 What's up guys and welcome to one take. I'm Gil and today we're talking about Raised by Wolves episode 10, the season finale. This video will of course have spoilers for the entirety of Raised by Wolves season one and there are some big questions this week. What the heck did mother just give birth to? What were those cave paintings all about and what's with the Neanderthal skull? We'll get into all that and more but first some overall thoughts. Overall I felt pretty mixed about this finale. When I watch a season finale there's basically two things I look for. On the one hand I want to get some sense of closure or at least hit important points in a character's arc that serve as a good note to end on. Then on the other hand I want to see some signposts of where we're heading in the next season. I'd say this episode definitely delivered in the latter. We had some pretty intriguing developments with the mystery and some pretty clear setup for the conflicts coming up in season two. On the other hand I didn't feel a great sense of closure. I do think that characters like Paul and Campion reached important points in their character arcs but those moments didn't quite land for me because I felt like they depended on groundwork that I didn't really think was there but I'll get into the details of it as we jump into the episode. Either way I enjoyed the season as a whole I'm really glad we have solid sci-fi on TV especially sci-fi that's willing to ask some pretty interesting questions so I'm very excited for the second season but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's dive into episode 10. First just a quick reminder if you're enjoying these videos to go ahead and hit that like button, hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon so you get notified the next time we do a video. First let's talk about Marcus slash Caleb. He's still alive after the end of last week's episode but he's not exactly doing well. His face looks all veiny and bruised. He also has that hallucination of Hunter and it's unclear to me if that's truly a hallucination just from a broken mind or if it is some kind of vision from soul or whatever intelligence has been communicating with Marcus. The one thing that makes me think it may be more of a vision than a hallucination is the presence of that serpent where you see Hunter's arm replaced by a snake. Considering what happens at the end of the episode we know that the serpents hold some kind of importance so the fact that they would appear in his vision tells me this might be more coming from soul or the intelligence. Then at the end of the episode, the atheists arrive on another ship one we didn't know about. I love that reveal because I think it's great setup for conflict next season. It should be pretty interesting to see what happens when mother and father inevitably reunite with the children and then they clash with the atheists because in theory, mother and father should be on the same side as the atheists but the children are another story. They already have a sort of split allegiance between mother, father and the Mithraic. That's only gonna get cranked up when you introduce this additional army of atheists. It'll also just be another window into the current state of humanity, something I've been very curious about. How much of humanity has actually been wiped out? How much has survived? This should give us another window into that. I will say I hope they can do more with the Caleb Marcus character next season. I found him very interesting until the last two or three episodes when he went into full on believer mode and turned on his family. I found him a lot more interesting when he was still sort of struggling between his old Caleb self and having to blend in with the Mithraic versus where he is now where like I said, he's fully embraced his new role. We've seen some hints that he still has a little bit of a split personality. It's hard to forget the gruesome face cutting scene where he kept saying, I know who I am. So I'm hoping next season some of his old self crops back up and we get more of that great internal struggle. Now let's talk about mother discovering the human emotion of jealousy this episode. Basically she finds out that Campion is jealous of her new child that might have superpowers. She also finds out that father is jealous of the fact that she has mated with some other being. So mother discovering emotions has been one of my favorite dynamics this season. Amanda Cullen is just doing such a great job of creating that mix of feeling some human emotion but having that enjoyed confusion over what am I feeling right now? And she definitely continued to sell that this episode. This also leads into another great confrontation between mother and father, which I've always said those are the moments where the show really shines for me. And he's basically in the same boat as her. He has these emotions he doesn't quite understand. He even says he feels anger towards mother. He tries deleting the thoughts but they just keep coming back. Later he decides he's going to delete all of his memories of her and Campion and basically do a factory reset. She says you're going to forget about Campion, you're gonna forget all the jokes you made. And father says no, they'll live on with you assuming you haven't deleted them. So the reason these scenes work so well for me is that I understand where both characters are coming from. Mother has gone through an experience that to her feels spiritual and very important. She mated with this being because it felt like the right thing to do. At the same time you fully understand father's jealousy, anger and pettiness here. So in terms of character arcs paying off in the finale, this is one that really did land for me and really worked. There's also an interesting line when mother reveals to father the true nature of their mission. Basically the fact that raising the Gen 1 children was just a trial run for raising the child she's about to give birth to. Father tells her one thing I've learned is that our mission is for us to determine. So I think what's going on here is after the loss of the Gen 1 children, fathers realized that they're really crafting their own journey here. They took it upon themselves to raise these new children from the arc. That wasn't part of their original mission. But mother at least at this point is still sticking to their original mission in an almost spiritual way where she is just determined to follow the original will of their creator. Now you might say, and I think mother would agree with you that she's not being spiritual here. She knows her creator. He was a physical biological person that she knew. So there's nothing spiritual or religious happening here. But at this point, I think mother has so far deviated from the original mission she was sent on. The Gen 1 children have all been killed except for Campion. So at this point, they're so far into uncharted territory that to rely on the original intent for creator is not exactly logical. At this point, I think father is right in saying, we need to craft our own journey. We need to make our own mission. You can't just keep clinging to some devotion you have to someone who could not have foreseen what we're going through now. I will say that before we got to this confrontation when father decides he's going to delete his own memories, we got one scene of father in the woods alone where basically he makes a bunch of stick figure children and then speaks his whole dilemma out loud, saying, I need to take care of my children, but whenever I'm around mother, I'm too angry. What am I to do? He basically monologues the whole thing. And I have to say, I really didn't like this scene. It came off as totally inauthentic to me because I don't think father to think all this through would have to create stick figure children. I don't think he would speak out loud. It felt basically like a shortcut way for the show to take the subtext of this dilemma father's going through, not really knowing how to communicate it to us. So instead they just have the character say it out loud even though that's not something which would happen in real life. So for me that took me out of the show a little bit and I feel like you could have deleted this scene and we would have understood the entire dilemma just based off mother and father's confrontation which came next. So I didn't love that scene but I did love the mother father dynamic in this episode overall so I can see past it. Now let's talk about Paul. He goes through a pretty interesting journey this episode. He loses mouse again but this time mouse leads him to some cave paintings. And the fact that mouse was brought back to Paul by soul or whatever intelligent force is manipulating our characters makes me think that soul or that intelligent force wanted Paul to see the paintings. And what exactly did he see? So I tried looking at all the different symbols on that wall and interpreted it as some kind of a story. The way I see it, if we start in the upper left corner we see a humanoid figure next to a large circle full of swirls. Now that large circle has three smaller circles around it. So that makes me think it's Kepler-22B. The three circles around it are Kepler-22B's three moons and the swirls might be a reference to the serpents that we know resided on this planet from all the bones we saw. The humanoid figure might be a self-portrait of the people who used to live here, possibly humans. And when I say used to live here, maybe they still do live here and are just sort of dormant or as we learn later, maybe they are devolving. Next to that we see a large craft leaving the planet which seems to be piloted by two people and it has nine circles inside of it. Now the tails on the craft make it look partially biological, which is an interesting look and the two people up front have spikes coming out of their head, which is similar to how Mother was drawn in Ghost Tally's rendition of Mother Kissing Campion a few episodes back. So that makes me think the two people piloting this craft are necromancers or something in that ballpark. Above that we see something which to me looks like a constellation or maybe some kind of a map. So possibly that gives an indication of where that craft is heading and I think where it's heading is Earth. If you look in the bottom right corner, we see a large sun and then above that we see a bunch of circles, which to me look like our solar system potentially. That larger circle in the middle I think is enlarged because it represents their destination, Earth. If you look next to it, we see one smaller gray circle. So I think that's showing us this planet Earth has one moon as opposed to Kepler-22B's three moons. So pulling all this together, my first thought was that the nine circles in the back of the craft represented nine embryos. That perhaps they were bringing to Earth in order to seed human life. But that doesn't feel right to me since later in the episode, Mother makes direct reference to evolution. She talks about Neanderthals. So it does seem that there's a record on Earth of humans evolving the way we understand evolution. Maybe whoever came from Kepler-22B arrived on Earth a very long time ago and did help evolution along. Now, one way or another, I don't think it'll turn out that humans independently evolved on both Kepler-22B and on Earth. So I think there has to be a link somewhere along the line and I believe these cave paintings are hinting at it. I also have to say, I can't believe they decided to put a shot of these cave paintings in the first trailer released for this show back in August. The other big moment for Paul this episode is that he shot Sue. Now that was one of the moments that didn't quite land for me. I understand why Paul did it. His faith is very strong at this point and it's been further strengthened by the miracle of Mouse's return and the voice he's been hearing. So when the voice tells him the truth about his mother, he's going to listen to it. But similar to Marcus, it just feels like you've got two extremes. You're a non-believer or you're a believer where you're 100% in and at that point you'll do whatever you have to do without any hesitation. Whether it's turning on your own family like Marcus or with Paul shooting his own adoptive mother. I would have liked to have seen a little bit more internal struggle for Paul because although this Sue is not really his mom, he has been with her for a long time. We don't know exactly how time works in the simulation but he might have experienced in at least 13 years with this person as his mother. So I would have liked to have seen more struggle with shooting her or at least I would have liked more build up to Paul as the firm believer willing to do anything. For example, a few episodes earlier, we saw Paul help Campion escape from the silo. If we'd seen Paul become very militant in his faith and refused to help an atheist, then maybe I would have accepted this moment a little bit more. That's just one example. They could have pulled this off a number of ways but just for me personally, Marcus and Paul's transformations haven't been super interesting to me. I would like to see more internal struggle and hopefully we see some of that next season. Now we'll get to the Neanderthal school, the giant serpent and all that crazy stuff in a couple of minutes but I wanted to touch on Campion first. This is another area of the episode that didn't quite work for me and not to keep beating up on the show but this again felt like a character transformation that was pretty rushed. So at one point in the episode, Father tells Campion that he's becoming something of a warrior and that was a moment where I sort of scratched my head and said, is Campion becoming something of a warrior? I understand the logic of it. Campion hit Father in the head with a sling. Clearly he's become good with a sling but I don't think we've seen a whole lot of Campion of the warrior or a whole lot of Campion becoming good with a sling or becoming good at hunting, for example, to earn Father telling him that he's becoming a warrior. So that moment didn't really land for me and then even worse than that, as Mother and Father are about to sacrifice themselves by going into the pit, they basically say that Campion is going to become the leader of the remaining humans. And then we get a great shot where Campion looks up from the pit after screaming, witnessing Mother and Father's sacrifice. He looks up from the pit and a few of the characters give him a sort of nod. And visually to me, this scene is saying that Sue, Hunter, Tempest and the others are acknowledging that Campion is going to be a leader. Visually the scene also looked great to me but in context, I don't really feel like Campion has earned that leader role. It felt like the scene was depending on groundwork being laid that would show us little hints at Campion learning what it takes to be a leader starting to get into that role and then we get this moment but I don't really feel like we got that groundwork. It reminded me a little bit of another show and spoilers for Game of Thrones coming up, fast forward about 30 seconds if you haven't seen the finale to Game of Thrones. But in the last episode, there's a reveal that Bran is going to become the king. Why do you think I came all this way? That is what this moment felt like to me. I know that Campion's going to struggle in this role and of course he's not fully matured, he's not fully ready for it but I don't think we've even seen the prerequisite and hints that he should even attempt to take up the mantle. I think Tempest for example, could be a better leader. She's the one that killed the creature, she's the one who first decided to basically join mother and father's side. So she seems a little bit more ruthless, a little bit more willing to make tough decisions but we'll see, maybe that'll be some of the conflict next season. This question of who should really be leading the remaining humans. Now let's talk about mother and father with all their crazy reveals this episode. First, a hooded figure attacks mother, she easily kills it. Then after father joins her, they remove its mask and see an almost human looking face under it. More interestingly, they find that it's carrying on the Anderthal skull. So my first thought in that moment was wow, that's crazy, that's interesting. Then I kind of hated the next line when father says, perhaps the creatures are evolving because that's not how evolution works. You don't just blink and then primitive creatures overnight have become more advanced creatures. But maybe he's saying that there's something on the planet causing a sort of rapid evolution but I'm not clear why that would be your first thought. My first thought would be we see these primitive creatures running around. Oh, it looks like there are also more advanced creatures that we just haven't bumped into already. My mind wouldn't first go into this some kind of evolutionary link between them. Then mother and father realize there are no humans around so maybe there were humans that are now devolving. In the next scene, mother tells father that given what the children have been eating, we probably shouldn't tell them about this discovery implying that the creatures we've seen, the creatures that the children are eating are somehow devolved versions of human beings. So there were a few things about the reveal that I thought were clunky but overall I thought it was a pretty intriguing one. And I love when father says that line, something along the lines of this planet has a history, I feel we are dangerously ignorant of. That was just a chilling moment. Also, mother says she needs to have the baby here. She feels stronger here and it's hard to know exactly what that means but maybe this area is a source of dark photon energy which is needed to take the birth to fruition. Now going back to the hooded figure that attacked mother, I assume it's not the same one that we've seen a few times this season. The one that Marcus came in contact with, the one that grabbed the tarot cards and ran away. I assume it's a different one because that other hooded figure seemed a lot smarter and more athletic. As opposed to this one that just uselessly charged at mother before getting killed. Now, when they removed the mask from this hooded figure, like I said, it looks somewhat human but clearly not human. I'm not sure if we're meant to think it is a Neanderthal or if it was just holding on to a Neanderthal skull but if it's not a Neanderthal, it might be something else from earlier in humanity's evolutionary change. Definitely let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts on what that being was meant to be. Now let's talk about one of my favorite scenes from the finale. Mother gets a close up look at the thing we saw in her vision a week ago and I did not expect to see this so soon but basically mother walks into a cave and sees what looks like the remnants of the structure that that thing was sticking out of. Then she sees its head on the ground and first thing I want to point out is I loved the score in this scene. I think the score is one of the things that's been consistently good throughout the season especially in moments like this where it just gives that feeling you're seeing something bizarre, strange but also very significant and that's the feeling I got during this scene. So like I said, the vessel or the container looks broken up, the head is lying on the floor and when mother picks it up and rips the helmet off we saw something I didn't expect to see which is a very human looking skull and that seems to trigger her birth or perhaps it coincidentally happens at the same time but before we get to that, a couple of takeaways from this moment. First, the container did not look particularly old so mother's vision might have been something that happened very recently. When I first saw it I assumed it was an event that happened long ago in this planet's history but that might not be the case. Now as to what exactly this thing actually is it's probably something I need to give more thought to and potentially do a follow-up video but at the moment my initial reactions with all the talk from mother and father of evolving or devolving, I'm leaning towards this device being part of some kind of advanced genetic experiment. Maybe it's supposed to create rapid evolution to a hired powered being but it backfires somehow causing de-evolution which is maybe what resulted in those creatures we've seen, the ones that the children are eating. Also in the vision we saw this thing through its snout spitting up a sort of white fluid. The only other white fluid we've seen is android blood so that makes me think whatever experiment they're doing, whatever they were doing with this vessel, it's somehow connected to the necromancers and it's somehow connected to dark photon energy but hopefully we get some answers in season two. Like I mentioned before, this leads into mother giving birth in one of the most horrifying birthing scenes I've ever seen. So again, hats off to Amanda Collin where she really sold the turmoil of this scene. The moment where her abdomen basically sucks back into her body and she starts screaming, where is my baby? That was an incredible moment and then it ends with her basically vomiting up this floating serpent and latching onto her like a parasite. Ultimately mother and father try to kill it by flying into the planet's core. Then it looks like maybe they get spit out. So if there is a higher intelligence at work here on this planet, call it soul if you want to. Maybe decided to spit the lander back out because it wanted to save the serpent which means also saving mother and father. They end up in an area that looks different from the ones we've seen previously. So I think they end up in the tropical zone. Then the serpent now very large flies away and that's the end of the episode. A few thoughts on this. First, I suspect that flying into the planet's core actually ended up helping the serpent. Maybe there's a power source there. Maybe something again related to dark photon energy by going into the core. They actually gave it more energy which allowed it to very rapidly grow into what we saw at the end of the episode. I also just have to say I love this reveal because the best reveals are the ones that are shocking, surprising, but don't feel like a cheat and that's exactly how I'd describe this one. If you were to imagine what mother's going to give birth to, probably the first 10 things you imagine are some form of humanoid thing with superpowers. Not once did I think it was going to be a giant floating serpent. But if you paid attention, we see the serpent bones throughout the season so we know they play some kind of important role on this planet. Also the pits have played an important role and I suspect that the serpents are somehow related to the pits. Maybe they're the ones who made them. We have some evidence for that back and I think episode one, when father goes into the pit, he finds something that to me looked like the skin of a serpent as though they shed their skin like we know snakes do on earth. So the serpents and the pits have been significant. Mother's about to give birth to what we know is going to be an important thing on this world. So the fact that it's a snake, it's surprising but not entirely unearned and that's why I loved this reveal. Now having said that, I did find it kind of funny just how quickly mother and father decided that the only way they can kill this thing is by sacrificing themselves. Basically father suggests they throw it in a pit. Mother says we can't because it can fly and then they decide they need to fly into the planet's core. But aren't there a couple of other things you can try in order to kill it besides throwing it into one of the pits? For example, I might try stomping on its head or stabbing it or throwing it into Paul's trap for example. So I thought that was a little bit odd but putting that aside, like I said, I was a fan of the reveal overall. Now a few questions I have about this thing, I believe there is some kind of intelligence at work on this planet. It whispers to Marcus, it appears as tally and it spoke to mother in the sim using older campions face. Ultimately it used mother's body as a vessel to birth this serpent. So was that the end goal? Does this serpent represent some kind of achievement where maybe it's a higher life form of some kind? We know that in the sim the intelligence wearing older campions face told mother that whatever she's about to give birth to represents the future of humanity. Is it not just an animal like a snake or is it actually intelligent and sentient? On the other hand it might be a tool, it might just be a weapon that the intelligence is going to use to serve some grander purpose. Anyway, I thought that was a really cool reveal to end on and a great way to close out the season. So I'm excited to see where things go next and how this mystery on Kepler 22B further develops. I'm also excited for the interesting character dynamics they've set up for season two. Paul is sort of on his own now but maybe with his more militant faith he might go back to Marcus. We have the new group of atheists and mother and father will be a sort of wild card in all of this. Also the season may be over but we are not done talking about raised by wolves. So make sure you're subscribed to keep up with everything that's coming. We know that a second issue of the comic book is on the way which is meant to bridge the gap a little bit between season one and two. So we might get a few tidbits before season two comes out. Also I'll probably go back and rewatch some of these episodes with the finale's reveals in mind to try and piece things together, try to theorize and come up with some interesting predictions for next season. So look out for some analysis and theory videos on this channel. I also wanted to just quickly plug another video I put out earlier this week. If you're bummed out that season one is over and you're craving more Ridley Scott-esque sci-fi content last week I did a sort of dramatized recap of the raised by wolves tie-in comic. I had a lot of fun doing that and I decided to give the same treatment to another comic series called Fire and Stone which traverses multiple eras across the Prometheus alien and predator franchise. So I took the first issue from that series and did a sort of dramatized recap with music and sound effects. I had a lot of fun with it so I recommend checking that out and it would make me very happy if you did. And if you enjoyed this video please go ahead and hit that like button, hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon for more videos like this one. Every time somebody likes or subscribes it is a huge help to the channel and personally gets me that much more motivated to do the next video. So if you like or subscribe you are an incredible person. So thanks for watching and see you on the next one take.