At this point, I’m pretty sure that everyone might be having a lot of questions regarding the show. “1899” knows how to keep its audience engaged. Previously in “1899,” we saw almost all the characters’ backgrounds and what they had done. Everyone has an evil side, but you somehow sympathize with them. They have all killed someone and are on their way to America to live the American dream and get away from themselves and their past. But how long will you run away from yourself? You have to face yourself and the guilt that keeps growing inside you like a weed. They say America is the land of dreams, and these characters sure do have a lot of dreams; however, the nightmares that they get keep lurking and haunting them. Each character has a good and a bad side, so the audience keeps guessing whether they are on their side or if it just sympathizes with them because they are stuck in the middle of nowhere.
The ocean is so loud now, and everyone onboard has to sit with themselves and think about what they have done. They say people only do what they believe to be the best that they can do, so whatever bad things they do are because of their ignorance, therefore involuntary. It’s human nature to run away from hard facts and truth. Take anything, for example, I don’t even need to explain why humans are a mystery to themselves. In “1899,” we see this philosophy on screen, each character commits a crime but has an excuse, or in some cases, reasons, for what they did, even if it was killing someone. Can murder be justified, in some cases?
“1899” makes you wonder if murder is justified in some cases because what can one do when their life is at stake otherwise? In the case of the French couple, Clemence and Lucien, we see they got married even though there was no love between them, and Lucien seemed not to care. He keeps blaming Clemence for not being enough and is very violent toward her, but he will not accept the fact that he is the problem because, till now, Clemence has only tried to win him over. She keeps asking him if he loves her, which makes you feel bad for her because it looks like she is just trying to gain his affection in the series, and Lucien thinks he did the right thing marrying Clemence without actually falling in love with her, he did it for his own selfish reasons. What a shame!
Anyway, at times, “1899” also feels like a video game, the respawning of the little boy indeed feels odd, and I somehow think Daniel and the little boy are either connected or the same person. We don’t get much background on where Daniel has come from yet, nor do we know anything about the little boy yet. Do you think he finally spoke now that things are worse than ever on Kerberos? If I were to rate the best episode yet, it would definitely be this one, and I’ll explain why, just read on!
The Condition Of Kerberos
In the opening scene of “1899” Episode 5, we see Maura running to a coffin that we keep on seeing in her flashbacks. This scene makes me wonder if she has also died and somehow respawned like the little boy. There is a possibility the show explores the themes of rebirth because in Egypt, a scarab beetle signifies rebirth, and we see the same in “1899.” The boy has a beetle with him and that, I think, saved his life. Moving on, in the next scene, Maura is in a mental asylum, being pulled away from a person she calls her father. She wakes up on the ship again, beside Daniel. The passengers have locked the boy in a cupboard again, just as they found him in Prometheus. It feels like a loop now, everyone is running around in circles, doing the same thing all over again. We know the boy’s going to get out soon, Maura won’t let him remain locked up for long, but Eyk won’t let her save the boy until she gives him some answers. He asks her why her name was on the passengers’ list of Prometheus again—ah, this man and his incorrigible behavior!
Further, on the lower deck, we see Franz and his team plotting how they can take charge of the ship if they have control over the machine room. One of the guys from the lower deck asks what they will do once they reach America because mutineers receive the death penalty, and Iben gets up and says justice is always on the side of the survivors. Well, we’ll see who survives Iben, don’t be so confident. I would like to point out how confident these characters are in “1899” even on the verge of dying. It makes me wonder if people are actually this strong or if situations make you tough. Iben’s character is rather delusional in “1899.” She thinks ‘The Light’ is guiding them, and just like her daughter, even I felt like I had had enough of her religious lessons. She wants to kill in the name of God, but does any religion preach murder? Nope. However, people do commit crimes in the name of it. This angle is controversial to write about, but I’d also like to point out how “1899” throws light on ‘delusion’ with finesse. Anyway, Tove leaves the mutiny and joins the good people (Eyk’s team), or so we are made to believe till now, but who knows if Eyk’s team can be called good too. However, these people do want to save lives, so I’m guessing they are acceptable. So, when Tove goes to Eyk’s team and informs them she is there to help them stop her mother, the boy starts thudding on the doors of the cupboard in which he’s locked. Everyone points their guns toward the cupboard, and Maura runs to help the little boy. This scene is hands down the best scene of the series so far because time stops when they shoot Maura for not listening to them and trying to open the cabinet! Yes, time stops for Maura. How? I don’t know, but it was fun to witness. The scene was so cinematic, it felt like I was watching some big-budget sci-fi movie! In a somewhat dramatic way, Maura takes the bullet that is floating in the air and then opens the cabinet. She talks to the boy in a very theatrical tone and asks if the pyramid stopped time. The little boy holds her hand, and they leave the room together. Everything comes back to normal after they leave the room, which kind of confirms, at least for me, that it is some sort of game for the ‘Creator’.
The Creator
The boy finally speaks! I mean whispers, but something is better than nothing, isn’t it? Well, Maura demands answers, and the little boy whispers in her ear that he can’t give her explanations, she has to ask the ‘Creator’ for answers. Ah, ‘Creator’, we are witnessing some sort of simulation or game now. Further, the first mate uses his triangle device to send messages to someone, now it feels like they are playing the famous game ‘Among Us’. It feels like he is somehow connected to whoever the ‘Creator’ is. The boy then goes into the shaft under Maura’s bed and opens a portal to some other world or dimension. I say this because there is land now! We see a mysterious building and the whole set-up looks like we are in Shutter Island now! Is the ‘game’ inspired by Inception and Shutter Island, with a hint of The Truman Show? In my opinion, if this turns out to be a game, it was surely inspired by these movies. Anyhow, Daniel follows them through the portal and tells the boy he’s made a mistake by bringing her there, and the boy says she doesn’t remember anything. I have a strong feeling that Daniel is her brother, and since the child looks very pale and not like a human being, he might be Maura’s child (she’s had a miscarriage), but this is just a theory.
Moving on, Daniel leaves the little boy in that simulation and goes back to the ship to save the passengers. Daniel’s character gets more screen time in this episode, and we get to know more about him as a person. Maybe he’s the saviour and the ‘Creator’ is evil. Just because he’s called the ‘Creator’ doesn’t mean he’s going to be a good person, right? From Maura’s flashbacks, it was clear that her father was involved in something. Well, in this episode, we get to know that Henry Singleton is the ‘Creator’ and Maura’s father. Well, everything repeats itself with Maura again, and she wakes up back in her room after her vision ends. She then goes to Eyk and tells him that Henry Singleton is her father, and her name is Maura Singleton. What she doesn’t understand is why her name was on the passengers’ list of the Prometheus when she doesn’t remember ever boarding the ship. Besides that, it was missing for four months. Nothing makes sense again. Well, things get more confusing when Eyk shows her the paper that he signed, he was the captain of Prometheus, and he doesn’t remember being on the ship either.
Things get interesting now, and Maura explains to Eyk how her father is experimenting with human behavior. Based on her visions of the past, Maura believed that she was a doctor but somehow her father erased her memory and turned her into a patient in the same mental where she used to work. While they are talking, the scarab beetle comes into their room, and she grabs it. She explains how she thinks it’s all an experiment and that whatever they are experiencing is a dream and not real. She believes her father is playing around with the passengers’ minds for his experiment. She takes Eyk to the second simulation/another dimension like the little boy took her and Eyk looks at Maura puzzled and questions how a whole landscape fits inside a ship so far from the coast and I remember laughing my head off. In a very intense scene, he manages to say something so adorable.
Anyway, on the ship, we see Daniel shutting down the ‘magical machine’ and the ticking sound stops. Now, there are only a few survivors. What will happen in the next episode? Will we finally get to know more about the ‘Creator’ and his experiment? Is this like a video game experiment or a magical experiment created by Henry with special powers? I sure am excited now.
Final Thoughts
I think this is where the show takes an interesting turn because in the previous episodes, I was getting a little disinterested, but I guess we needed the proper background of each character to understand why they did what they did and what their purpose in life is. This show seems very philosophical in that matter. Everyone has a purpose here, they all want to live to achieve it, but how many of them will survive this experiment is the real question.
See more: ‘1899’ Episode 4: Recap And Ending, Explained – Eyk Vs. The Mutiny
