Time travel stories, if constructed well, always end up being interesting to watch. “About Time” and the “Back to the Future” trilogy are some of the examples of films that explored the time travel genre exceedingly well because the story allowed the viewers to be engaged in it. Just a few weeks ago, Netflix Turkey released “Oh Belinda,” a time travel comedy film that kind of explored the idea of the lead of the film traveling into another dimension. The Roku Channel now brings you “Slip,” created and starred in by Zoe Lister-Jones, which tells the tale of a woman who keeps going into different dimensions as the same person and experiences a different life story. Will she be able to come back to her reality, or will she be forever stuck in this time loop?
Spoilers Ahead
Mae’s Life So Far
The show begins with Mae Cannon, who works as an assistant curator at a local museum in Brooklyn, New York. Her personal life is nowhere close to exciting, for her and her husband Elijah, a struggling writer, are going through a rut in their marriage. They like being around each other, but there is no excitement left in them to keep their marriage going. They are not breaking up because, by the looks of it, neither of them is strong enough to end it. There is a co-dependency between the two, but there seems to be no intimacy or friendship left in them to make the marriage work. The show begins with a monologue of Mae talking about how she feels being in her marriage, and it is not good news. Mae and Elijah have stopped being physically intimate with one another, which has somehow taken a toll on Mae. Luckily for her, the job she does keeps her happy and grounded for a while, and her best friend, Gina, is by her side. Mae and Elijah should probably see someone for their growing distance, but there is no effort from either of them to make this marriage work.
She, Gina, and her boss Vanessa are working on an exhibit based on a Buddhist mythological character for their museum, and the three of them are excited about the opening day of the exhibit. The exhibits happen to be about the Hungry Ghosts, who, as per the myth, live in chronic deprivation and longing, and they are literally and figuratively hungry, thus their namesake. The hungry ghost might be something that can be used to describe Mae’s state of mind right now because all she is craving is some love and affection from her husband. As the exhibit becomes a success, Mae runs into Eric, who is a singer-songwriter trying to find his foothold in the industry. Intrigued by what he does and his interest in her, there is an instant connection and attraction. Mae ends up sleeping with Eric, but to her shock, she wakes up in his apartment. She knows there is something odd about what is just happening around her because she finds all her shoes in his place. Mae is clueless at this point about what is going on. She was quick to conclude that she was in another dimension, but she had no idea how she got there. Mae would do anything to get back to her old life, but for now, she is stuck here.
Her First And Second Experiences
The dimension Mae has woken up to is one where Eric is a very famous singer and songwriter, and Mae has been married to him for quite some time. But as his conversation begins with her, she learns about herself from him, her drug addiction, and her being in depression for a long time. Their highly publicized life has been marred with many scandals, as she comes to know from various people, including the paparazzi, but Mae is finding it difficult to let Eric know of her predicament. Mae is sure there has been some sort of time travel that her mind and body have gone through. She does not have any memory of Eric, which puts him in a tough spot. As he and she are preparing for the “Met Gala,” she is finding it difficult to be around anyone in this world. Eric comes home to let her know that he is finding it difficult to be around her when she is not putting in any effort to make things work. Eric, who is known for cheating on Mae, ends up blaming her for everything that is going wrong in their marriage. He apologizes, but it all comes across as passive-aggressive to borderline gaslighting. Mae tries to make him understand her predicament, but Eric, being the narcissistic person that he has become, chooses to leave and let her know that he needs some space from her and their marriage.
Mae was quick to pick up that she could not live with Eric, even though living with him comes with the perks of being around luxury and a life of constant popularity. He is unable to stay loyal to her and does not come to understand her mindset or the pain she is going through. Instead of empathizing with her, Eric ends up leaving her all alone. The only constant in her life right now is her best friend, Gina. Mae is craving to look for someone who understands her inside out and loves her for who she is. Mae meets Sandy, a bartender, and owner of a gay club. They both get carried away, and she ends up sleeping with her. As Mae wakes up, she has again traveled to another dimension where she and Sandy are married to each other and have a daughter, whose birthday they are to celebrate on that day. As their day goes by, meeting Sandy and Mae’s friends, they come to know her daughter’s bullying nature, and Sandy puts a lot of the blame on Mae. Sandy has the habit of putting Mae on the spot, both publicly and privately.
Mae, on the other hand, is having difficulty being with her daughter and handling Sandy. She looks for the place where she and Elijah used to live. Elijah still lives in that house but with his wife. In this dimension, he is happily married to this woman, who comes across as an overbearing person. Though Mae manages to run away from the woman; she ends up meeting Gina. In this dimension, too, Gina remains her constant, to whom Mae can speak about her time travel issues. Gina, being her friend, hears her out, but she requests that Mae maybe consult a doctor who could help her. To make her understand the time travel phenomenon, she asks Gina to keep an object that belongs to Mae. Mae goes on a date with the only intention of sleeping with the person as an experiment so that when she wakes up, she will find Gina in that dimension with this object. Mae’s mind is probably time traveling because she ends up having a good time at night, and she connects physically with those people, but when the same people become her spouse, it becomes an issue for her as she is unable to see her perfect spouse in them. They turn out to be the exact opposite of what she wants in a marriage. Both Eric and Sandy are selfish and inconsiderate of Mae’s feelings. She is probably only sleeping with a random date she met through a dating app because she knows it is her way of escaping Sandy’s overbearing nature.
‘Slip’ Season 1: Ending Explained – Will Mae Ever Get Back To Elijah?
Mae keeps looking for Elijah in all the dimensions, but she does not get to see him or catch a glimpse of the man. She feels he is probably the only one, and maybe she would want to know him as a stranger all over again. Mae ends up sleeping with the random date, and as assumed, she ends up waking up as the wife of this man, who is a stockbroker. The man is rich and selfish; he ends up getting killed by a speeding bus. Unable to understand what to do from here on, she contacts Gina again to check if she is carrying the object. The object sadly did not transfer over, and Mae is in no position to explain her situation to her best friend. Mae is distressed because she feels she is in a loop where she keeps going from one dimension to another while sleeping with someone. She is unable to find an end to it. She feels she will have to find Elijah and bring him back to her life so that they can start knowing each other from scratch.
She notices the Buddhist monk who she saw in the last two dimensions, and she is sure the man would be able to give her some kind of cosmic answer to her problem and put an end to the constant loop that she is in. She requests Gina to help her, but Gina comes to know that Mae’s a widow now, with her husband dead. Mae’s reaction to her husband’s death puts Gina off, and she refuses to help her further with whatever expedition she wants to go on. Mae ends up meeting the monk and tries to have a conversation with him about her predicament. The monk lets her know about her longing for the desire of getting and wanting, and in that process, she ends up suffering. Mae realizes she lost Gina in this process and Elijah in her process of seeking desires and a home. The monk lets her know that the desire she seeks can be found only in discomfort, and the life she wants will come to her if she realizes that life is all about unpredictability. With that idea in her head, Mae seeks Elijah in this dimension, only to hope he is single and available.
To Mae’s surprise, she ends up meeting Elijah. They meet up as strangers, and they start hanging out with each other. They find a connection that Mae had not found with anyone before. Neither with Eric, Sandy, or the random date she went on. In the hope of not letting him know about her current life and the dimensions that she has been jumping into, she introduces herself as Liv. Mae, as Liv, makes sure not to sleep with him because she does not want to rush things; if she sleeps with him, they will wake up married, which she does not want at this moment with him. Elijah obliges her only request, which is to not sleep with each other this early. Mae is happy to have found Elijah, and she can now see how different their lives are, which is a good thing, in her opinion. She has been given a chance to get to know him better, and Elijah would see another version of her. Things don’t go as planned when Elijah learns that Liv is not her name and that she was widowed only a few days ago. They break up, and Mae is back to square one, which is longing for love.
Mae has an epiphany where she realizes she has to love herself more than anything in this world and accept herself only to be loved by anyone around her. Gina understands her situation, and seeing her friend spiraling, she helps her get back on her feet. Gina and Mae were raised in foster homes, and they have seen good times and bad times growing up. They have been each other’s constants ever since. That’s why maybe Gina was her best friend even when Mae was jumping dimensions. She would not leave because she was the only other person who knew Mae inside and out and accepted her for who she was. Mae finally runs into Elijah one more time, and their meeting proves that they have missed each other, and this way, they are destined to meet again for the third time. Mae also concludes that Elijah is probably the only person who understands her, and there is comfort in being with him even though they have had their rough patches. He is the one who wants to understand her, at least in this dimension, and she finds herself going back home whenever she is with him. Elijah, in this dimension, lives in the same home as he did in his actual life. Mae and Elijah finally sleep with each other.
“Slip” Season 1 ends with Mae waking up in her actual home, and she is happy to be back. Mae went through all the dimensions to find an escape from her marriage, but she ended up seeking Elijah in all her worlds. It can be safely assumed that Mae is an embodiment of the “Hungry Ghost” exhibit at the museum where she worked, and just like the ghost, Mae was also seeking desire and longing because she felt that was missing from her marriage. But after living in three different dimensions with three different people, she was only seeking Elijah in all of them. She got what her heart desired.
