Constellation: Noomi Rapace Weighs In on Finale’s Startling Closing Image — Plus, Could There Be a Season 2?
The following contains spoilers from the March 27 finale of Apple TV+’s Constellation.
Apple TV+’s Constellation on Wednesday wrapped its eight-episode run by tying up some loose ends, before leaving viewers with a couple of twists — and a startling final image — to puzzle over.
Coming off of last week’s fiery, reality-overlapping ordeal at the cabin, the episode “These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruin” saw Jo admitted to St. Sergius, a mental hospital, where she was tended to/lorded over by Irena. As Jo repeatedly maintained that she was not mad, Irena was inclined to pump her with mood-calming lithium, but couldn’t — because Jo is four weeks pregnant.
Jo at one point managed to sneak out of her room and roam the halls, curious about the haunting wails she had heard earlier, from the facility’s other “guest.” Arriving at that room, she was startled through the small window the wild eyes of an elderly, bearded man. Irena later revealed that that man was the first person to travel into space, and he, as many other astronauts have, went “mad.”
Back home, the Magnus of this reality did his best to dismiss Alice’s claims that “Mummy” is not in fact her Mummy, and that there is “another Alice” out there. Concurrently, the Magnus and Alice of the other reality, where Jo died, got to packing up their house to move. But along the way, each Alice came across the Fisher-Price tape player which they had used to communicate last week, and shared one final (?) conversation.
Alice-who-doesn’t-speak-Swedish and her father paid a visit to the mental hospital, where they each had meaningful heart-to-hearts with Jo. Jo and this Magnus seemed to arrive at a consensus that they were into each other way more than they had been before — which tracks, since this Jo wasn’t cheating on her husband.
As for Jo and Alice, they agreed that while they may not actually be mummy and daughter, they can be mummy and daughter to one another in this reality. Alice also asked where the baby that Jo (who is from “there”) is pregnant with by her dad (from “here”) will be “from” — a valid question seeing as an ultrasound that Irena eyeballed earlier had the same “indicator” that Henry labored to replicate on the CAL.
Speaking of Henry… oy! Having been swapped into this reality after shooting Paul Lancaster, Bud Caldera smashed the CAL and effectively took over his doppelgänger’s life, though at episode’s end he seemed to let Irena in on the “stolen lives” secret they share. Henry in turn was stranded in Bud’s life, trying but failing to be exonerated for murder (of Ian Rogers) and attempted murder (of Paul Lancaster). The Paul of that latter reality, meanwhile, came to in the hospital after being shot, and appears to now be the Paul who had lost an arm and died!
Closing out the finale, we cut to the ISS station where a dead Jo had been left behind by Paul, as the recording of Jo and Alice’s final FaceTime played over and over. The camera panned over to Jo’s weightless, lifeless body, and as her iPad floated by…. DEAD JO’S EYES CLOCKED IT, AND SHE GRABBED IT!
Is the other Jo in fact alive?
“I hope so!” series star Noomi Rapace told TVLine, while explaining that the finale’s final twist wasn’t decided on until late in the process.
“When we started shooting the last episode, [series creator] Peter [Harness] had an idea and he knew where he was going, but the very last image was not set in stone,” Rapace reported. “And that was something that I loved about this whole process — it felt like we went on an expedition, and Peter was very much part of it.”
Along those same lines, Rapace revealed another last-minute change that was made, to an earlier episode.
“When Jo comes back home, to the temporary home in Star City, and she’s on crutches and she breaks down and starts crying and she and Magnus they start kissing…. That was initially a sex scene,” she shared, “and we kind of reworked it because I strongly felt that she was so vulnerable and broken and just in desperate need to connect, it can’t really be sexy, you know. It’s more primal. It’s more like, ‘I need closeness, intimacy.’ And that’s just another example of how we worked. It was very respectful to each other’s craft.”
Could there be a Constellation Season 2?
There’s certainly fodder for a second season, given the aforementioned”un-dead” Jo, the ongoing odysseys of Bud and Henry, Paul’s latest reality-swap and the email that Irena sent out to other space travelers, seeking data on their mental health.
“Obviously we’re very happy to get to the end of the first season, but there’s a long way to go with these characters,” showrunner Harness said last month during the Constellation panel the Television Critics Association winter press tour. “I think there’s a bigger story to tell about space, about the history of this, and I think these characters have got a long way to go. [Jo and Paul] have only just landed back on Earth, and life is very long for these characters.”
We enjoyed the series but found it a little difficult to follow at times. We hope there is a season 2.
Jo’s face at the end reminded me of Gus Fring post bomb.
This show was not enjoyable. What was the moral of the story?
The first seven episodes were tense and intriguing. There were lots of twists and turns. The final episode was blah, blah, blah. Almost no tension. It was like strangers to the series were asked to write this episode. There was nothing in it to make me want to watch another season The characters were fairly well developed. Jo’s husband was a pathetic character in both realities, no wonder she was attracted to someone else in the other reality. Bud and Henry dichotomy was good. This episode was a real let down to what had been an interesting puzzle.
Personally, I like that there was some modicum of closure while still leaving the door open for further development of the storyline. Too much tension without closure is just not fun for me.