The Showdown
After 5 episodes of build-up, Ad Vitam roars into life for its finale, delivering some much-needed answers and a shocking conclusion to our two lead characters. With plenty of questions left at the end despite these answers and minimal backstory around the people pulling the strings, Ad Vitam finishes things off with a finale that’ll please some but leave many feeling unsatisfied.
The episode itself starts with Darius being interrogated about last night’s events. He’s surprised that Christa didn’t turn the gun on herself after killing Virgil. After celebrating his last day in the force, Darius heads home and calls his wife. He then starts looking at CCTV footage from the night before where he sees Samian’s uncle, Charles Vanghen, smoking a cigarette.
Darius decides to investigate Charles which takes him to his place of work, the Stern museum, which is dedicated to the regeneration process and how it was created. Darius follows him to a secret bar where he encounters Odessa. After having a deep conversation with her about life, he starts to realize that everything is linked: the museum, the youth centre and the missing minors. Despite having the puzzle pieces in his grasp, he can’t quite align them in a way that fits together just yet.
Desperate for answers, Darius meets with Azuelo and relays all the latest developments from his investigation. He comes to the conclusion that Odessa and her company are using Avenir as a way of finding troubled minors. Reluctant at first, Azuelo finally agrees to help him by putting Odessa and Charles under surveillance. However, just as Darius is about to leave, Azuelo takes out his gun, ready to shoot his former colleague. A fight then ensues between the two and Darius barely escape by stabbing Azuelo in the neck.
Realizing that Azuelo was involved, he decides to takes his car where he finds a glowing key card with an octopus on it; the same icon found in Stern museum.
In the evening, ready to finally get to the bottom of it all, he makes his way to the museum which leads him to follow Odessa yet again. This takes him to the main function room where a lot of people are gathered. Suddenly, a tank appears where a young man is being kept. After being administered the regeneration, the tank is drained and the teen starts to scream in agony. We see him age rapidly within seconds into an old man and finally into the cocoon-like creature we’ve seen before.
Straight after, another tank lights up and this time, Christa is the victim. Darius rushes to her aid and shoots the tank in an attempt to free her. This causes everyone to panic and leave the building. Unfortunately, a piece of the shattered glass enters his stomach in the process. Despite his injury, he manages to flee the building with Christa.
Unable to run any further, Darius stops and sits against a tree. He tells Christa about his wife expecting a child and convinces her to go on without him. Watching her escape, he draws his final breath before dying there and then. As the police arrive and find the missing kids in the museum, they also come across the body of Darius in the forest.
A few days have past and Christa comes to visit Beat. She tells her that it’s thanks to Darius that she’s alive and that before he died he talked about his new child. Worried about Christa, Beat tries to convince her to hand herself in to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. Christa replies that it’s only the beginning and that people outside are not happy with what they have become.
The episode then ends with us learning that a new law has passed enforcing birth control measures and a smiling Christa meeting with other minors from the youth centre. As they look on with determination, they leave on a boat.
While the last episode does wrap up most of the story arcs and answers a lot of the questions raised, it still would have been nice to see more development on the role of Odessa and the museum in the kidnapping of minors. The ending does leave us with more questions though; just why were they experimenting on those innocent kids and where are Christa and the others going? These questions leave us wanting more and in a way, actually detract from some of the work leading up to this moment.
Ad Vitam has been a tense and interesting sci-fi thriller, one that definitely improved in the second half. The excellent use of electronica has been consistent throughout and the chemistry between Christa and Darius grew as the series ticked along. The ending could leave things open for a potential second season but for now, we leave the show wondering what we would do if we could live forever and how civilization would cope.
Given the ending 3% received after its first season, both shows do bear some similarities and with Netflix snatching the rights to international showings for this one, who knows if the streaming giants will renew this for future seasons. Only time will tell how people take to the latest French sci-fi thriller but there’s certainly potential here to expand further.
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Episode Rating
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My thoughts on the museum was that many of these eternal adults would never know what it means to die so for those considered “elites” or rich people who want to die vicariously through these children used it as a way to satiate their sick, curious minds. The lack of law intervention to prosecute these people displays how money/power/influence has provided them with loopholes during their lifetime. In my opinion, this show was poorly resolved.
Okay wow these comments answered the frustrated questions I had after finishing the last episode. Feels like they ran out of budget or something for episode 6. Thank allot guys. I’ll ref reviewgeek again to get some episode banter in the future
My take was that everybody turns into this larval stage/giant embryo during rejuvenation. The creature that emerges is brand new but has all of the memories of its source, except for memories in the tank (in an earlier episode, one of the anti-rejuvenators referred to the rejuvenated as ghosts of their former selves). The elite just want to watch it happen, to accept what they have become. Since the kids are unwilling, the tank is drained, killing the larva so the elite don’t have to deal with an angry rejuvenee. At the end though, with the passage of the new law, it seems that the elite have cut off their own supply of subjects to observe.
Christa was showing the other minors a map of the nature preserve Béat was promoting; she must have taken the copy from Darius’ house. I too was disappointed by the rushed feeling to the last episode. I would have liked a teaser about a police mole, or some indication of Elias’ political leanings. And what happened to Darius’ naïve sidekick? He never appeared in the last episode say all.
anyone know the name of the son played in Episode 6 when darius is in the restaurant with odessa?
What Jared said. Spot on. Picked up on what the reviewer missed.
I liked it a lot.
Did I binge watch it? No.
Still, I thought it was pretty well done overall. Some episodes needed some time editing I think.
The two main characters did grow on me.
I don’t think rapidly aging the minors was just a “work of art” to watch. Odessa had too much motivation. It’s true, she saw the amount of minors as a problem, and had not qualms about killing the incompatible minors, and using the compatible for her experiments. That doesn’t seem like it’s enough, especially in the grand scheme of the show. Everything else was very meticulously framed, everything else made since and fit.
Does anyone know if there’s anything I missed? My best guess is that either Odessa only in charge of executing the operation for population control, or it’s also an experiment that is looking so see if it’s possible to reverse the induced aging, and the “show” wasn’t finished because Darias rescued Christa. That, or some other type of research that’s trying to improve regeneration.
Odessa was too defensive of herself and too emotional at the experiments for it to a simple reason like “passing the time,” and/or just thinning the population. That’s probably what the carefully manipulated mass suicides were for, no reason to go the extra step and mutate something. Too complicated.
Maybe she did it to get off on the horror or seeing, since society was coddling all sense of feelings; you didn’t age anymore, rarely encountered sources of grief, and when you did there were “grievers” to make it hurt that much less. Maybe she did it to evoke emotions.
I was confused at the part of the teens in the tank at the museum. I didn’t understand the reason or purpose. Was there a point or reference?
And was Odessa getting arrested at the end?
When Odessa and Darius were talking, she mentioned finding away to deal with the passing time, since aging is no longer a thing. That wisdom and looking back on life has come to an end now that people live forever. He jokes that steak is what does that for her, but in reality, her and the other immortals get off on watching these minors rapidly age and die since they no longer get the satisfaction of a life well lived and dying themselves.
With the passing of the no birthing law, Crista smiles because her fears of these heinous things happening again (mentioned when talking to Beat) will disappear now that minors will essentially cease to exist.
She is headed to the Archipleago with some other minors to live out their lives like normal humans would since she realized throughout the show that suicide is not the answer.
I believe the minors were heading for the archipelago that was the subject of Béat’s protection project.
The ending was super rushed. If Azuela was working for the minor-snatchers, why would he give over evidence to Darius? There was no hint that anyone in the police was a mole throughout the entire series, so they added it in the end to allow Darius to put the pieces together and get a way into the event.
Darius didn’t take Azuela’s car either, because the operator was asking for Azuela to respond in the parked car as Darius was driving away. He found the black card in Darius’ pocket and took it with him. He didn’t know what it was until it lit up in his car.
Overall the ending was put together just to end the show, and really broke consistency with the rest of the show