Apple TV’s Constellation season 1 left us with more quantum complications than answers

Constellation blends the horrors of space with quantum entanglements on Earth, which means everything: it becomes complicated. After surviving a disaster on the International Space Station, astronaut Jo Ericsson (Noomi Rapace) struggles to understand the “hallucinations” that culminate in the faux-normalcy of her home world. That also means: it is a wormhole of complications.

(Ed. remark: Spoilers ahead for Constellation.)

As we see in Constellation‘s first season, both Jo and her daughter Alice undergo the existential realization that our Jo (the survivor with whom we spend most of the time) has swapped reality with Other Jo, Alice’s real mother who was murdered aboard the ISS. As a ghost of this world, Jo finds herself in a state of emotional liminality, feeling disconnected from her new reality and this Alice. Meanwhile, Alice begins to understand that her mother is “there and not there,” both literally and mentally, in childish terms. The irony is that the closer Jo and Alice(s) perceive the boundary between their worlds, the better able they are to move on and survive in their respective worlds.

With no clear path home (thanks, Bud), Jo bittersweetly resigns herself to building a life with a stranger Alice and Magnus (James D’Arcy). The bitter part is that she and this Alice understand that they must play along with the pretense of some peace or face the wrath of the meddling space program. In any case, the nice thing is that Jo and this unknown Alice realize that they can adopt their own mother-and-daughter bond, despite coming from different places, while Jo’s own Alice takes comfort in the fact that her mother lives somewhere else. Presumably, this new dynamic opens up the possibility for main Jo and Alice to engage with and love the personality flaws of their loved ones’ alter egos, rather than be confused by them. That Jo accepts a life of ‘there and not there’ is better than ‘not there’ at all.

Yet Jo’s acceptance does not erase the loose threads of her world(s). And there is much that threatens the peace she learns to find with Alice.

Can Henry Caldera solve this mess?

Whenever they influence the other’s consciousness, whether willingly or unconsciously, the two Calderas (Jonathan Banks) act as each other’s evil doppelgänger. As we know at the end of the season, Bud was the one who fixed Apollo 18, but the mysterious reality switcheroo saddled him with a discredited reputation while Henry got fame and a clear(er) conscience.

Once Bud discovers that he can influence the Other Caldera through willpower, Bud happily pursues Henry, who has inadvertently stolen his rightful life, his Nobel Prize, and the universe where his heroism saved Apollo 18. something It’s understandable – albeit assholeish – that when Bud gets swapped back into his timeline, he takes down Henry Caldera’s CAL capsule to avoid being swept back to the Other Place (and, as a result, Jo and William Catlett’s Paul of their proper timelines).

Tellingly, once Bud returns to his dimension, he wants to enjoy the good life, grinning as he thinks the right Henry will reap the failures of Apollo 18 and the shame Bud has carried for decades. Constellation encourages us to question how the twist of fate has shaped the respective attitudes of these displaced Calderas, and whether they are actually getting their comeuppance. How much of Bud’s selfishness is affected by the injustice of losing his timeline? Did having a softer timeline make Henry any more honorable? Regardless, Henry acknowledges responsibility for his CAL that enabled the ISS disaster that killed Paul (another Paul he doesn’t know). Henry is determined to right his wrong, but he also inherited the shitshow of Bud’s transgressions and murder charges that would hinder his efforts. If he can get past the insane label, there’s little chance that Henry’s attempt to tell the truth about the CAL could lay the groundwork for this reality’s space program to investigate its own timeline anomalies (like, say, that body coming to life on the ISS). Bud, on the other hand, has all the resources of the space program at his disposal, but would benefit most from keeping the secret of CAL’s chaos.

What happened to Paul?

From what we see, the series implies that the CAL sent Paul, Jo’s fellow astronaut, to his “Other Place,” where the CAL didn’t exist and his mentor Henry Caldera isn’t a chief technician. Out of paranoia about mysterious space noises, Paul floats Other Jo’s cadaver into the space station (more on that later).

When a confused Paul searches for answers in the Other Place, his search escalates into a confused Bud Caldera shooting him. With Bud and Henry switching back, we saw Paul briefly reunited with Henry (at most uncomfortable time). As Paul recovers in the hospital, perhaps the most hopeful outcome is that he can reach an inmate Henry to make sense of the CAL disaster – if the space program doesn’t out him as a lunatic.

What happens with Jo’s pregnancy?

Image: Apple TV Plus

To reinforce her decision to stay, Jo also decides to postpone a pregnancy she conceived with the Other Magnus. Alice asks a good question: “When you go out over there (what Alice knows as the Other Place), where will the baby come from?

The answer seems to lie with ex-cosmonaut/Roscosmos head Irena Lysenko (Barbara Sukowa) – who turns out to be the living counterpart of the dead Russian cosmonaut – who sees an omen on Jo’s ultrasound. The fetal image is apparently doubled, indicating a fetal anomaly and perhaps its tenuous connection to the Other Place. If the fetus were conceived by two beings from different worlds, would it possibly grow into an unknown entity that could bridge the worlds?

Is Other Jo still alive?

The final cliffhanger of the season returns to Other Jo’s corpse floating in the ISS and seemingly coming to life. Is this body a vehicle for a nefarious alien entity? (Rapace has been there, done that Prometheus.) Or is it really Other Jo’s consciousness reawakening?

Other Jo’s moving corpse mirrors Irena’s corpse showing up and speaking in Alice’s dreams. I offer my hypothesis: the souls of the dead are trapped in a liminal presence that allows for the power between realities. This adds dark hindsight to the living Irena’s rumination from Episode 3: “I always dream of space… circling the Earth endlessly,” indicating that she was vaguely aware of her counterpart’s desiccated corpse that orbits the Earth. No wonder Irena advises Jo to simply be grateful that she is alive and to adapt to her (new) environment.

In Constellation, to glimpse that liminal Other Place means facing your loss and death in another universe. To end this season, a majority of the characters are allowed to lock the lid on Pandora’s box to calm the disorder for the time being. But growing temporal disorder threatens to upend their reality.