1899 – Season 1 Episode 7 “The Storm” Recap & Review

The Storm

Episode 7 of 1899 starts with Daniel and Maura making love. After, Maura wishes that they’d stay like this forever, discussing memories and how the mind processes the world around us. As alarm bells wail in the background and Maura disappears from this memory, Daniel hurriedly gets dressed and heads outside, where he finds clothes on the floor and that familiar sight of the mental hospital in the distance. “Wake up,” comes the whisper, as we cut to Maura inside the hospital.

Daniel is locked inside the room but he pleads with Maura to let him out, pointing out that the shutdown has started and they haven’t got long until everyone dies again. Instead, Maura rushes away and heads back up to the deck, where a storm begins raging and wind whips around the boat.

This isn’t good news, especially as none of the passengers can actually steer the ship – especially in stormy conditions. While everyone else heads off to find the captain, Mrs Wilson hangs back; her whole hand has turned black after touching that strange black material.

As she sits down to gather her strength, Maura passes and offers some words of encouragement, telling her to imagine this is all in her memory. Memory… of course! Maura gets her eureka moment and believes the Captain is back inside his own memory. Everyone onboard is trying to find Eyk Larsen and right now, no one seems to know where he is. But we do. He’s onboard the Prometheus.

Meanwhile, Daniel pries open a grate on the wall and finds a compartment behind that can be crawled through. Naturally, that gives him the way out. Well… sorta. He scrambles through and finds himself inside several different worlds, one after another. Each seems to be glitching out on account of the storm, but they’re all vastly different and seem to be designed for each passenger.

Daniel finally finds the young boy, pointing out that Maura still doesn’t remember but in order to help her, the pair need to find the code and his device to stop what’s happening. Handing over a ring, the young boy smiles sadly. “She’ll wake up this time.” He says. Unfortunately, the boy has also been found by one of the ship’s officers, who uses a tablet to search the entire vessel for him. Once he catches wind of his heat signature, the officer hurriedly sets to work initiating a shutdown.

Circling back to that earlier instance of memory, Maura descends into Daniel’s personal hatch and finds a photograph of her and Daniel together, along with the young boy who’s clearly her son. As thin slivers of memory start to come back, Daniel hurries to his cabin to speak to Maura. He points out that the young boy is her son, Elliot, and she’s had false memories planted in her. Maura made herself forget to get rid of the pain.

“I know you remember.” Daniel whispers, and as he leans forward to kiss her, flashes begin to sprinkle back. Daniel points out that all of this is a simulation, “Plato’s cave allegory” he says, urging her to wake up and remember what’s happened. If she can’t do that, her consciousness if going to be stuck inside.

Daniel is determined to save her before everything restarts. There’s an override code to stop the shutdown but only Maura knows where that is. She’s hidden it but made herself forget.

Maura checks her locket, the one from the envelope, and finds a key. But what does it open? In order to find out, Daniel and Maura scramble to try and buy themselves more time, with Daniel inputting a code to try and anchor themselves to this simulation. It turns out this has happened dozens of times (explaining the ship graveyard last episode). Maura is caught in a loop and has been this entire time. They need to get to Elliot, and they only have 10 minutes to stop the cycle repeating again.

Meanwhile, Ling Yi hears the voice of her mother out on deck, and despite her jumping overboard earlier in the series, the young girl hurries out the bridge and confronts her. When Olek joins, he’s hit by a nasty wave surge that slams him off the edge of the boat and into the water below.

As Ling Yi tries to make sense of what’s happening, Jerome and Clemence take Lucien back to their cabin. He’s suffered a horrible seizure once more but this time it’s not good news. They’ve made it too late. Unfortunately, it’s also too late for Angel too, who’s crushed thanks to the ship lurching and cracking under the storm pressure. “I’m scared.” He says, before eventually passing away.

Unfortunately, this also causes a big break in the ship too, as water begins pouring in and flooding the cabins. Franz and Tove attempt to try and shut the doors, but realizing it’s impossible to do from the outside, Franz decides to save Tove and sacrifice himself. Anker and Iben also lose their lives too.

We then cut to Henry, who’s brought Elliot as requested. Henry is nonchalant in his reaction to the deaths, pointing out they constantly make the same mistakes and that’s because they rely far too heavily on emotion. According to Henry, that’s what makes them weak. And as we approach the end of all things, Henry’s voice crackles over the PA system, telling Maura that she’s come far but failed… again.

The shutdown initiates and the ship plunges into whirlpool, which reveals a strange bright light at the end. And just like that, everything changes. Eyk Larsen watches as another ship joins the graveyard, that being the Kerberos. The remaining passengers head up to the deck and try to make sense of what’s happening.

The Episode Review

1899 returns with another really solid episode, this time explaining the ties between Daniel, Maura and Elliot. For a while I genuinely thought that the boy was going to be a younger version of Daniel, but then that might be because I’m looking too closely at Dark!

However, the ideas here work well to give a sense of Westworld mixed with Dark, and 1899 has done a commendable job to keep things interesting and to mix in answers to some of its mysteries. The idea of this being one big simulation that’s been repeated constantly, and tying that in with concepts of memory and belonging is a nice way of giving this series definition.

The ending leaves things wide open for the next chapter though, and it’s anyone’s guess quite how this one’s going to finish now!