To save what’s left of the environment, the human population needs to be controlled at all costs. The ever-increasing number has weighed down the planet more than it can handle. But the truth is, we still don’t have any solutions to the problem. Netflix’s Parasyte: The Grey introduced a wave of parasitic creatures who enter the human body and take control of their consciousness. Their kind was created to keep a check on the human population and eat mankind without completely eradicating them.
Spoiler Alert
Much like the creators of the most deadly bioweapons in the world, we were not made aware of the person who created these “Parasytes,” but their main motive was quite clear. They wanted to control the human population by slowly picking out the extra weed. It all seemed like a little “farm” experiment where good insects are released into the agricultural lands so that they can “munch” upon the predators and save the yield. The yield, in our case, is Planet Earth. Maybe it was the reason why the creators of these “Parasytes” didn’t give them the ability to reproduce. In such a case, the parasite population, at some point in the future, would have exceeded the current human population, and exploitation of the planet’s flora and fauna would have remained the same. These “Parasytes” were vulnerable, had a short shelf life, and lacked human traits, which they were trying to learn once they invaded a human body.
As already established by the end of Parasyte: The Grey, the events of Netflix’s series and the Japanese anime took place in the same universe, or, in particular, on the same planet, Earth. However, there was a gap of almost 20 years between the two catastrophic events. The first waves of these “Parasytes” arrived on the planet’s surface in the early 90s. It could be theorized that the first wave was just an experiment in Tokyo (or Hiroshima in the manga) to test the impact of these creatures on human society. However, the event that took place in South Korea was a mass invasion, where the creator of the “Parasytes” wanted to curb the population of the entire world. Shinichi’s arrival during Parasyte: The Grey’s ending made it clear that he had already dealt with the issue in his home country and now had come to Korea to help Jun-kyung stop the parasites. However, as Jun-kyung mentioned during her initial briefing, these parasites were spotted throughout the world, which means we could see them as a “world-level” threat, and various global organizations may join hands to solve the issue.
The initial theories speculated on the fact that these parasites came from outer space. However, the opening text of the series made it quite evident that it was sent by “someone living on Earth” who wanted to protect the future of all living beings. If that’s not true, then it could have been sent down to Earth by another human settlement that could foresee the fate of mankind and wanted to protect them without directly interfering in their affairs. However, one peculiar thing that caught my attention was that in larval form, these parasites have only one true goal: to take over a human brain; however, as soon as they entered a human body, their agenda gradually changed.
This particular trait was quite evident in Pastor Kwon’s case, who wanted to rule mankind instead of “eating” them. Kwon’s greedy ambitions, ironically, made him more human than a parasite (if you know what I mean). Hence, even though the creators had launched a full-fledged attack on humanity, they might realize in the near future that their bio-weapon wasn’t completely perfect and could easily lose track of their true mission.
Stretching this a bit, we had already seen how protective these “Parasytes” could become for their survival and would do everything in their power to save their host, which became evident in the case of Su-in and Shinichi. Now, you see, “survival” is a very interesting term. Earth has some 7 billion living humans. Now, on average, most of them want to live or survive, right? So, as a person, a judge, or an executioner, how will you decide whom to kill and whom to let live? And on what grounds? And why should the person making those judgments have that kind of authority? There is literally no answer to these questions; only further arguments. This is why Thanos’ snap was kept so ambiguous.
However, in the new setup, we have both parasites and humans coexisting together, and therefore, the next season of Parasyte: The Grey is probably going to explore this aspect in great detail. Additionally, we could speculate on the introduction of the creators of these creatures, who would either bring further wrath upon the world or help Su-in and Shinichi contain the mess that they had created. Based on the existence of mutants, we could definitely theorize that there are more like Su-in and Shinichi out there, and we might meet these powerful superhumans in the next season who would team up to save the rest of humanity from the “Parasyte” invasion.
