The second episode of “Extrapolations” took place in 2046 and focused on Rebecca Shearer (Sienna Miller), her son Ezra, who was suffering from a condition called “summer heart,” and the last surviving whale that Rebecca was working with. Despite being somewhat aware of the inevitable outcome of her work at Menagerie 2100, which was to drain the brains of the species that were on the brink of extinction and then clone them, Shearer tried to learn what she could from the whale’s experiences. In her personal life, Ezra struggled to maintain his health in the hot climate of Colombia while trying to grapple with the fact that every species on Earth was dying. The episode concluded with Rebecca taking Ezra to see this whale before it ran away to a place where humans couldn’t reach it or was killed, and subsequently moving to Alaska. “Extrapolations” Episode 6 opens 20 years later, where we see that Ezra has apparently conquered his physical ailments and is working in London as a substitute for those who have lost their loved ones.
Major Spoilers Ahead
Ezra Starts to Lose His Memories of Lola
If the adult Ezra Haddad’s face looks familiar, it’s because the character is being played by Tahar Rahim, who played Ezra’s father, Omar, in “Extrapolations” Episode 2. Ezra apparently married his high school friend Lola, whose younger version was played by Bella Patel Sauer, while the adult version is portrayed by Devika Bhise. They both used to suffer from summer hearts. But over the years, humanity found an experimental cure for it. It worked for Ezra, but it didn’t for Lola, and she died with her and Ezra’s child in her womb. Ezra is surviving at a great cost, as he is constantly at risk of losing his memories. That’s why he has to keep them in a memory-saving, cloud-based device called Cache Cloud, which allows him to revisit his time with Lola. This is an expensive endeavor; hence, he helps people who have lost their loved ones or need some closure by acting like the person they need in that situation. And by acting, I mean he changes everything about him, from his physical appearance to his sexual orientation, by downloading information about that individual from the cloud so that his clients can have an immersive experience.
When Ezra Haddad goes to pay for the extra fees that Cache Cloud is asking for in order to retain his memories, the topic of the blockchain comes up. And where there’s blockchain, there are enormous amounts of energy consumption, which is obviously contributing to the climate crisis. The relevance of this particular plot is to highlight the current and real-life push to shift to cryptocurrencies, which relies on blockchain mining and is, therefore, one of the biggest reasons for the environmental crisis we are in or heading towards. Anyway, coming back to Ezra, he is forced to let go of some of his memories to avoid paying for the extra charges that Cache Cloud is asking for. Then we see all the other people that Ezra is working for, in addition to Natasha Alper (Gemma Chan) and her daughter Harlyn (Scarlett Sher). He has to go on a date with a Frenchman named Derek Lejeune. He has to meet with an elderly woman named Dariya, who only speaks Arabic, and pretend to be her son. All seems to be going well until Ezra learns that he’s suffering from something called vascular dementia, which indicates that his neurons are toast, thereby pushing him toward a decline in his cognitive abilities.
Ezra and Natasha Get Intimate With Each Other
Although Ezra’s situation is slowly deteriorating, he is helping Natasha and Harlyn’s lives get better. So much so that Natasha agrees to go out for a drink with Ezra and talk about each other’s lives. That’s when we get to know that Natasha’s ex, David, isn’t dead; he has essentially bailed on his family and started one in the United States of America. Ezra doesn’t just use data; he puts a lot of himself into his performance as a stand-in. So, he uses the information that Natasha gives on the spot and gives her some closure by apologizing on behalf of David. Of course, this completely dystopian but wholesome moment is followed by two back-to-back issues. Firstly, Dariya is dead, and secondly, Ezra has exceeded his Cache Cloud space. He tries to rely on his organic memory by reciting words that are synonymous with Lola in order to keep his brain functional. But it doesn’t exactly work. Therefore, he hires a stand-in, just like himself, to remind him of Lola. She does her best, but the tattoo on the back of her neck prevents Ezra from having an immersive experience.
On top of all this, the Cache Cloud employee, Janice (Marilee Talkington), keeps pestering Ezra about paying to increase his memory space or deleting his memories. So, in the heat of the moment, he deletes everything except any memory with the keyword “Lola.” That means everything about his mother and his grandmother is gone, and he has to live with that. Things get worse the following day when Ezra learns that an earthquake has destroyed the servers that are used to run the internet. Hence, everything about Ezra’s clients is gone, and he has to rely solely on himself and what he remembers about that particular client’s needs to keep himself employed. In a last-ditch attempt to retrieve his memories, because Janice is obviously of no help, Ezra turns to his shady neighbor (David Hywel Baynes) as he knows about all kinds of backdoor tactics to get what he needs. The neighbor obviously needs money, and to get that kind of cash (measured in units in the future, evidently), he has to double his workload and also cross a line, which is to participate in physical activities if that’s what the client needs. This change in his routine goes horribly for Ezra. However, his long-term contract with Natasha allows him to unwind as the two get intimate with each other.
‘Extrapolations’ Episode 6 Ending Explained: What Happens To Ezra’s Memories Of Lola?
Predictably, the nice moment shared between Ezra and Natasha is ruined by Ezra’s need for money as he charges her for the night they spent together. Things get worse for him as he takes on a client for whom he needs to get punched in the face. When he goes back to Natasha, she gives him an earful for making that desperate move. So, after a lot of bickering, Natasha gives a very practical solution. She tells him that David isn’t coming back, and no matter how hard he fights to retain Lola’s memories, she isn’t coming back either. But since they, Ezra and Natasha, are alive, they can make the most of what they have instead of holding onto the past. This completely changes Ezra’s perspective. On his way back to his apartment, the neighbor threatens to leak Lola’s images to the world wide web if Ezra doesn’t pay up, and Ezra doesn’t listen to all that noise. At the end of “Extrapolations,” Episode 6, we see that Ezra, Natasha, and Harlyn are together now. As they walk through a mall, the billboard for Menagerie2100 announces that they’re bringing back the whale, and the one for Exowomb uses Ezra’s memories of Lola to promote their product.
I think this is the best episode of “Extrapolations” so far because it takes such an intimate yet sci-fi approach to deal with something so relatable, i.e., the memories of our loved ones. We all keep talking about how the period between 2020 and 2023 has been a haze, which is largely due to the condensed trauma we experienced during that time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All those horrifying incidents we witnessed have shifted or outright thrown out the memories that we want to hold on to. As we desperately try to retrieve those bittersweet moments shared with our family or friends, we forget to live in the present and cherish all the people we have with us right now. So, it’s good to see a show reminding us that, even when the planet goes downhill, we need to be there for those around us instead of resorting to some crypto nonsense, which will only make everything worse. Every actor in this episode is great, but Gemma Chan and Tahar Rahim are truly mind-blowing. And I know that everyone is going to hate Janice, but that only means that Marilee Talkington has aptly essayed every HR and PR professional we’ve come across in the past few years. Additionally, I like how it highlights that, in the hands of corporations, something as organic as a whale and someone as cherished as your wife can be used as content for marketing. In conclusion, stay with your loved ones, don’t hold on to the past too tightly, and don’t think too hard about the future.
