Gather around, sci-fi fans - YouTube wants to tell you an Origin story.
If you're confused about how the first season of the big-budget YouTube Premium show wrapped
up, and what the developments may mean for the show to come, keep watching as we break
down the twist-filled ending of the streaming service's newest hit.
Origin starts on board a spaceship of the same name with a small group of people left
behind, one hour after an unexplained evacuation.
Each passenger is seeking a new start, with a clean slate promised by the mysterious SIREN
organization, and their colonization project on the distant planet Thea.
It's a framework that justifies a lot of distrust between the passengers, especially the first
two we meet - former Yakuza member Shun, and former bodyguard Lana.
Their relationship is founded on skepticism, but the two have little choice but to work
together.
Despite mutual paranoia, they become the leaders of the surviving passengers.
The end of the season focuses on their relationship, with the two forming a tentative trust…
that ends in brutal betrayal.
The alien thing When the passengers come across injured crew
members Evelyn Rey and Dr. Max Taylor, they soon discover that Taylor's possessed by an
alien parasite, trying to mimic the behavior of a normal human being.
"Who are you?"
"Max Taylor… medic… human."
An autopsy reveals the alien to be a slender worm that installs itself in the brain, where
it can survive and reproduce.
While the one attached to Taylor dies, one more lives on, taking up residence in the
head of a crewman who calls himself Eric - which Lee later discovers is not his real name.
After Fake Eric is discovered to be another alien host, the passenger Henri makes an attempt
to blast him out an airlock.
The plan fails, but Eric is still defeated shortly after.
When his brain is examined, it's found that the alien escaped.
Thus begins a season-long mystery - which one of the passengers did the surviving alien
jump to?
As Origin draws nearer to Thea with the mystery
of the alien still unresolved, the ship's AI goes into a fail-safe mode, activating
a security plan called Protocol 47.
Detecting the presence of an alien life form, the ship begins emitting a lethal gas, moving
through the ship with the aim of killing everything on board.
Suddenly, instead of simply waiting out the threat, the survivors are forced to either
solve the mystery, or die trying.
With Origin barrelling toward Thea with no
easy answers in sight, the passengers stockpile oxygen tanks to try and wait things out.
But then Shun makes a horrifying discovery.
Separate from the other passengers, he comes across two vital pieces of information: a
video diary of Max reciting a childhood memory that Lana later presented as her own, and
an audio recording of "Lana" rehearsing her own humanity.
"They know I'm still here…
I'm the only one still here" As it turns out, the alien never had anything
to do with the suspicious Baum or Katie.
The truth is indisputable: Lana is the alien.
But when did she become infected?
In the beginning, Lana really is who she says
she is.
But halfway through the season, she ends up with the parasite that originally existed
in Fake Eric.
To fill in the blanks, the final episode goes back to a few critical moments, showing new
perspectives of what really happened while most of the characters weren't looking.
When Fake Eric escaped from Henri's attempted airlock attack at the end of episode four,
he fled to a pool room, finding Lana.
Hunted, injured, and desperate to survive, the alien attacked her, travelling between
the two of them and killing the first host in the process.
This means that our heroine turned evil offscreen sometime between episodes four and five.
Ever since then, we've been watching a Lana working to deceive the others, and keep its
alien self alive.
After taking over Lana, the alien sabotaged any equipment that might have helped test
for its presence.
It also killed Lee, and framed Katie.
It's only found out because of its one known weakness - it can't access people's memories.
But in Lana's case at least, this doesn't seem so clear-cut.
Lana seems to still be in there somewhere - not just bringing up old memories, but actually
fighting for control of her own body.
With that info in mind, it doesn't sound like the Lana we knew will be gone for long.
If the series gets a second season, you can bet our heroine will figure out a way to vacuum
out that alien worm.
Before all of this happens, Rey and Abigail
make a discovery that's arguably even more chilling than their encounters with the aliens.
Not only are there terrifying monsters in this system that mimic human beings, SIREN
seemed to know about them.
Specifically, Rey and Abigail discover that Thea has a neighboring world, Iris , that
was kept secret from both passengers and crew.
Based on video footage and files they find, it seems like it may be the alien homeworld
- and it's very dangerous for humans.
Rey deduces that SIREN knew the planet was populated by hostile aliens, and sent the
Origin ship toward Thea anyway.
The company also prepared for possible close encounters without telling most of the people
on board.
"That's why protocol 47 exists — bc SIREN knew there was hostile life near Thea."
Protocol 47, as Rey points out, is an emergency measure designed specifically to annihilate
crews compromised by parasites.
But the show also hints at the secret in more subtle ways.
In the third episode Rey flashback, Dr. Taylor is surprised to discover that the ship has
guns onboard.
Also, Captain Sanchez seems extremely certain that Cell 50 is a lost cause when it's breached
by an asteroid impact - almost as though she knew that asteroid might carry hostile life.
It's information that throws everything the crew and passengers may have took on faith
into serious doubt.
With that in mind, it's hard to imagine what might be waiting on the planet's surface.
Paradise as promised?
Or some terrible new threat?
The season ends with an ominous message, and
it couldn't be more clear of a warning - "Don't land on Thea."
Given what the Origin passengers know by the final episode, all the lofty promises they've
been sold about Thea become questionable at best.
Iris, at least, seems completely overrun by the same aliens the Origin passengers have
been evading for a week.
Is Thea compromised too?
Origin doesn't end in a way that wraps things up conclusively.
It feels like it's just getting started.
What is SIREN's real goal on Thea, and why don't the passengers know about it?
What's the situation on the planet?
Will Henri survive?
What about Lana?
And hey, is that conversation about faster-than-light experiments, spacetime curves and time travel
going to amount to anything?
"they're like tiny time travel machines or your future."
One way or another, it seems the Origin survivors are far from done fighting for their lives.
Maybe they should just turn the ship around, and try returning to Earth.
Who knows?
The possibilities seem endless, so here's hoping we get to see what all these Origin
stories are building toward with a season two.