Raised by Wolves has been renewed for a second season, but we'll still have months to ponder
the meaning of the HBO Max series' first season and its finale, "The Beginning." This is the
ending of Raised By Wolves explained.
The finale of Raised By Wolves' first season makes it more clear than ever that our characters
have been employed as instruments of some greater will, presumably that of Sol, the
god of the Mithraic religion. Throughout the series, multiple characters have had strange
visions, including the androids. Some of these visions seem to show the future, some are
glimpses at the distant past, and some are apparitions of the dead child Tally, who tumbled
into one of the gigantic bottomless pits that appear across the surface of Kepler-22b.
But the will of Sol becomes louder and clearer in the first-season finale, as not only do
we hear his words through a fairly cogent prophet in Paul, but we also see it apparently
exercised in the goopy, wriggling flesh of the "baby," Number Seven. "The Beginning"
allows us to take stock of how each character has been manipulated, presumably by the same
supernatural guiding hand.
"An orphan boy who dwells in an empty land"
"The prophet who will unlock the Mithraic Mysteries."
Throughout this first season, there have been a few candidates for who this prophecy might
refer to, and it appears that the answer may be the most obvious one after all. Paul, the
brilliant Mithraic child whose birth parents have been dead since before the Ark even left
Earth, has been receiving messages from Sol that are clearer and more frequent than anyone
else.
The clearest evidence that Paul is in touch with an actual omniscient being is his newfound
knowledge of Mary-slash-Sue's true nature that she is not his mother but actually the
atheist soldier who killed and replaced her. Being a bright kid, it's plausible that he
may have been able to piece some of this together, but he also calls her by her real name, which
he could not have conjured by himself.
Unaware of Paul's apparent open channel from Sol, his faux father Marcus believes that
he himself is the subject of the prophecy. Marcus has long since cast aside his previous
identity as the atheist soldier Caleb and is now a true believer, and it's easy to see
why. When Caleb hears the voice of Sol, we hear his words as clearly as Caleb does. It's
reasonable to assume for the moment that the same voice is speaking to both Caleb and Paul,
as it has led both of them to facilitate the birth of Number Seven.
Earlier in the first season, Sol told Marcus that if he lets Mother live, he will be, quote,
"king of this world."
This is in line with what Paul is told, that Mother is carrying Sol's child. If Marcus
is also Sol's instrument, then it makes sense that he would command Marcus to spare his
unborn child. What further purpose Marcus might serve in Sol's design is unclear, but
as a second Mithraic vessel has now arrived at Kepler-22b, Marcus has now found new enemies
or, potentially, new disciples.
Up until the final episode, Mother has believed that her child is the will of Campion Sturges,
the atheist who reprogrammed her back on Earth. Using the hibernation pod's virtual reality
system, Mother has re-accessed her archived memories of her time with Sturges. She later
interacts with a version of Sturges that she believes is an archived program, which tells
her that her pregnancy is the next step in their plan. However, this no longer seems
to be true.
In episode 8, "Mass," the health care android Karl tells Mother that Necromancers such as
herself were created using "dark photons," based on designs decoded from within the Mithraic
scriptures. Not even her builders fully understand how she works, but if the scriptures come
from Sol, then she is literally built from a divine plan, which may have included constructing
a biomechanical child. Her "true mission" to create this new being likely predates her
reprogramming by Sturges.
Does the version of Sturges with whom Mother has the virtual encounter actually have anything
to do with the real Sturges, or is this Sol taking on the visage of the one who Mother
sees as her creator? In "The Beginning," Mother describes her pregnancy,
"We communed in a virtual space, and while we did, information was downloaded into my
drives."
The question is where these files were downloaded from.
Reports that Kepler-22b is uninhabited have proven to be greatly exaggerated. Kepler-22b
is home not only to fossils, ancient temples, and creepy galloping mammals but to an intelligent
species of humanoids.
"The Beginning" offers our first clear encounter with one of Kepler's humanoid inhabitants.
Their existence has been hinted at over the course of the season that cave dwelling that
the Mithraic troops found back in episode 5 had to belong to someone, and we caught
only a quick glimpse of its owner at the time. Now we've seen their face or at least the
face of one of their kind in the individual who tries to knock Mother into a bottomless
pit. Mother kills the humanoid before we can learn any more from them, but Father believes
that the Neanderthal skull it carries indicates that life on Kepler-22b is evolving in a reverse
path from that of humans on Earth.
That's quite a leap evolution is the result of random mutation and long-term selection
across millennia, and it makes no sense for a species to evolve backwards. However, since
one of the characters on Raised By Wolves is essentially God, we can't really take intelligent
design entirely off the table. In any case, "The Beginning" implies that nearly all the
creatures in the show may share a single evolutionary ladder, upon which Mother's new baby now sits
at the top.
Of course, by "baby," we mean "four-foot floating serpent with a lamprey's maw," which is as
much a surprise to Mother as it is to us. While she and Sue have been trying to monitor
its gestation over the past few episodes, neither of them has access to a sonogram.
And while neither of them could have predicted that Mother's "Number Seven" would be a gooey
snake monster that's born by flying up out of her throat, we, the audience, should probably
have expected something like this from the man behind Alien and Prometheus.
"Hey baby."
"You're strong!"
That the form of this new creature closely resembles the form of Kepler-22b's native
fossilized serpents should be all the evidence we need that its conception has nothing to
do with the plans of Campion Sturges. Number Seven quickly grows to the size of the monsters
who've left their fossils all across the planet, but creator Aaron Guzikowski has already confirmed
that it has inherited abilities from its android parent, as well.
Although it's not for the first time, in the season finale, Mother is confronted by Father
about the fatalistic streak she's been developing over the course of the story. Father's position,
that their mission is their own to determine, better represents atheism than Mother's, which
is essentially a dogmatism based around another person's design for them.
Mother has always revered her "creator," Campion Sturges, after whom she named her youngest
child. There's a logic to this as an artificial life-form, she has a certainty of purpose
that few humans can ever experience. She is not only programmed to serve a specific aim,
but she is conscious of that programming and aware of the person who created it. Her feelings
intensify after uncovering archived memories of their time together on Earth, during which
she falls in love, and the feeling may even be reciprocated.
Mother may retain the capacity for faith from her time as a Mithraic-made Necromancer, but
as she points out to Father, her effective worship of her creator does not actually require
faith. Faith implies the possibility for doubt, and Mother has met her god. Sol, on the other
hand, is an immaterial god, who, until recently, could be dismissed as superstition. It will
be interesting to see how she copes with the strange new physical evidence of Sol's existence
that has just been born from her body.
Unlike Mother, who is an advanced weapon of mass destruction reprogrammed to be a parent,
Father is a "standard service model," a run-of-the-mill android who's not supposed to be special.
And yet, Father is better at being a human being than anyone else living on Kepler-22b.
He's a caring and attentive parent as well as a loving partner, and he clearly has a
rich inner life. Mother may have physical abilities that he lacks, but Father is at
least her equal when it comes to emotion and self-actualization.
"He won't disappoint you. As loyal as they come. A fine protector. He was my equal."
In the final episode, Father realizes that his love for Mother and his feelings of jealousy
during her pregnancy are putting his mission to protect the children at risk. Father intends
to purge his memory files, eliminating this record of their years together and the pain
he associates with them, which is perhaps the most human desire he's demonstrated so
far.
Father and Mother set aside their quarrel when the birth of Number Seven presents an
imminent danger to their children, unflinchingly sacrificing themselves by piloting the lander
into one of the pits and flying straight into the planet's molten core with Number Seven
aboard. Their reconciliation is very speedy, but superhuman processing power seems to mean
a superior ability to get over yourself.
Mother and Father clearly expect the heat and pressure of the planet's inner core to
destroy their craft, as our understanding of geology says that it should. But Raised
By Wolves' version of Kepler-22b evidently has its own special properties that allow
the lander to shoot right through it and emerge on the opposite side of the planet, which
appears to be the "tropical zone" where they intended to bring the children after Number
Seven's birth. Since they bail from the lander, and it's subsequently destroyed by one of
Number Seven's phenomenal growth spurts, Mother and Father are now stranded half a world away
from Sue and the kids.
If not for the arrival of the second Mithraic Ark near the end of the episode, there'd be
no reason to expect that Mother and Father could ever reunite with the rest of the family.
Now, there's at least hope that Campion and the gang can hijack a craft from them and
mount a rescue mission or at least simply settle in the tropical zone as they'd initially
planned. Whether piecemeal or all at once, we should expect a change in scenery in season
two, since we doubt the Mithraic have much interest in starting their colony in a dry,
rocky desert, either.
The rest of the pack may not have had much to do in the first-season finale of Raised
By Wolves, but they are the subject of the season's parting moments. In the episode's
penultimate scene, we see Campion process the gut-wrenching loss of his parents before
discovering the strength and calm that Father praised him for in one of their final scenes
together. He rejoins his family, and the atmosphere and cinematography of the scene heavily imply
that the family will now be looking to Campion to lead them.
Mary-slash-Sue has, so far, survived her gunshot wound, but her true identity as an atheist
soldier has been exposed to the family. Whether this will put her at odds with the religious
Hunter and Holly has yet to be seen. Her deception is least likely to bother Tempest, who is
both an ardent atheist herself and also very pragmatic. Vita, the youngest, has no lines
in the finale and isn't really a character yet, but she may have to grow into one next
season.
Paul has run off after shooting Sue and is now on his own. Will he discover the new Mithraic
arrivals? Will he go off on his own path, perhaps guided by further divine intervention?
One thing's for certain when Paul and Marcus run into each other next, the two are going
to have a lot to talk about.
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