Netflix 1899 recap guide: All 8 episodes explained

1899 episode 6 recap: “The Pyramid”

It’s Tove’s turn for flashbacks! 1899 episode 6 opens with a flashback to Tove and Ada sprinting through the woods. Tove is back on the ship with the remaining passengers when she wakes up. Something about the flashback triggers Tove, making her believe the boy is the devil, just like her mother.

Luckily, cooler heads prevail. Daniel and Eyk make it clear that they need to figure out what to do because they’re stuck in the ocean, and the engine is off. If they don’t turn it back on and find land ASAP, they’re all going to die out there.

Eyk finally takes charge and starts acting like the captain again, instructing Olek and Franz to take the men to the furnace room and power up the engine. The two priests are to stay with the first mate to work the telegraph and send a distress signal. He puts Mrs. Wilson and the rest of the women, sans Maura, in charge of searching for survivors on the ship. Eyk intends to find the boy with Maura’s help. “If we want to survive this, we’ll need to trust each other.”

After the title credits roll, we return to the ship’s dark corridors, but first, the camera pans to the mysterious console we’ve seen Daniel tinker with a few times. It’s oozing some black sludge that then seems to crystallize.

In the hallways, Tove’s mother, Iben, starts rambling that her daughter is “chosen,” She thinks Tove believes her now about the boy and all her other assertions. Elsewhere, Maura and Eyk reach an understanding. Neither of them revealed the other’s secret to the remaining passengers.

Franz, Olek, and the other men see that same black, crystal-like substance descending from the ceiling on their way to the furnace room. Daniel warns them not to touch it. “We don’t know what it does.”

Maura takes Eyk down the hatch in her room to search for the boy, revealing that they’re at a replica of where she grew up, and the “house” in the distance belongs to her father.

Tove and Clémence split from the group to search for survivors and share a moment. Clémence admires Tove for her resilience. She’s always wanted children. Then Clémence strips down and puts on a pair of pants, remarking that men invented dresses and high heels to make it harder for them to run away. Given their situation, pants seem way more practical at the moment.

Down in the furnace room, Ling Yi and Olek work together to get more coal to burn so they can restart the engine. Ling Yi finds a postcard and questions if it’s from a girl. Olek says no, it’s from his brother. She kisses him after confirming he doesn’t have another woman waiting for him somewhere.

Maura takes Eyk into the mental hospital, explaining that her father built it for her mother. Her mother was the only person Henry ever showed genuine affection to, and his obsession with the human brain stems from her sickness. She slowly forgot who everyone was, including her children and husband.

They go inside the room with the creepy medical chair we’ve seen Maura get strapped into a few times. Eyk opens a window and is shocked to see what appears to be the ship’s hull. Similarly, Maura finds a loose panel and rips it off, revealing more of the boat behind it. How is that possible? Daniel follows them into the hatch.

The telegraph room houses an antsy Ramiro, Anker, and the first mate. The first mate is frustrated with being stuck there, waiting for a response from their distress call, so he marches off down the hall. Meanwhile, Ramiro tries to comfort Anker in light of Krester’s death.

Left to her own devices, Mrs. Wilson quickly finds herself in trouble when she touches some of the strange black substance on one of the portholes. It starts overtaking her hand, and outside her room, we see more of it appear in the hallways, coating the walls like rock formations.

Continuing their perusal of the hallways, Tove spots Krester, or what she thinks is Krester, and follows him through a doorway that takes her to the past. Suddenly, she’s in a field and no longer pregnant. She finds Krester being held at gunpoint and runs to stop the man from killing her brother. The shot goes off on the side of Krester’s face, causing the scar we see later. But seconds later, Tove returns to the ship. Iben arrives and helps Tove to her feet, encouraging the group to continue to the lower deck.

The redheaded first mate returns to the dining hall and climbs into the cupboard, where the boy was previously locked away. Energy pulses, and we can assume he used it to travel somewhere else.

In Henry Singleton’s house, Maura tells Eyk what the boy told her about asking the Creator for answers. Eyk advises her to help continue searching.

Tove continues down to the lower decks again and believes she sees Krester. But it’s not Krester; it’s the man who shot him. Terrified, Tove backs up and goes through another doorway, reverting to the past. Again we see that fateful day when Krester got shot. Tove emerged from the woods into a horrific situation where men were holding her entire family at gunpoint, minus Ada. They lie and say Ada is in school, so that’s why she’s not present.

Krester slept with the man’s son, which the man deems a severe offense. He says he cannot abide having farmers on his land who “steal” from him, alleging that Krester “stole” his son’s innocence. In return, he plans to take something from them. He rapes Tove while her family is forced to watch.

After getting over the initial shock of the assault, Tove fights back and eventually bludgeons her attacker with a rock, stealing his gun and shooting him dead. So now we know how Tove got pregnant and what Krester was referring to when he mentioned she had killed someone. When Tove wakes up on the ship again, she succumbs to sobs, and Clémence comforts her.

While shoveling coal in the furnace room, Lucien does try to make amends with Jérôme. But it’s a little late for that. He’s already been labeled a deserter. But it’s not like Lucien got off easy either; he will die unless he can get to America and a doctor there can save him. The surgery isn’t something the doctor has ever performed on someone still alive. At least they are successful in getting the engine running again. That’s something!

However, Ramiro and Anker quickly realize the other guy has left, and they don’t have anyone to steer the ship. Ramiro finds the coordinates from the telegraph and finds the point on the map. Anker starts looking through some of the books nearby for help, but none are helpful. They’re all covered in a repeated phrase: “May your coffee kick in before reality does.” Ummm, that’s not a good sign.

The first mate/Henry’s secret agent, arrives in the hatch to meet with Henry. He still doesn’t have the boy with him. Their conversation is full of more cryptic messages. It will take 48 hours for a “transfer” to complete, and Henry says something about how people are blind to reality and need to shift their perspective to see the full scope of things. They’re standing outside the giant black pyramid, surrounded by a field of that same black crystal-like rock formation that has infected the Kerberos.

Inside the Singleton hospital, Maura and Eyk discover those black protrusions in the hallway. Maura reaches out to touch one, but Daniel arrives just in time to stop her. He warns them they don’t have much time because “it’s spreading.” He implores Maura to remember who he is as Eyk pulls a gun on Daniel, suspecting him of working for Henry.

Eyk and Daniel get into a fight over the gun. Daniel gains the upper hand by pulling out his handy-dandy console device and using it to send Eyk down a hatch into the woods somewhere. Once alone, Maura grabs the gun and points it at Daniel as he begs her to wake up and tells her he loves her, revealing that he is her husband of 12 years! But Maura doesn’t believe him and can’t remember. “None of this is real.” She locks him in the room with the restraint chair.

Outside, Maura tries to remind herself who she is, shouting at the skies to her father. She throws the gun in frustration and is shocked when it hits something invisible and solid, leaving behind a mark like broken glass. Upon closer inspection, Maura discovers a panel suspended in mid-air. Removing it reveals…the ship’s hub. “This can’t be real.”

Henry watches all of this transpire from the screens in his office.

Back on the Kerberos, Tove, Clémence, Mrs. Wilson, and Iben reach the upper deck just as a horrible thunderstorm starts rolling in. Mrs. Wilson notices the blackness has spread down her hand toward her wrist. Tove looks at the stormy horizon and says, “This can’t be real.”

Eyk climbs out of the hatch and finds himself in the steering room of… the Prometheus?! Just like Tove and Maura, Eyk mutters, “This can’t be real.” And when the camera pans away, we see that the Prometheus is just one of many steamships, all stuck in an eerie boat graveyard.

Written by Maddy Lennon