Raised by Wolves: Season 2 Ending Explained

Warning! Full spoilers follow for Season 2 of Raised by Wolves.

Not since Lost has there been a show as fundamentally anti-explanation as Raised by Wolves, which answers most of its questions with even deeper mysteries. By the time its second season wraps up, we’re no closer to concrete answers than we were when the show began, but this approach feels correct for a story where every character is in constant pursuit of the unknown, and every mystery is interpreted through a religious lens.

Once tasked with raising a handful of human children, androids Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim) are now in charge of an entire atheist commune on Kepler-22b, a nearby habitable planet appears to have age-old connections to Earth’s dominant religion in this future, Mithraism, whose symbols appear all across the planet’s ruins. What’s more, someone (or something) claiming to be the Mithraic deity Sol keeps speaking to various characters and convincing them to undergo horrifying transformations. Last season, Mother gave birth to an enormous flying serpent, Number 7 — one of this season’s major antagonists — while former atheist Marcus (Travis Fimmel) began to see himself as a Mithraic prophet. Before long, his wife Sue (Niamh Algar) followed suit, believing in Sol — however briefly — to the point that she was manipulated into using her body as a vessel for a holy tree, which was in turn used to fuel Number 7.

Is Sue dead? Perhaps in a traditional sense, but for a show where transformation is both beautiful and horrifying, it’s hard to be sure (after all, the tree still has a human heartbeat). But what does all this mean, and how does the millennia-old android Grandmother (Selina Jones) and her newly-revealed plan factor into the planet’s history? Fans of the show probably know better than to expect answers anytime soon, but we spoke to creator and showrunner Aaron Guzikowski to get a better sense of the purpose behind these concepts, how they came to be, and where they might be headed in Season 3.

Raised by Wolves: What’s The Deal With Grandmother and Her Veil?

In a mirror to Mother’s arc last season, Father spends much of Season 2 filling an emotional (and biological) hole by striving to create life. Each time he’s defeated in battle or undermined by his children, his human insecurities grow, until eventually, he pours all his time and effort into resurrecting an android being who appears to be millions of years old. This android, nicknamed Grandmother, has a biomechanical veil meant to filter out emotions, which she eventually hands off to Mother in order to help bypass the protection protocols preventing her from killing Number 7 (though this veil ends up cocooning and containing Mother when she begins to resist it).

Without her veil, Grandmother begins to experience emotions for the first time, but before the show delves into her character or where she came from, the season ends on Mother’s horrifying discovery: the planet’s humanoid creatures, who she believed had “de” evolved from human beings, were manipulated into doing so by androids like Grandmother, whose plan appears to involve convincing Campion (Winta McGrath) and the other human children to enter the planet’s acid ocean and adapt biologically, the way Tempest’s (Jordan Loughran) newborn baby grew webbed fingers when it was taken by one of the mere-creatures. Grandmother’s original protocols, much like Mother’s and Father’s, involved protecting the human species, but without emotions to guide her decision making, she approached her mission as an equation, and came to the conclusion that humans would be happier in simpler and “less” evolved biological forms.

This is the closest the season comes to providing a definitive answer to any lingering mystery, though the form it takes continues to be mysterious. For instance, the appearance of Grandmother’s veil may be more than just a throwaway plot point, and may even have a deeper connection to the show’s themes of humanity and religion. On one hand, the veil has both a literal and symbolic function, since it both filters out emotions and gives its wearer a more inhuman appearance. On the other hand, veils appear throughout numerous religions and cultures in human history (including real-world Mithraism, where they were used to initiate bridegrooms into the religion), and as with many of the symbols seen throughout the show, this cross-cultural connection seems to be a key reason for its inclusion.

“Because it’s science fiction, you’re free to take some of these symbols, but then also take that literal interpretation versus how we perceive it, and then find some kind of connectivity between those two,” Guzikowski told us. “It’s like a mirror, but it’s also like a wall, and also it can filter emotions. It’s almost like an antidepressant drug on some level.”

The line between literal and symbolic is in constant flux in season 2, especially with the numerous appearances of Mithraic artifacts. The show’s version of Mithraism draws from real-world religion — both ancient Mithraism and Christianity — but it also remixes many familiar religious images and ideas into its own mythology, like trees and serpents, which also appear in many real-world religious stories. This all ties into the show’s approach to the sentient signal which several characters interpret as the Mithraic deity Sol.

Raised by Wolves: Who (or What) is Sol?

In a literal sense, some of the show’s characters appear to have figured out at least half of the “Sol” mystery. It’s a signal emanating from somewhere beneath the planet’s surface, and whether it turns out to be something that was programmed, or something that has an intelligence of its own, the result is the same: it “speaks” to several characters and gives them instructions that feel divine in nature. Regardless of what this signal actually is, its impact on the characters and what they believe is what matters most, given how their arcs resemble those of characters in holy texts. For instance, in the terrifying final images of Season 2, “the signal” convinces the Mithraic disciple Lucius (Matias Varela) to crucify Marcus, which at first appears to kill him, but eventually makes him float through the air, as if he has ascended and become some sort of higher being (perhaps for Sol to somehow use, the way it used Number 7 to wreak havoc). This crucifixion imagery no doubt resembles real-world Christianity, but the show takes familiar images and remixes them until they become uncanny; Marcus, for instance, is crucified upside down, and rather than a cross, he’s nailed to what’s left of the holy tree that was made from Sue’s body.

“It’s always been my conception for this show that we would go to different places, that are a lot like Earth.” – Guzikowski

Guzikowski likens Sol to a kind of code, though not necessarily a technological one. “I think all of these symbols are almost like a code, in that a lot of them are familiar to us, and even the way we understand them here on Earth has been distorted over time, depending on where you live and the stories you’ve been told,” he says. “There’s meaning in these symbols, and [the show] is trying to decode what that is, and it’s somewhere in between what we believe it is here and what [the characters] are discovering, and how it relates to this new place.”

With its caves, relics, and temples, the show often places futuristic characters (and android beings) in settings that feel distinctly ancient. In the process, it makes atheist characters ponder ideas of existence and the origins of life by confronting them with age-old religious imagery. This is likely one of the reasons that, no matter what answers have come to light, the nature of “Sol” itself has remained a mystery, and something many of the characters have no choice but to interpret as the voice of (a) god. “These kinds of primal images and stories that we’ve told, those really old stories and those really old elements like snakes, and what that represents… the power it has when you hear it and see it, is that you can’t really explain it,” Guzikowski added. “I think we’re trying to deal with that ancient vocabulary, trying to decode it.”

In essence, by transforming ideas from ancient religious texts — whether holy serpents and trees or instructions from divine beings — into modern sci-fi concepts involving DNA manipulation and signal transmission, the series forces modern characters and modern viewers to confront age-old questions in new ways. In a world where the lines between technology and biology have grown increasingly thin — not unlike our own world, where A.I. has become more commonplace — the show treats the increasing humanity of androids as a given, rather than something in doubt. In the process, it breaks their functions, their emotions, and even their beliefs down to their most basic elements, and turns each one into a story point of its own.

This is often highlighted by Collin and Salim’s detailed performances as Mother and Father, arguably the most fascinating parts of the show, though many of the child performers — like McGrath, and Felix Jamieson who plays Paul — also grew into their roles this season, and pushed their characters to new and challenging places. It makes one wonder where the series will go next, and what challenges will be thrown the actors’ way as the story evolves.

In true Raised by Wolves fashion, Guzikowski didn’t have any direct answers on this front, but he did provide a number of major clues.

Raised by Wolves: What Can We Expect From Season 3?

Just as Season 2 shifted the show’s location to the Tropical Zone — which, in the final episode, becomes consumed by snow — there’s a good chance Season 3 will explore newer, more mysterious realms of Kepler-22b. “It’s always been my conception for this show that we would go to different places, that are a lot like Earth,” Guzikowski said. “It’s not a mono planet. Like in Star Wars, they have Hoth. It’s cold everywhere. It’s just one thing. Or like Tatooine, it’s just a desert and that’s the whole planet. This planet’s more like Earth, especially because you don’t have a way to scan the whole planet. I really like the idea that the audience is with this family. And we won’t know until they know what else this planet has to offer.”

On one hand, part of the perspective on these new discoveries is that of androids like Mother and Father, whose analytical nature keeps clashing with their increasing humanity. On the other hand, the other major perspective on each new element of the show is that of their human children, and these two differing points of view will likely help craft the story going forward.

As for the way Mother and Father are likely to evolve, especially after their hubris has led each of them to create new antagonists (Number 7 and Grandmother respectively), Guzikowski had this to say: “They’ve raised these human children, but one thing that’s always been missing is that real connection. [The children] didn’t come from Mother and Father. A human sees a child grow up and you see yourself reflected back at you. You see sort of that continuance. And for these Androids, what makes them such great caregivers is they don’t have that. They’re really just there to care. They don’t have a self. They’re not seeing themselves in the thing that they care for. But the more emotional they become, the more human they become, and they start yearning for that. And I think what I love is that the irony is that, it makes them worse parents in a lot of ways. Because they now have all of their own sort of wants and desires and expectations.”

Just as the android characters are likely to slip further down the rabbit-hole of human feelings, the human characters — especially the children, who are still figuring out their beliefs — are likely to be the show’s eyes and ears when it comes to interpreting the planet’s mysteries. “They’re growing up. They’re coming of age. But at the same time, there’s this grand mystery. Like, where are we? What is this place? What is the ultimate direction of our species?” Guzikowski said.

“I think having the perspective of the kids is really interesting, just in terms of this new world and the way children interpret things. And that is more of a literal interpretation of what’s happening around them. So just seeing them grappling with it as children is, in some way, more informative than the way adults would because of the way they’re taking it all in, and they’re learning things for the first time. And obviously, they’re all probably going to have a really big impact on this planet, one way or the other.”

“Having the perspective of the kids is really interesting, in terms of this new world and the way children interpret things.” – Guzikowski

Guzikowski didn’t speak to his ultimate end-goal for the show other than the fact that he has all the answers in mind, but doesn’t want to reveal them too quickly. However, he did mention what role he thinks the kids might play in the ultimate fate of Kepler-22b. A brief moment in season 2 depicts a young atheist girl turning Mother into a religious symbol after she finally defeats Number 7, while elsewhere, Campion copies the last words scrolled by the android Vrille (Morgan Santo) before she shuts down (or “dies”), creating his own religious edict of sorts. No matter where the story is headed in the long run, it appears to have already laid the foundation for the birth of new faiths and beliefs tied to the events of the planet.

“[The kids] are making these small decisions now and these things are just going to snowball,” Guzikowski teased. “And maybe 300 years later, they’re going to be telling stories about these kids and these events, and they’ll have been mythologized. Even as grand and insane as these events are, they’ll be mythologized and transformed into stories as they are on Earth.”

Author: David Griffin. [Source Link (*), IGN All]

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