‘3 Body Problem’ Ending Explained: Why is Saul a Wallfacer? What Happens to the Staircase Project?

**Spoilers for all of 3 Body Problem Season 1, now streaming on Netflix**

“We’re slow, we’re dumb, and we die easy. We are bugs,” Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo) despondently says in the 3 Body Problem finale just when it seems all is lost. The San-Ti have successfully stymied the progression of science with their sophons and are speeding across the universe to conquer Earth. Project Staircase is a bust, leaving poor Will’s (Alex Sharp) brain to float through the Milky Way for the next five million years. The brilliant Auggie Salazar (Eiza González) is so traumatized by the events of Judgment Day that she has turned her back on the fight, hiding out in Latin America where she’s using her nanofiber tech to save small towns from dysentery. And Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham) has received a personal visit from the San-Ti’s “ambassador” Sophon (Sea Shimooka), promising him that he’ll be watched every second for the rest of his life. All in all, humanity’s fight seems hopeless, leading Saul, the newly-minted Wallfacer, to agree with the enemy when they tell us, “You are bugs.”

However, Da-Shi (Benedict Wong) isn’t so convinced the war has already been won. In the final minutes of 3 Body Problem Episode 8 “Wallfacer,” he takes the grieving Jin (Jess Hong) and Saul on a drive to the Florida swamps, where locusts have overtaken nature. He explains that humans have hated bugs forever, but no matter what they’ve tried, they’ve never been able to exterminate them all. He toasts the bugs and then tells Jin and Saul they’ve got work to do.

So the final metaphor 3 Body Problem leaves us is rather obvious. If humans are bugs, that only means they’ll be hard for the San-Ti to kill. Small and weak as we may be, we have a capacity for survival. The fight isn’t over.

However, the ending of 3 Body Problem Season 1 also leaves us with a lot of questions. Is Will gone forever? What does it mean that Tatiana (Marlo Kelly) has been invited into the game? What exactly is a Wallfacer? And why was Saul Durand inexplicably chosen to become one? And looking ahead, will there be a 3 Body Problem Season 2? (And looking way, way ahead, what exactly is the Dark Forest Theory?) Here’s everything you need to know about the 3 Body Problem Season 1 finale…

3 Body Problem Ending Explained: What is a Wallfacer?

3 Body Problem Episode 8 “Wallfacer” opens with the Oxford Five’s most low-key and rascally member, Saul Durand, waking up from a one night stand. She’s offended because he doesn’t remember her name and asks him to order her an Uber. While the two are walking to meet the car, Saul is explaining why he’s not going to worry about the impending San-Ti invasion, centuries away. His one night lover is clearly irate with him for not caring about humanity. A skateboarder collides with Saul, setting off a series of car crashes that end with Saul’s lady friend killed. “Nora,” he says, revealing that he did remember her name.

The reason why I lay this all out is because it not only reveals the depths of Saul’s duplicity — he knew her name the whole time! — but because it’s also lifted directly from the sequel to Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest. In that novel, Saul Durand’s “character” is Chinese scientist Luo Ji, and like Saul, Luo Ji is about to be roped against his will into becoming a Wallfacer.

The Wallfacer Project is a counter-offensive mission created by humanity to exploit the San-Ti’s one perceived weakness: they don’t understand lying. Even though the San-Ti’s sophons are zooming around the world monitoring everything humanity is doing, a brilliant individual with a capacity of obfuscating their motives could come up with a plan to stymy the invaders. That’s the hope, at least.

Saul is one of four Wallfacers chosen and the only non-famous entity in the group. He is also the only one who rejects the position. Nevertheless, he is the one the San-Ti immediately target for another assassination attempt. (Oh, yeah, he was the target of that car crash; not Nora.)

Which begs the question: Why was Saul chosen to be a Wallfacer? On paper, he’s kind of perfect. Think of how he convinced that girl he forgot her name. However…there’s another reason…

Why Was Saul Durand Chosen to be a Wallfacer? The Punchline of Ye Wenjie’s Joke

No one on Earth seemed to know who Saul Durand was before he was named a Wallfacer, but somehow the San-Ti were all up in his business. Why? Well, think back to the penultimate episode of 3 Body Problem Season 1. In 3 Body Problem Episode 7 “Only Advance,” Saul runs into Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao) at the grave of her daughter and his mentor, Vera Ye (Vedette Lim).

The two have a conversation in which Ye Wenjie shares a very strange joke with Saul that he doesn’t seem to get. It has to do with Einstein going to heaven and trying to play his beloved violin, only to be told by the angels you can’t play with God. Saul doesn’t find it very funny and even 3 Body Problem star Rosalind Chao teased Decider that it’s less of a joke than a secret tip to handling the San-Ti. But why Saul??

“So, at one point I say he’s really the smartest one of the Oxford Five,” Chao said. “I had also taken Saul under my wing. There was a scene earlier that [shows] he had really become kind of one of my pet favorites…he brings me groceries.”

“The fact that he was a bit of teacher’s pet makes me want to impart this wisdom to him without letting the Sophon know,what I’m imparting to him.”

As we’ve seen in an earlier episode, the narrative structure of fairy tales confounds the San-Ti. Hence, Ye Wenjie uses the structure of a joke to parlay information to Saul. However, Chao warned we won’t know what that info is unless Netflix renews the series for a second season.

“You won’t know what I’ve imparted to him until Season 2,” Chao said. “So there has to be a Season 2. Otherwise, it’s just a bad joke, right?”

Will There Be a 3 Body Problem Season 2?

Netflix has yet to announce plans for a second season of 3 Body Problem, but Decider learned during a recent roundtable with creators David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo that they have plans for the long-haul, even if they’ve already incorporated parts of Books 2 and 3 into the show’s first season.

“We’ve taken chunks of Book 2 and Book 3 and pushed them into the timeline of Book 1 because Book 2 and Book 3 start pretty much in what is the rough present. But that still leaves a lot of meat on the bone,”Alexander Woo said. “There’s still a lot left for us to navigate down the line. It’s just that, you know, the stuff that has taken place in the present we’ve put into Season 1.”

“But as you know, if you know the books, Season 2 has a lot that goes on and through time and space.”

So there’s a rough plan! In fact, there may even be more than a rough plan. During the same roundtable, Decider asked the showrunners about the horrifying events of 3 Body Problem Episode 5 “Judgment Day,” and David Benioff hinted the ramifications of that episode would have a huge influence on Auggie Salazar’s character in the future.

“The repercussions of that carry on throughout the season and, you know, ideally into later seasons where, Auggie, who’s witness to this, is completely shattered by the fact that she was complicit in the murder of innocents,” Benioff said.

So the showrunners have a plan for 3 Body Problem Season 2, but it’s up to Netflix to make it happen.

What Does it Mean that Tatiana Haas Has Been Invited to Play the Game?

One character who is feeling really stoked at the end of 3 Body Problem is Tatiana Haas. She is arguably the San-Ti’s most loyal human on Earth, as well as being one of the few survivors of Ye Wenjie’s organization. She not only is dispatched to kill Ye Wenjie — who seems ready to die by suicide anyway in 3 Body Problem Episode 7 — but in the finale she is invited to play the game. Tatiana takes it as an honor and it’s clearly a sign that she’ll be in closer contact with the San-Ti going forward.

However…and the show doesn’t explain this…but someone physically put the game in her trailer. Which suggests, along with Saul’s would-be assassin, that Tatiana isn’t as alone in her fight for the San-Ti as we’ve been led to believe. There are still people who welcome our alien overlords. Again, something for Season 2.

So Is Will Downing Like Officially Dead-Dead in 3 Body Problem? Where is Will’s Body Going?

Will Downing donated his brain to his secret love Jin’s ambitious Staircase Project and all he got was this lousy five million year trip floating to the edge of the Milky Way! Is Will gone forever? Well, we’ll have to wait until future seasons of 3 Body Problem to find out. (Or read Liu Cixin’s third book in the trilogy, Death’s End.)

That said, as Woo himself said, a potential 3 Body Problem “Season 2 has a lot that goes on and through time and space,” so what’s a few million years floating as a brain, huh? Not that big of a deal!

3 Body Problem: What is the Dark Forest Theory?

Well, well, well… curious about what the title of The Three-Body Problem‘s book sequel, The Dark Forest, might allude to? Wondering why folks are chattering about a “Dark Forest Theory”? Keep in mind what I’m about to impart is a massive spoiler for Liu Cixin’s books, which therefore could very well spoil a potential future season of 3 Body Problem…

The Dark Forest Theory is the idea that the reason why humans haven’t heard from alien civilizations isn’t because aliens don’t exist. It’s because aliens are hiding — and we should be hiding from the aliens, too.

The Dark Forest Theory imagines that the universe is just that, a dark forest full of unseen threats, terrifying predators, and even defenseless creatures who will resort to anything to survive. In a dark forest, the quickest way to die is to light a fire because it will draw attention to your position. (Remember how Haymitch tells Katniss literally this in The Hunger Games? Your intuition may be to light a fire for survival, but not when you are prey!)

By broadcasting Earth’s placement to the San-Ti, young Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng) unwittingly lit that fire, drawing the alien race to them. The Dark Forest Theory posits that the most damning thing you could do to yourself or another species is to light it up and reveal their position.

That’s all I’ll say…for more, watch 3 Body Problem or read Liu Cixin’s books.