1899, Episode 2: The Boy | Episode 3: The Fog
Episode 2: The Boy, or Girl Whuuuuuuut?
Alright, so I’m going to start off by saying that I decided to write about this series on an absolute whim, having seen only one episode. I’ve never done episodic recapping before and this show has A LOT going on, which make it hard to know which details to highlight and which can be safely elided. I also don’t know if anyone is interested in this, although given how I pored over everything I could find about Dark, I think there’s a possibility that someone, somewhere, is really desperate to go on this journey with someone. If nothing else, at least I’m making sure I actually understand and can summarize what’s going on, at least so far.
The episode opens with the Captain, who I’m still calling Captain Jonas because I haven’t caught his name yet, waking up in the woods. So far it’s 2 for 2 with the cold opening of a passenger reliving something traumatic - in this case, his wife setting their house ablaze with herself and their 3 daughters inside - before the hushed, but harsh, order to “wake up!” brings him to consciousness, or maybe life given that he was flat on his back with his eyes open, just like Maura, aboard the ship.
We cut to our mysterious boy from the end of the last episode, resting in Maura’s room. His only possessions are a pyramid made of black stone and a gold ring, which Maura examines while he’s “sleeping” - only he’s not sleeping and his eyes pop open the moment she leaves the room, because this child is hella creepy. After unsuccessfully attempting to bond with/question our spooky rapscallion, Maura encounters the damp dude - now dry, and looking dashingly Byronic - outside her room. “Have we met before?” she asks, and of course he’s like “nope, don’t think so,” then immediately pulls a photo of her out of his pocket as soon as she’s gone. Could this mystery man be the brother that she set off in search of?
Well, she’s not the only person thinking that someone looks a bit familiar. Episode 1 introduced a French speaking black man who stole a crew members uniform, and it turns out that his name is Jerome, and he is, in fact, a stowaway. You know how else speaks French? Our sad newlyweds, Clemence and Lucien…. and Jerome seems to know at least one of them. He sneaks into their room, leaving some kind of military medal on the desk, then later has a brief interaction with Clemence on deck where she asks “Do I know you from somewhere?” Hm…. Is someone playing games with people’s memories here?
I mean, the answer is pretty obviously yes, because Captain Jonas is going off the fucking deep end - OR IS HE?!? While walking the halls of the ship he hears his dead daughter’s voice, singing something super creepy and German; he then sees his daughter in the hall, and following her through a door, finds himself inside his old home. His wife and daughters are alive, and he has a short conversation with the eldest before she bursts into flame. Is he hallucinating? I mean, maybe, but he seems to suffer real physical reactions, being blown back by the intensity of the flames, then discovering a tiled shaft that leads him back to his room on the ship. I think a lot of shows would have that shaft disappear the next time the good captain looked at it, but nope! It’s definitely there, although when he goes back down it’s all smooth, black tile, with no passage leading to his burnt out house.
Meanwhile, in steerage, the Danes are wondering just what the hell is going on above decks. The ship is stopped and no one knows why, and they aren’t very happy about it. Krester, the young man with the scar who had a charged encounter with the Spanish Libertine (sorry, haven’t caught his name yet), is still engaged in some dickful thinking, and when the Spanish gent shows up again and gifts him with a fancy silver cigarette case, he accepts it. Tove, the pregnant sister, sees the cigarette case and is not well pleased. “Rich people always expect something in return,” she warns Krester, taking the case and returning it with no little anger.
The Spaniard, it seems, is on the run from the law, and his “brother,” the priest, is… well, not his brother, and not a priest. Dude’s not even Spanish, it turns out - he’s a Portuguese servant named Ramiro, and he’s not happy that his boyfriend is making eyes at a hot Dane. It doesn’t seem like the Spaniard has lived an entirely easy life, though - as he and Ramiro start to get busy, we see what look like some pretty serious whip scars on his back.
The Captain announces, to the dismay of everyone on board, that he is turning the ship around and heading back home with the Prometheus in tow. He’s convinced that the shipping company is hiding something, which seems like a reasonable assumption given everything that’s going on, and he isn’t going to stand for it. Unfortunately, the formerly damp dude, AKA Maura’s neighbor, has some other plans. He releases a very shiny green beetle on the ship, which attracts the attention of the youngest Dane, Ada. He says that he’s sorry as she backs away fearfully; the next we see her, she’s lying dead on the deck of the ship, with no obvious cause of death.
As the captain is told of her death, the camera zooms out - showing that Captain Jonas’ face is one of 9 being displayed on some old-school (but not 1899 old school) cathode ray tubes. So, yeah - what the fuck is going on?
Episode 3: The Fog, or Wait, Am I racist?
As per usual, the episode opens with one of our main characters reliving a traumatic moment. The star of this episode was the young woman in Geisha garb, but it turns out that she’s not Japanese, but Chinese, and the servant she’s travelling with is her mother, a former prostitute. Ling Yi, it turns out, wanted desperately to go to America and escape the stifling confines of her life, and planned to knock out her friend Mei, who was being sent to a brothel there, and take her place. Unfortunately, she miscalculated the dosage of the sedative and accidentally killed her, and Ling Yi and her mother put the body in a box and throw it in a lake. In the dream/flashback, though, it’s not Mei in the box, but Ling Yi, screaming as the box descends into the depths.
Ling Yi “wakes” to a reality (not sure about that word choice given some of the stuff going on, but whatever) that is scarcely better. In the last episode, she caught the attention of the sad French newlywed, Lucien. The Lady in the Green Brocade (don’t have her name either, oops) takes note, and offers to arrange a little tête-à-tête between the two, revealing her connection to Ling Yi - she’s her pimp.
The Lady in the Green Brocade, though, soon discovers to Ling Yi is not the experienced prostitute that she thought she was shipping over to America. She’s angry, but not entirely displeased, and tells Ling Yi that she expects her to keep the appointment, then takes her leave. Ling Yi’s mother, who spent her entire life trying to shield her daughter from her work, is distraught, and Ling Yi runs off, hiding in a box on deck. She is found by Olek, a very hunky crew member, who offers to hide her below deck.
A dense fog has rolled in, blanketing the ship and preventing navigation; earlier, the compasses had started swinging wildly as well, so the two ships are at a standstill. As Ling Yi waits for Olek, the fog moves in, enveloping her as she is transported back to the moment of her friend Mei’s death, this time as herself, trying and failing to keep her from drinking the concoction. When Olek returns, the fog evaporates, and Ling Yi returns to her room to prepare for her assignation that evening. She performs a Geisha-adjacent routine for Lucien, and is ready do her duty when he says “that’s ok, can you just hang out for a bit while I do this?” and then has a seizure.
Meanwhile, Captain Jonas and Maura are trying to figure out just what the fuck is going on. They’ve got an abandoned ship, a creepy and still-silent child, and, as the captain soon reveals to Maura, that mysterious tiled shaft underneath the captain’s bed. They agree that they need to go back to the Prometheus to find the captain’s log, which Captain Jonas hopes will have some information about what happened to the ship before everyone, you know, died or vanished or whatever. While they don’t find it, they do find another black tiled shaft - guess it’s a feature, not a bug - and the captain finds a mostly charred passenger list that, for some reason, has Maura’s name on it. Spooky.
The Danes have realized that Ada is missing and are talking about how the Prometheus is cursed, the boy they brought back from there is cursed, this whole dang thing is cursed. And, you know, maybe it is - a moment later, a crew member comes downstairs to tell them about the body that’s been found. Tove, the pregnant sister, goes to identify Ada then carries her through the ship where the steerage class passengers mourn together. No sooner does the crew member leave them to their grief, though, when he stumbles across several more bodies, all without a sign of injury or illness. People are, as you might expect, not pleased with this news.
With the ship at a standstill, pointed in the wrong direction (from the passengers point of view), and towing an apparently cursed doppelganger, the news that people are now dropping like flies sends the ship into an uproar. The crew and the steerage passengers grab weapons and sweep through the ship, poised to mutiny.
As they do, formerly damp dude, AKA Maura’s neighbor, starts fiddling with a little etch-a-sketch looking thing. The fog is abruptly pulled back into the ship, and then the next moment, the Kerebos vanishes, leaving only the abandoned Prometheus behind.
Well… didn’t see that coming.
Stray Thoughts
The first mate seems to be in on or up to something. He’s sending and receiving some kind of coded messages made up of little triangles, although it’s hard to tell yet what’s going on with all that
Krester (brother of Ada and Tove) runs into the Spanish Libertine while looking for Ada and the two engage is what must have been a terribly uncomfortable mutual handjob through the gate separating steerage from the deck of the ship
Creepy boy and damp dude know each other, and are looking for something on board the ship
I initially thought all of this was inside Maura’s head and that she was exploring her memories; then that this was some sort of prison, similar to a book I read a while back called The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which you should definitely check out
Edit 3/8/23
1899 got cancelled right after the new year, so while I did finish and very much enjoy the rest of the season of 1899, I’m not going to continue trying to recap it. Netflix, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to have the appetite for gorgeous and gloomy series’ like this anymore, which I find very disappointing.
