Netflix 1899 recap guide: All 8 episodes explained

1899 episode 8 recap: “The Key”

We got a lot of answers in the penultimate episode of 1899, but there’s more to come in the finale.

In the last episode of the series, we get Elliot’s dream to start us off. He has a memory of himself and his mother sitting out in a field, where he brings her a green beetle to show her. He wants to keep it with him in a box, but Maura tells him to let it go so it can be free. He’s then taken to that dark place with the big pyramid before he wakes up. Henry wants to show Elliot the truth, telling him that Maura has him fooled and she’s actually the only person who can get them out of the simulation.

When Henry takes Elliot outside to the big pyramid, he says it’s time for the little boy to remember as the walls come down and they end up at the hospital from Maura’s memories.

Things go from bad to worse on the Kerberos when Eyk finally makes it back on the ship. The remaining passengers — Maura, Tove, Ramiro, Ling Yi, Jerome, Clem, Virginia — all look to Eyk for answers, but he’s just as confused as the rest of them. He demands to know who Daniel is and how he got him on the Prometheus, but Maura doesn’t know. She explains that Daniel is her husband and the little boy is her son, but she doesn’t remember any of it. She then turns to the other passengers and tells them she doesn’t believe any of this is real. She explains that her father is the owner of the ship company and she thinks he’s controlling everything. Though they don’t believe her, she asks if they remember how they got onto the Kerberos, and none of them know.

Cut to Daniel, and he’s working on the power source of the Kerberos while trying to change something with his device. But nothing’s working. We’ll find out what he’s doing soon enough. As he meddles, the lights on the ship flicker and then turn red as the black protrusions continue to grow.

The other passengers on the ship decide they should just simply leave now that they’re in the shipyard, but that proves easier said than done. They run through all the halls and the black protrusions only get larger and larger, trapping them on the ship.

Eyk and Maura decide to go to Daniel’s room after Maura’s floorboard hatch disappeared, and they go down to his memories. They end up in that house again, and Eyk sees the photographs of Maura, Daniel, and Elliot together. She tells him that she doesn’t remember and doesn’t feel anything when looking at the pictures. Eyk questions if maybe Daniel isn’t telling the truth and his memories are illusions.

Maura is determined to figure out the simulation nonetheless, theorizing that maybe it’s structured like a brain is. Maybe different areas mean different things, as she explains to Eyk: “Inside the brain, memories are stored in different areas but they’re connected to each other through neural pathways.” She and Eyk start taking down the walls and they see the pathway with all the wires. There’s a flashlight inside and they take it, walking through to explore other areas.

At the hospital from Maura’s memories, Henry shows Elliot the room with the chair and instructs him to take a seat so he can bring back his memory. He sticks him with a needle with some type of memory serum, and Elliot watches as he sees a vision of his parents from another time. “You can’t stop him from dying, Maura,” Daniel’s voice can be heard before Maura sticks a shot in Elliot’s neck. “It’s the only way for us to be together,” she tells him. Elliot comes back to reality and Henry reveals the truth: He’s trapped in the simulation Maura and Daniel created so they can keep him alive. Elliot doesn’t believe it, but it’s true. Henry says there’s a way out but only Maura holds the key.

As Daniel works on the power source with his device, the other passengers on the Kerberos are able to walk through different reality portals as they experience each other’s memories. They see strange things, for example when Ling Yi sees Olek covered in grease walking around. He climbs through a portal door and she follows, and as it turns out all the remaining passengers end back up on the Kerberos. They start hearing voices, including Ángel singing, and they follow it down to the engine room.

The first mate delivers the news to Henry that Daniel’s hacked into the mainframe and is changing things in the simulation. Henry instructs him to find Maura and get the key. Meanwhile, Maura and Eyk end up back at the hospital to try and find her father’s office, but the sailor finds them first. He asks for the key, explaining that the simulation is falling apart, and she hands it to him. He uses his device and suddenly Eyk falls to the floor, dead. Maura orders him to bring Eyk back, but he says it’s impossible.

Maura and Henry reunite and she demands to know where Ciaran is, but her father says that’s the least of her worries. The simulation changes and now Maura is strapped into the chair, with Henry explaining to her that she’s the creator of all of this. She tried to heal her pain but she only ended up creating more. Henry and Elliot stick her with a shot, seemingly another memory eraser. Henry tries to use the key on the pyramid but it doesn’t work as they realize Daniel ended up changing the code.

After an overhead voice counts down the time on the Kerberos, the ship explodes. Maura wakes up on the ground in a hospital gown and she walks over to the gravesite where Elliot’s playroom is. She walks downstairs and Daniel appears after her, telling her that “it worked.” Because he hacked the system, the loop did not start over again. But what now? Maura has a lot of questions and Daniel tells her that they’re in the first simulation they ever created and that because he reprogrammed everything, the shot Maura was given actually brought her here.

The pyramid Henry has no longer holds power, and there’s a new, more colorful one they can use along with Maura’s wedding band as the key. Daniel explains that Maura’s brother took over the simulation and has been controlling everything, which is why they were on a loop. Maura must go back to reality to stop her brother, but before she does so she asks Daniel if he’ll be there. He tells her he’ll always be with her, and then helps her go back.

When Maura wakes up next, she’s in a spaceship traveling through space. She’s strapped into the wall with a device over her head, and when she looks around she sees other people she met on the Kerberos, like Eyk, all strapped in as well. This seems to be how you can enter the simulation. She walks around the ship and goes to the computer, where the screen says it’s the year 2099! The spaceship they’re on is called the Prometheus, and as far as we can tell, Daniel is not there. Before the screen cuts to black, Maura gets a message on the computer. It’s Ciaran, telling her “welcome back to reality.”

That’s as much as we get from 1899, and wow, it’s a wild ride. Now that Maura is back to reality, she must find Daniel and Elliot and work to stop her brother. Of course, there are so many questions left unanswered, so we’re hoping Netflix renews 1899 for a second season or more. The creators want a multi-season show, so fingers crossed that happens.

All eight episodes of 1899 are now streaming on Netflix!

Written by Natalie Zamora