Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese’s “1899” largely takes place on a ship called Kerberos that’s carrying a bunch of immigrants from all across the world to the United States of America. But after traveling a significant distance, the crew receives a distress signal from a ship called Prometheus that had disappeared four months earlier. The captain, Eyk, decides to deviate from their usual course and get to the Prometheus and rescue any surviving members. This causes commotion amongst the crew and the passengers, but Eyk soldiers on. When they do go to the ship, it turns out to be in an extremely dilapidated condition, with the power out and no visible activity. Again, despite the crew’s apprehensions about the whole situation, Eyk takes Olek, Jérôme, Maura Franklin, Ramiro, and Franz. And the first thing that they discover is a boy named Elliot locked inside a cabinet with a black pyramid next to him. No other passengers. Just him.
Major Spoilers Ahead
Why Was Elliot In The Prometheus?
The answer to any question regarding “1899” is, “It’s a simulation.” We learn that a version of the events in the Kerberos had actually happened in the Prometheus (and several other ships because the simulations are running in a loop), and Elliot was a part of it too. Of course, Elliot doesn’t reveal that initially. As in, he literally doesn’t utter a word. He keeps handing the black pyramid to Maura since she’s the one taking care of him whenever she asks him any question about what went down in the Prometheus. He seems to have access to mysterious shafts embedded in the rooms of the Kerberos. He knows the unknown man, Daniel, who swam aboard the Kerberos one night and is familiar with the door-unlocking beetle (which ties in to Elliot’s real or fictional backstory where he was asked to let go of a beetle that looked like it instead of trapping it in a tin box by Maura) that he has. He even welcomes the mutiny by the people on the lower decks of the ship after a girl named Ada and several other crew members and passengers are found to be dead. It gives him the opportunity to show that he can be thrown overboard and magically reappear in the cabinet in Kerberos’s dining room.
The members of the Kerberos lock Elliot in the cabinet because they think he’s the devil or something, in the same way that he was found in Prometheus. Soon after that, a ticking sound starts to play all over the ship, causing everyone to go into a sort of trance and jump into the water. I am guessing that that’s exactly what happened during the simulation on the Prometheus too. How did he appear in “Prometheus” then? Like I said before, it’s a simulation, and Elliott is one of the constant aspects in all the loops. So, he has gone from one ship to another, and each time he has been labeled as the cause of the random deaths and then locked in the cabinet because that’s where he teleports to after being thrown off. But in the Kerberos, Maura jumps in to free Elliot, thereby forging a new path for him in this iteration of the loop. And since Maura chooses to get him out of the cabinet, he rewards her by telling her that he can’t say anything because “the Creator” is listening. Additionally, he takes her through one of the shafts that leads them out of the simulation of the ship to the simulation of a remote mental hospital.
Why Did Elliot Want To Help Maura Franklin?
The short answer to that question is that Elliot is programmed to help Maura get out of the simulation. Now, let’s get to the longer answer. It’s clear that he’s working with Daniel to get to the Creator and then wake up into the simulation Maura is in. But Elliot is doing things of his own volition, too, thereby straying from the decisions he has made in the previous loops. That becomes apparent when Daniel appears in the mental hospital simulation and tells Elliot that he shouldn’t have brought Maura there because the Creator knows they are there too. Daniel asks him if he has ever brought Maura there before. Elliot says that he didn’t because she didn’t remember, thereby reaffirming the fact that in the previous loops, she didn’t take him out of the aforementioned closet. Daniel advises him to stay in the simulation because Henry (and his secret associate, Sebastian, i.e., the first mate on the Kerberos) won’t find him there. He takes this advice so seriously that he literally doesn’t appear in an entire episode (the episode being the sixth one).
In the 7th episode of “1899,” it’s revealed that Elliot is actually Maura and Daniel’s son. This comes as a surprise because Maura has previously stated that she can’t have a child. However, in the simulation, which mirrors Daniel and Maura’s home, we see pictures of her along with Daniel and Elliot. When Daniel finally gets to the simulation in which Elliot has been hiding, the kid even refers to Maura as his “mum” and says that she needs to remember where the “code” is in order to break the current loop of the ship simulation. So, on the surface, Elliot is working with Daniel to help Maura remember her own identity and her relationship with them. And since time is against him (and Daniel), he has to do it quickly, or else the simulation will restart, and Maura will forget that he’s her son. If you ask me, I didn’t see any sense of urgency in him. It isn’t indicated anywhere that the simulation has to go a certain way before Elliot can reveal via a notepad that “the Creator” is listening to everyone. But, hey, maybe that’s the pace at which he likes to work.
What Did Henry Singleton Reveal To Elliot At The End Of ‘1899’?
The big question that looms over Elliot’s head is, “What’s going to happen once he manages to wake Maura up from the simulation?” Well, it’s going to break a couple of simulations. Just to be clear, there are three simulations going on in “1899.” The big one in the Prometheus spaceship is being controlled by Ciaran, i.e., Maura’s brother. In there, Maura is holding Elliot hostage and injecting him with some kind of liquid (the white one awakens the patient, and the black one puts them back into the simulation). Maura’s experiment on Elliot is creating the second simulation, in which the “creator” is Henry Singleton, and Elliot and Daniel are Maura’s saviors. And there’s the third simulation involving all the ships, in which Maura and the rest of the eight characters are the hapless passengers stuck in 1899. So, Elliot needs to wake Maura up so that the simulation in Elliot’s head can stop, which will then lead to the end of the simulation that Maura is in (which is being controlled by Ciaran).
Now, why is Elliot in a simulation created by Maura? According to Henry, Elliot is dying, and that’s why Maura has trapped him in this simulation so that they can be together all the time. Does Elliot exist beyond all the simulations, i.e., in real life aboard the Prometheus spaceship? I don’t think so. He’s a figment of Maura’s imagination, the personification of Maura’s unborn child or the son that she has lost for some inexplicable reason. Since Maura can’t cope with Elliot’s death, she has created the first tier of the simulation where she’s keeping Elliot alive. That has caused the imaginary Elliot to become sentient and create a simulation (which is an extension of Maura’s feelings) where Maura’s soul is being saved by Elliot. But then again, all of this can be Ciaran’s doing, and he is creating these illusions for Maura because that is how much he hates her. Therefore, is Elliot going to appear in Season 2 of “1899”? It all depends on whether Maura is going to be forced into yet another simulation. If this story sticks to the spaceship, maybe this is the last we’ll see of Elliot.
