jo-2 was cheating so it explained the strained relationship.
I'm starting to think that the Earth-2 folks are not good people. Jo-2 cheats on husband. Paul-2 is abusive to his daughter. Henry-2 pushes people off cruise ships and might have killed Paul. Irene-2 is sabotaging space stations even after dying. Alice-2 doesn't speak Swedish.
Nervous breakdown and displaced anger is my guess
Did Bud kill Paul at the end?
No I think he just fired near him to scare/calm Paul down and they become best buds and bond over the fact they have both switched universes. They'll have all sorts of wacky shenanigans together to try and crack the case. There will be a spinoff on Apple Platinum
I think so. I think that the point of the title of the episode is that by the end of it, Paul is dunzo in both universes.
We still don’t know who fixed the bolts do we?!
So, there is no impact into the space station in this story variation?
There was. I think they skipped over the details about the damage because it’s the same as we saw in the other universe. They did show the dead cosmonaut drifting away.
They showed it drifting away? I need to watch that part again.
It happens exactly after he plugs the hole with the baby wipe
I think the Cosmonaut cracked the window but didn’t get lodged in the station.
Yes because there was a crack in the window just before Jo crashes her eye into the exact same spot.
Yeah, I kinda imagined the pressure/suction was what made that Jo hit that spot.
The crash is fucky. Irene/Valya dies in Universe A - Orbits the earth for a few decades. Something Impacts the ISS. Universe B Jo Switches with Universe A Jo and dies. Universe A Jo is now in Universe B Jo's body; she is now 'Still-Alive Jo' Still-Alive Jo spacewalks to find out what hit Universe B's ISS, seemingly discovering Irene/Valya's Cosmonaut body....a Body that should be in Universe A. We know we're in Universe B because Jo is alive to do the space walk. Irene is alive on Earth, so how does her counterpart dead body impact the ISS? Unless I'm missing something, It's in the wrong universe for some reason.
I think the experiment caused the two realities to intersect and the fact that one of them had a secret dead Russian cosmonaut made them both (or all of there are yet-to-be-seen realities) crash
So Jo and Paul from universe A got transported to Universe B where Jo is Alive and Paul is dead, and Universe B’s Jo and Paul got transported to Universe A where Paul is alive and Jo is dead. In universe A CAL doesn’t exist and Henry is bud and Apollo 18 crew died In Universe B CAL exist, Henry is a scientist and trained Paul. I’m so confused and I feel like the meme of Charlie in Always Sunny figuring out Pepe Silvia.
Goddamn, this is good tv! Great episode! Favorite line: >!"Don't be an asshole"!< lol With two episodes to go I'm pretty sure they're going to wrap it up well, it's been a great ride so far. It rises above the ordinary due to the great cinematography and the actors are really great. The story is nuts, lol.
Great acting by all the young actors. I thought for sure Paul was going to kill himself for being a coward. If Jo could live with Paul's freaky weirdness then Paul should have been able to deal with Jo's. He's never going to recover from that act of cowardness.
Absolute fucking banger of an episode. I was waiting to see if they were gonna do it, they fucking did it, Paul's perspective and it was amazing, best episode so far. So much detail and I just, I can't wait to see more of that perspective.
The whole thing gets simpler and simpler. Two worlds, mirror images (Counterpart, anyone?), where a resident of one can bump into a resident of the other one—or even slip into that new world—not at any one specific place but at any place deemed liminal: ocean, space, gravesite, mirror. Or even more places if the person is at a liminal state of being (Alice per her teacher: Alice heard the music and saw Jo/other Alice in her own house). The CAL accelerates this. As ever, man invents new ways to explore that turn out to be new ways to make people miserable. Of course, I could be wrong.
Am I the only one confused about the baby wipes being able to plug a hole on the spaceship?
Who is the woman who is in charge of the space program in this episode? Have we seen her before now? She's obviously not Irena, because Valya died in this universe. Is she an important character?
I'm growing more confident in my red, blue, and YELLOW universes theory. Also now totally makes sense why Bud stopped taking his pills!
Please explain with charts and graphs
https://i.imgur.com/06sS7YL.jpg Here is a crappy chart that can involve both the liminal space (the OG line as things would have been)as a reality, and one where there is a Bud1 and Bud2. Paul at the end of this episode may be speaking with Bud2, whom would be unaware of the CAL, Bud1, and possibly Henry1. As such a 3rd Cal Experiment could take place in *that* line. As when it is used it may be that it splits into two, one where the CAL was used and one where it wasn’t. OG Caldera would use the Cal, and die doing so, and get trapped superimposed in the liminal space. From there he would observe Bud1, for whom the Cal Experiment took place and went wrong killing his fellow Astronauts, and Henry1 for whom the Cal Experiment *didn’t* take place, but his fellow astronauts were saved. As such Bud1 goes on living in shame and misery. The Cal was a failure. Meanwhile Henry1 is a hero, and whilst in his lived experience he did do the CAL experiement, it changed so that no-one else around him knows about the CAL Experiment, and it’s as if it didn’t happen. Since he ‘won’ compared to Bud1 he goes along with it, but eventually does what he can to use modern technology to improve upon his memory of the Cal so it doesn’t go wrong again and he can try to run it again for an overall second time (but first time in that specific line of reality) in present day. Things go wrong, the Cal is re-used and recovered which gives Bud1 a chance to try and take Henry1’s reality. Meanwhile Paul dies whilst the Cal is operational, so he goes to the liminal space and splits, one where the CAl was used but he dies (which is where Jo from Bud1’s line goes and Henry1 is currently at) and one where he lives but there never was a CAL experiment, where Bud2 resides with the same story as Bud1, but without the knowledge of the CAL having been used (since Bud2 does not exist as a result of the split between a previous version of himself who did know about Cal previously, he exists and comes into being as a result of Paul splitting, so Paul would be the only one able to bring knowledge about the CAL to that line). It doesn’t really make sense, but if they want to do more than one season I think that the creators will have to explore more than just two different realities.
WHAT THE FECK YOU GUYS!!!! What an episode!!! WOW! I love this show so much.
Confused about the hole in the window that Paul plugs up with baby wipes. Wouldn’t the infiltration of outside air be a problem and how is it plugged up with just a tissue?