Netflix 1899 recap guide: All 8 episodes explained

1899 episode 5 recap: “The Calling”

Once again, we’re transported to Maura’s past in the opening flashback. A desperate Maura is shown being dragged down a hallway in what looks like an asylum, and then she wakes up in the present.

Since the boy revealed himself to be alive and Maura fell asleep, the other passengers locked the boy into the cupboard exactly as Maura, Eyk, and the other rescue team members initially found him on the Prometheus. It certainly seems like history is repeating itself.

Maura immediately makes for the cupboard, but Eyk stops her, demanding to know why her name was on the Prometheus passenger list.

Below deck, the mutinous crew must decide what to do next, as once they arrive on land, the odds are they will be arrested. The punishment for mutiny is death. Iben steps up and provides some ominous words of comfort, “Justice always sides with the survivors,” meaning she’s happy to kill everyone who opposes them if necessary.

Tove has started to grow weary of her mother’s behavior. She tells Krester that nothing their mother has been saying is true. Iben isn’t hearing God, she hears voices, and it’s a sign of madness. Tove wonders if Krester feels guilt about helping her kill the boy (they don’t know that he’s still alive yet). Krester snarks that it’s not like Tove hasn’t killed someone before.

She claims, “that was different,” maybe the incident Krester is referring to was something Tove had to do out of self-defense. Then Tove grabs a shotgun and exits the room, telling Krester she’s off to do something she should have done long ago.

Elsewhere on the ship, Clémence and Lucien try to work through the wreckage of their marriage in the aftermath of the confrontation between Lucien and Jérôme. Clémence realizes that everything Lucien has told her thus far has been a lie, but Lucien argues she doesn’t understand because she’s grown up in privilege. “You are a constant reminder of what I can’t have.”

Tove shows up in the main dining hall with everyone else. It looks like she’s changing teams. Maura intends to open the cupboard in the main room to free the boy. Several people try to stop her, even threatening her with a gun if she doesn’t stand down. But Maura pushes through anyway, and when one of the men fires on her, Daniel leaps forward in an attempt to take the bullet for Maura. He doesn’t end up needing to because time suddenly freezes. Maura simply plucks the bullet out of the air.

Somehow the boy appears to have frozen time, or maybe he used the pyramid he’s been carrying around to do it. Maura frees him, and they rush out of the room. After they leave, time starts again, and everyone is bewildered by Maura and the boy’s sudden disappearance. Before they can figure out what happened, they hear sirens from somewhere else on the ship.

Eyk turns to Daniel and questions what he and Maura discussed the night before. Daniel doesn’t see how that’s relevant. Right now, they have much bigger problems. At the rate they’re burning coal, they will run out within the next two days. They need to start rationing it until they can find land. Eyk needs to get control of the ship again, or they all will die.

After that chilling realization, the sirens suddenly stop, only to be replaced by a much different sound, a faint ticking similar to a clock. Whatever the ticking sound is, it appears to be this episode’s “calling,” as dozens of passengers fall into a strange trance. Main characters like Eyk, Maura, Tove, and Jérôme, are unaffected and watch helplessly as their friends and fellow patrons climb to the deck and jump overboard, essentially committing suicide. Among the significant deaths are Ling Yi’s mother and Krester.

While all the insanity regarding people clambering over the railings into their watery deaths is happening, Maura and the boy hide in her room. He finally communicates with her via a written message that says, “They are listening,” and then whispers, “I can’t tell you; you’ll have to ask the Creator.”

As bodies are free-falling off the side of the boat, the mysterious redheaded first mate returns to the panel and types yet another message using the up and down triangle symbols.

The boy takes Maura into the secret hatch beneath her bed and uses the jewel beetle to open a doorway that leads to the same place we saw Maura at the beginning of the episode, with a sprawling manor in the distance.

Realizing what the boy is up to, Daniel races to Maura’s suite and follows them through the doorway, where he finds the boy. The boy says Maura didn’t remember. Daniel warns him that “he knows we’re here now.”

The entire conversation between Daniel and the boy is very cryptic. They say they’ve never “made it this far before,” and perhaps things will be different this time. Daniel advises the boy to stay put while he fixes things to ensure they don’t sink the ship. “He won’t find you here.”

On the ship, the remaining passengers do what they can to protect themselves and their loved ones from the ticking. Jérôme tracks down Lucien and Clémence to tie them to the bedposts and then ties himself, too, in case they become affected by the sound. Olek assists a grief-stricken Ling Yi, and Ramiro returns to Ángel.

Another message comes in from the shipping company. Again it says, “sink ship,” but it seems to be referencing the Kerberos, not the Prometheus.

Daniel returns to that mysterious console on board the ship, but he gets attacked by one of the workers from the furnace room. Daniel warns that if he prevents him from turning the machine off, “everything will start again.” He reaches for his remote device while the guy is on top of him and presses a button that appears to “power” the other guy down, almost like a robot.

Maura enters the manor and finds herself back inside the old mental hospital. There she is confronted by her father. “You’re not real. How is this possible?” Maura asks him where her brother Cairan is, and he says she’s not asking the right questions. Then some orderlies force Maura into the chair, injecting her with something. When she wakes up again, she’s back in her room on the ship.

She barely steps into the hallway before Eyk confronts her and slams her against a wall. They retreat to Eyk’s suite, and Maura finally tells him the truth. Her name is Maura Singleton, as in the company that bought the ships. Henry Singleton is her father.

Maura believes this whole thing is some experiment. Henry is obsessed with understanding the human brain and all its functions. He doesn’t care about owning ships. “I’m sure he did something to these ships to study the passengers onboard.”

Then Maura shows Eyk the envelope she received, the same one Eyk got. It’s addressed to “Henry,” but Maura says that was just a nickname. It’s short for Henriette, her middle name, what her brother used to call her.

Four months ago, Maura’s brother, Cairan, contacted her and asked to meet her at the docks in Southampton, claiming he had found out something about their father. Maura waited for him, but he never showed up. She learned one of the ships her father bought, the Prometheus, had left that same dock one day earlier. Her brother has been missing for four months, the same amount of time as the Prometheus.

During her confession, Maura is distracted by the reappearance of the jewel beetle on the desk. She captures it and uses it to open another doorway in the hatch beneath Eyk’s bed. This hatch leads to Eyk’s nightmare, the aftermath of the fire that burned down his house and killed his family. But they’re still on a ship, “how does a whole landscape fit inside a ship?”

Maura tells him it’s not the only one, that there is a shaft beneath her bed, and I think we can assume beneath all the other passenger’s beds as well, or at least the important ones.

When the crew member who received the message from the shipping company confronts the first mate, he uses his device (identical to the one Daniel has) to “power him down.” Then the redheaded first mate swaps uniforms with the other guy and hides his body.

Eyk and Maura don’t linger in the hatch for long. When they return to the ship, they try to theorize what might happen. Maura isn’t sure the people committing suicide are actually “dying.” Maybe the whole thing is some shared dream. Maura thinks she has discovered the truth before. She remembers being a doctor at a mental hospital, but she thinks her father has made her believe she was a patient instead, and later forced her to forget everything.

Maura doesn’t remember being on the Prometheus, but if her name is on the passenger list, maybe she was. And Eyk reveals another twist: his signature is on the top of the passenger list, meaning he was the former captain of the Prometheus.

Daniel finishes fiddling with the machine, and the ticking sound stops. The remaining passengers assemble on the deck; only a small group remains, including all the main characters we’ve gotten to know thus far, sans Krester. The first mate arrives on the deck to show Eyk the ominous “sink ship” message.

1899 episode 5 ends with a return to Henry Singleton, this time from inside his office. A doctor brings him a message from the Kerberos; I’m assuming it’s the one the first mate sent out earlier in the episode. It’s a series of right-side-up and upside-down triangles, akin to Morse code. We don’t know what it says, but Henry tells his aide to inform their agent on the Kerberos that he doesn’t have much time and to bring him the boy.

Then Henry gets up and walks over to his window, opening the curtains and gazing out on a massive black pyramid, identical to the miniature version the boy has been carrying around.

Written by Maddy Lennon