1899 – Season 1 Episode 5 “The Calling” Recap & Review

The Calling

Episode 5 of 1899 starts with Maura waking up inside a dream. She rushes toward a grave with the words “Wake Up” marked on the wood, as hands pull her back into the shadows and to a room where she’s tied down, injected… and thrust straight back into the ship.

When Maura does awaken, she’s shocked to find all of the passengers have locked up the boy in a cabinet with a metal pipe over the front. Sounds familiar to the Prometheus in episode 1 doesn’t it?

As Maura moves forward to protect the boy, wanting to free him, something happens. Time freezes, allowing Maura to distort reality to her will. She plucks a bullet out from the air and looks around in confusion. The only constant able to move along with her is the boy, who steps out from the cabinet after Maura frees him.

He leads her by the hand out of the room, unfreezes time, leaving everyone inside in a state of disbelief over what’s happened.

Meanwhile, Iben continues to snub her poor son, with Krester’s sexuality weighing heavily like an anchor on her heart, restricting her from actually being able to open up and accept her son. As for Tove, she speaks to Krester about this before eventually taking the gun and marching off purposefully.

Clemence learns the truth about Lucien too, including all the lies he’s told to reach this point. “You are a constant reminder of what I can’t have,” Lucien says sadly, tears running down his cheeks. He knows that his life has been a complete lie ever since he pretended to be a lieutenant.

Speaking of marching off, a strange ticking noise prompts a whole rabble of crew to begin marching off to the deck. The noise reverberates through the cabins like a siren song, splitting the group in half, with those lucid and those completely entranced.

With Ling-Yi’s mum taking charge, she nonchalantly drops herself into the water, followed by all the other passengers – Krester included. When Maura questions the boy over what’s happening, he writes down “They are listening” and continues on, claiming she needs to speak to the Creator for any sort of answer. And that comes in the form of that strange hatch hidden below the cabin.

When Maura heads down and through an eerie gap, she finds herself in the same strange vision we saw that encapsulated the early parts of this chapter. The details are incredibly similar, right down to the cross and a house in the distance.

When Daniel sees the hatch opened, he presses the buttons on his machine to reveal a hidden compartment, which happened to be hiding this gateway. The young boy is there, “It knows we’re here now” Daniel says to the boy. Now, there’s some cryptic chatter here about the Creator, “not making it this far before” and other dialogue that seems to hint at the true reality of what’s happening but honestly, it’s way too confusing to piece together right now!

Interestingly, a telegram comes through on the ship, with two words “Sink Ship”, while Daniel heads down to the engine room and tries to fix what’s gone wrong. Unfortunately, one of the engineers suddenly gets on top and begins choking him out, calling him a wolf. Daniel manages to press a few more buttons though and with that, the man suddenly goes limp and docile.

Meanwhile, Maura heads deeper into her reality, finding the house with the words “Mental Health” written on the front. The place is eerily quiet and she presses on until she finds Room 1011. The same room number as her cabin.

Pushing open the door she finds that familiar chair we saw from the flashes at the start of the chapter. The man in question from the hallway happens to be her father, and he appears out the shadows. Maura is sat down and injected with something, leading her to open her eyes and find herself back on the ship and lying in bed.

Eyk soon catches up with her and demands answers. And we do actually get some. It turns out Franklin is Maura’s mother’s maiden name. She was born Maura Singleton, and her father is Henry Singleton, the owner of these ships. She believes that all of this is an experiment given her father was more into behavioral science. He was never into ships.

Now, Maura never got on with her brother but he wanted to meet her, and set a time and date to do that – at Southampton docks. She went and waited for him but he never showed up. Then she learned that one day earlier the Prometheus, one of the ships her father bought, left that same dock. Given her brother has been missing for four months, it’s fair to assume that he was actually onboard the ship.

After catching the green beetle from before, Maura sets it down in the Captain’s hatch, using it to open the portal through to the other side. It works to reveal another strange area, where Eyk hears the familiar jaunty tune that his daughter sung in his visions in episode 2. This time, the pair stumble upon the Captain’s house rather than the mental institution. Could it be that there’s one of these below every single cabin?

With truths being unveiled, Eyk Larsen reveals even more horrifying truths. It turns out his signature is on the passenger list for the Prometheus, which seems to hint that he was actually the captain aboard that ship. Just as they reveal this, heading up to the deck they find the ticking noise has gone (presumably from Daniel’s tinkering) and the rabble of survivors convening together.

The Captain receives another telegram, repeating that familiar “sink ship”, but as Daniel appears, it would seem that they actually mean the Kerberos, not the Prometheus.

But that’s not all. Remember the strange arrow symbols? Well Henry Singleton, sitting in a plush office, receives these regarding “Project Kerberos” and immediately tells his subordinate that they haven’t got much time. He needs the boy for some reason. As he stands up and looks outside, a towering pyramid sits on the horizon. What on earth is going on?

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The Episode Review

So it would seem that this Project Kerberos is actually one big experiment and they’re using this for some reason against the passengers. It’s still unclear what the end-goal is here but it would almost seem like it’s some sort of behavioral study.

Understanding how Maura slots into all of this, not to mention the overarching mystery involving her father being a key component in the study, is a lovely twist and one that you’re unlikely to see coming. However, the fate of these passengers seem to be eerily linked to that of the Prometheus but I’d imagine we’ll start to see more of this over time and hopefully understand how everything is connected together.

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You can read our full season review for 1899 season 1 here!