Editor's note: The below contains major spoilers for 1899.1899 is finally available on Netflix, delivering one more mind-bending story from Dark creators. However, while the previous TV show from Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar bent time, 1899 plays with the notion of reality itself, pushing viewers to doubt anything they have seen. So, when the credits roll, you might still have questions about what happened aboard the Kerberos, a ship departing from Europe with a destination to New York, hosting thousands of people from very different cultural backgrounds.
Many questions remain unanswered after the end of 1899, as the series was clearly planned to span multiple seasons. Unfortunately, the series was officially cancelled at Netflix earlier this month, leaving many of these dangling questions open-ended in spite of Friese and bo Odar revealing that they "would have loved to finish this incredible journey with a 2nd and 3rd season as we did with Dark." Nevertheless, we have enough clues to solve some of the 1899’s biggest mysteries, such as the nature of the Kerberos Project and why the ship’s passengers are constantly forced to confront their traumatic memories.
What Is the Kerberos Project?
During the first and only season of 1899, we learn there’s something wrong with the Kerberos. The ship was bought by an English businessman, Henry Singleton (Anton Lesser), who made some strange modifications. While the Kerberos trip happens in 1899, some wondrous tech is hidden in the ship, and its passengers are taken back to relieve their most traumatic memory. The only people who seem to be aware of what’s happening are Daniel (Aneurin Barnard) and Elliot (Fflyn Edwards), the two remaining survivors from the trip of the Prometheus, the previous company’s ship, which got lost in the sea.
After receiving a mysterious message, the Kerberos’ crew finds the Prometheus adrift in the ocean and rescues the boy from inside. Daniel makes his way to the Kerberos by himself and manipulates Maura Franklin (Emily Beecham) into questioning her reality. As the final episodes of 1899 reveal, the ship is part of a computer simulation built to keep people’s minds trapped inside a machine. The shafts located all over the ship serve as loading points, allowing people to go from one part of the simulation to the other. Each shaft represents the pathway to a different memory simulation, and each memory simulation is inspired by one of the Kerberos’ passengers’ past. However, it seems like all these memories are fake, introduced in the passengers' minds to make them forget who they are.
For instance, Maura is Henry's daughter and is connected to the simulation. She doesn’t understand why, but it quickly becomes clear that the Kerberos is just the latest simulation in a neverending cycle. After people die on the Kerberos, their consciousness gets rebooted and reused in the next simulation, with each previous ship representing the log data of a failed experiment. Henry observes the people of the Kerberos from his office all the time, judging their choices and blaming them for making the same mistakes over and over again. While we don’t get a clear answer about why these experiments are being repeated, it seems like the goal is to understand the human mind and unlock its full potential by teaching people to put reason above their feelings. While Henry seems to be the mastermind behind Project Kerberos and the previous simulations, the truth is more elusive. And as we learn in the finale, Henry is as much a puppet as everyone else aboard the ship.
Who Built the ‘1899’ Simulation?
In the real world, Maura and Daniel are married, and Elliot is their son. At some point, Elliot’s body begins to fail due to a mysterious disease, pushing his mother to create a way to save his conscience inside a computer. Maura refuses to let go of her son, so she builds the first simulation to keep him alive forever. Maura and Daniel are the simulation creators, as he is a master programmer, and she’s a genius in neuroscience. So, as the creator of the simulation, Maura designed the program's architecture, allowing multiple people to be plugged into a machine simultaneously, so they could spend time with loved ones who are dead in the real world.
While 1899 never explicitly confirms it, it seems Elliot died at some point. Incapable of bearing that pain, Maura decided to erase her memories and remain forever plugged into the simulation, where she wouldn’t remember her failure anymore. During the entire series, Daniel and Elliot are aware of their virtual condition and try to make Maura wake up. As it turns out, Maura programmed an exit key inside the simulation. Still, since she hid it before she erased her own memories, no one knows where the key is. Henry took over control of the simulation with the same goal of finding the key, so he could finally be free of his virtual prison.
What Happens in the ‘1899’ Finale?
In the series finale, the key and the lock that must be connected end up in Henry’s hands. Blaming his daughter for all the pain inflicted on the people locked into the simulation, Henry decides to reset her memory, send her back to the start of a new boat trip, and use the key to get himself and the people close to him out of the simulation. The key doesn’t work, though, because, in a desperate move to wake up Maura, Daniel changes the Kerberos code, altering the program’s structure and destroying the latest iteration of the simulation.
Inside the simulation, every object represents a different piece of code. For instance, the black syringe Henry uses to stick Maura in the neck works as a memory reboot, forcing her to repeatedly relive the same hellish boat trip. The key and the pyramid Elliot is always carrying around are the two pieces of code that, when put together, wake up someone and bring them to the real world.
When Daniel changes the simulation code, he changes the black syringe so that it would transport Maura to the first iteration of the simulation, a simple room the family used to extend their lives together. Daniel also changed the key code to become Maura’s wedding ring and the pyramid code to become a toy found in the first iteration’s room. As Daniel explains, it is imperative that Maura wakes up and works in the real world to free everyone else. That’s because, while she was in deep slumber, her brother Cirian took control of the simulation, trapping everyone inside it. Maura follows Daniel’s instructions and gets out of the simulation, but there’s still much we don’t understand about what happened in the virtual world.
For starters, we don’t know why Cirian decided to trap everyone inside a computer program, nor why he made everyone’s fake memories so filled with traumatic events. We do know, however, that all the people onboard the Kerberos chose to be there at some point, and a future season might reveal why. There’s also the matter of the computer virus spreading through the simulation, which might corrupt the passenger’s consciousness. We don’t know where the virus came from, but it might have been introduced by Daniel in a way to break Maura out of Cirian’s mind prison. Finally, Maura wakes up to an unexpected reality.
What Is Real in ‘1899’?
As Maura gets unplugged from the machine that trapped her consciousness inside the simulation, she realizes she’s inside a chamber where some of the passengers she met inside the Kerberos are equally plugged in. The room is inside a spaceship belonging to “Project Prometheus,” which also houses multiple equal chambers, meaning all the people from the Kerberos are there too. While the simulation of the Kerberos trapped people’s minds in 1899, the real year is 2099, and almost two thousand people are being transported through space toward a destination unknown.
That explains why the people inside the simulation were somehow volunteers, but it doesn’t help us understand why Ciaran took over everything and kept people locked inside. However, Ciaran is aware of his sister’s escape and sends a message to welcome her to reality. A potential Season 2 would have likely taken place, at least in part, in the futuristic reality while returning to the simulation to provide answers about what happened to all the people trapped inside it and how Daniel inadvertently might have doomed them all.
1899 is now available to stream on Netflix.