“Chosen” is a Danish series created by Jannik Tai Mosholt and Christian Potalivo. The series has merged the teen drama genre with sci-fi. The story unfolds in a fictional Danish town named Middelbo, where a meteor struck 17 years ago, helping the otherwise sleepy town gain popularity. Emma is a teenage girl who cannot seem to fit herself into the ways of the town. She is the central character who uncovers hidden secrets around her. While “Chosen” tries to bring the best of both worlds, it complicates the storyline and ends up with too many loose ends.
‘Chosen’ Plot Summary: What Is It About?
Middelbo, a small town, came into prominence after a meteor struck right next to Hussain’s supermarket. Hussain turned the incident into a business opportunity and established the Meteor Museum. Initially, people from far and wide came to the town to take a look at the mysterious occurrence, but gradually it became a spot for school excursions. Emma was a tour guide at the museum. It was under her supervision that a school kid mishandled the meteor, breaking it into pieces. This made Emma suspicious, as a meteor would not break simply by touching. The idea of her town and its people became blurry when she was asked to stay silent about her doubts. In the process, she met a group of teenagers who had similar doubts and were researching the meteor strike in depth. Their theory was that it was not a meteor strike that took place 17 years ago, but rather a crash landing of a spaceship. They firmly believed that extraterrestrial beings did exist in their town, and they wanted to prove their theory with evidence.
Meanwhile, the generation of outer space signals from Middelbo led to the arrival of Thomas Damborg and his company, who apparently entered the town to build ships and revive the old port.
From alien invasion to teenage drama at its core, “Chosen” tries to balance between the two. The phenomenal performance by the young cast makes it an engaging watch, though several plots are left unexplained, leaving too many holes in the story. Even though the series initially focused on Hussain and his immediate claim to fame and wealth, the character gets lost in the process. ‘Chosen’ did not explain what sort of adjustment took place between the aliens and humans such as Hussain, who was apparently present at that spot.
What Did Hans Plant Inside Emma?
The teen group that was led by Mads oversaw the people of the town. They spied, especially on those who were close to that spaceship landing. One night, Marie and Emma watched Susan, the doctor Emma often visited. They saw Susan and Hans, their biology teacher, engage in a conversation. They assumed the two to be involved in a romantic relationship.
The next day in class, Hans asked Emma to meet him at his place. Initially, Emma feared the idea, but the group advised her to visit him and plant a device on his computer through which they could extract data. Emma reached his place, while Hans was busy on his phone. Emma searched for evidence at his apartment. She felt something mysterious was taking place in his basement, even though it seemed normal visually. Hans got off the phone and asked Emma to leave, as he had nothing to talk about. He added that he knew what Emma felt, she felt like an outsider. Emma left his house, scared by his words. The next day, Emma went to Hans’s place, this time with Marie and Frederik. As Hans left his apartment, Emma entered to collect evidence.
Meanwhile, Marie and Frederik followed Hans. Hans met Susan, and the couple argued, though the subject was unclear. As Hans left and got into his car, Marie tried to call Emma and found that she had left her phone in the car itself. Panicked by the situation, Marie ran to help Emma.
When Hans caught Emma trying to enter the basement, he took her inside the house. While Hans held on to Emma, a mysterious figure attacked Hans. The figure moved with great speed. Hans injured the man after getting hold of him and also punched Emma, leaving her semi-conscious. Hans carried Emma’s body to the basement. The basement was a strange place, with neon lights and fungi-like growth on the ground. Hans planted an alien device on Emma, which transported her to a place that was beyond time and space.
After planting the device, Hans chose to kill himself, knowing that a mysterious figure would hunt for him. The figure who was dressed as a space warrior entered the room and saw Hans’s body and Emma. Emma had blood dripping from her lips after the struggle with Hans. After seeing her blood, the warrior lets Emma leave the house.
Emma witnessed Hans’s strange blood, which was fluorescent in color. Clearly, this indicates he was not a human species. This demarcated the aliens from the humans. Emma later popped the device out of her body and figured that it reacted to her blood and generated a type of signal. Later, Lucas, the alien warrior, explained that it was a tracking device that could help one reach the alien species’ spaceship. So, why would Hans give a device that would help track their spaceship to Emma? The mystery is gradually explained.
Lucas And Emma’s Alien Hunt
Mads was not ready to accept everything Emma witnessed. He envied her for knowing more than him. This created a rift between the group members. Emma believed she was more than just a carrier of the device Hans planted and wanted to learn more about the alien species. She approached Lucas, the alien who came to Earth 17 years ago to kill the extraterrestrial terror organization. Lucas had previously explained himself to Emma, and she decided to trust him for help. Lucas apparently lost his planet to this terror organization that was notorious for manipulating people, and he wanted to save the Earth from facing the same fate as his people.
Emma and Lucas’s friendship was one of a kind. She helped him with information, and he murdered the aliens in question. Things took a turn when Emma went to collect information at Susan’s chamber. She found blood samples of the alien species. Lucas and Emma followed Susan. They witnessed her having a conversation with Emma’s mother. This took Emma by shock. She decided to spend some time alone. She rechecked the blood samples and saw the name of her mother written on one.
Emma concluded that her mother was not her biological mother but rather an alien. She feared that her biological mother might have been harmed by her stepmother. She felt that her life was a lie. She loved her mother immensely, but she now could not help but doubt her intention.
‘Chosen’ Ending Explained – Was Emma An Alien?
Emma decided to confront her mother at a restaurant. Meanwhile, Emma informed Lucas about her mother. He advised her to not be manipulated. At the restaurant, instead of her mother, another man, Emma had previously seen near the alien spaceship, sat across from her. Emma tried to scream, but she realized that the space was created in her mind and was not real, as the people around her could not hear her voice. The man disclosed what took place 17 years ago. They belonged to a different planet where war was taking place. Fearing for their lives, they left in search of a planet where the inhabitants looked like them. They found Earth and decided to land and stay hidden on the planet. Sadly, their spaceship caught fire, and they crashed into the Earth’s surface.
Emma’s biological mother was a member of the group that arrived on Earth but could not survive the crash. She died after giving birth to Emma. Emma’s mother, Lykke, was a human being who was present at the crash site. Hans asked Lykke to take care of the baby and from then on Lykke did whatever it took to protect Emma.
Emma was, therefore, an alien. As she pricked herself, she saw her fluorescent blood. Since childhood, she took the medicines her mother asked her to take, thinking it was for her mental health. She finally realized that the medicines helped in forming the red color of the blood. The people of her world advised her to reach the spaceship as they would soon leave. The signal that was recently generated was to inform aliens on Earth that the war on their planet was over.
Bombarded with identity information, Emma went home to find her mother lying dead on the floor. Lucas had figured that Emma was an alien from the same organization, and he intended to kill her, but Emma fought back. She escaped from Lucas and ran as far as she could to finally find the spaceship and the people of her community. However, the spacecraft broke down into dust as Lucas killed her people. Before dying, they advised Emma to run as far as she could and find more people from their planet who survived. ‘Chosen’ ended with Emma imagining her planet, the place she could finally call home.
The spaceship and the people around it were probably a constructed image, through which she learned how Lucas was killing her people and could be the reason for the destruction of the spaceship. ‘Chosen’ addresses the question of identity and how Emma always felt out of place in this world, only to learn that she never really belonged here. Her misunderstanding regarding her mother was also corrected; the blood sample she had in hand was her own but was labeled under her mother’s name.
Though ‘Chosen’ has a lot more explaining to do, the history of the aliens and the people is not clear, along with the illusional space constructed by the aliens. Added to that is also the truth of the Lucas character. You might end up questioning Emma’s intelligence, considering how she witnessed several significant occurrences but never cared to take pictures of them. You might also be reminded of Stranger Things, be it by the audio track or, at times, even the visual panic. Nonetheless, “Chosen” is an entertaining watch that needs to be back for another season.
‘Chosen’ is a 2022 Danish Science Fiction Television Series streaming on Netflix.
