What happened on the Prometheus in 1899?

Netflix’s latest mystery thriller is bound to have you on the edge of your seats and we’d highly recommend you bump it to the top of your watch list! 1899 just debuted on the streamer in the early hours this morning, and viewers who love a good mind-bending story will surely be entertained when they start binging. From the creators of Dark, this multilingual series follows an ensemble cast of characters traveling from Europe to America.

Along the way, secrets the passengers are keeping close are uncovered as we learn why these characters want to go to America so badly. But everything changes when they find a ship called the Prometheus that had been reported missing for four months. It becomes apparent this is going to set their trip across the pond back, and no one is happy about that.

MAJOR spoilers ahead for 1899 on Netflix.

The premiere episode of 1899 does a great job setting up the characters and the plot at hand. We meet prominent people like the captain, Eyk Larsen (Andreas Pietschmann), a woman named Maura Franklin (Emily Beecham) who’s looking for her lost brother, a Polish worker named Olek (Maciej Musiał), some of the wealthy passengers, and some of the lower-class ones. Plus, there’s the crew of sailors who become wary of Eyk’s intentions.

Throughout the eight episodes, there are many questions viewers will have, but the biggest mystery is regarding what happened on the Prometheus. There were over 1,400 people on board and we don’t know what happened to them. At least, not until the end of the show.

As we find out, everything is a simulation. Though she cannot remember, Maura and her husband Daniel (Aneurin Barnard), also a passenger on the ship but who knows what’s going on, created this simulation in an attempt to keep their dying son Elliot (Fflyn Edwards) alive. But her brother has taken control and is keeping them on a loop, so once one simulation ends after eight days, another one begins and everyone participating resets their memory so they know nothing once more.

What happened to the passengers on the Prometheus in 1899?

The Prometheus is simply just another loop in the constructed simulation that Maura and Daniel created, just like the Kerberos. So the passengers on the Prometheus are the same passengers on the Kerberos, they just don’t remember. The reason why when Eyk, Maura, and a few of the others first board the Prometheus in the premiere, there’s no one left except a mysterious little boy. That’s because all the passengers of the Prometheus started a new loop, waking up on the Kerberos to restart their experience. The little boy they find is Maura and Daniel’s son Elliot, and he’d been hiding on the Prometheus.

That’s why when Eyk finds the Prometheus logbook, he sees his and Maura’s names written down. They had been on there, just in a different reality time loop. Freaky, right? The ending of 1899 is absolutely bonkers and it’s one I’ll be thinking about for a while! This is truly one of the best Netflix originals I’ve seen in a long time.

Stream 1899 on Netflix right now.