The ending of Netflix’s The Electric State movie sees a heartbreaking reunion between Michelle and her brother, Christopher. While this particular scene is quite similar in its essence in the Simon Stalenhag graphic novel, it plays out quite differently than the Russo Brothers’ magnus opus. [Spoiler Alert] Both the graphic novel and the film are centered around Michelle who embarks on a perilous journey across the United States to find her brother, who had reached out to her by piloting a Kid Kosmo drone. However, in the novel, Michelle, is sort of a solo traveler whose journey begins in the Mojave Desert, Pacifica and ends up in Point Linden, where she finally finds her brother lying motionless on a derelict bed wearing a Sentre neurocaster. But even though the neurocaster plays an important role in both the narratives, in the graphic novel Sentre’s recreational devices were based on a technology developed by the federal army during the 1970s to help air force pilots control unmanned machines in order to minimize the loss of life on the battlefield. In layman’s terms, this technology made use of neuronics to transfer data between pilot and drone without latency. In the film, Ethan Skate, the founder of Sentre, had come up with the idea of a similar neural network to link the drones and the casters, though he needed an impossible amount of computing power to run such a vast neural matrix, which the boy wonder, Christopher’s brain, made possible for him. The film never explains why Christopher was so special, but the book does. However, at the risk of repeating myself, Christopher, or Skip, had nothing to do with Sentre in the graphic novel.
What Made Christopher So Special?
In the book, a secondary character named Walter, a rogue cop, mentioned a new-age techno cult, the Convergence, whose followers believed that the interlinking of pilot’s brains during the war led to the creation of a hive mind inside the military neurograph. The neurocaster network, as introduced in the film as well, was a vast collection of billion and trillions brain cells, or maybe even more. This neural matrix gave birth to a higher consciousness, also called the Intercerebral Intelligence, which was trying to take a physical form by impregnating the female pilots. Throughout the war, the pilots’ numerous cases of stillbirths, which initially was considered a side effect of the neuronics, but Walter and the Convergence believed it was some kind of Intercerebral Divinity trying to take human form. Furthermore, the cult surmised that the superintellect eventually managed to create at least one successful pregnancy, and it was none other than Christopher, whose mother was a drone pilot during the war. Now because Christopher was a product of the hive mind with a perfect non-human genome, it was suggested that he had powers beyond imagination. Yes, that’s why Christopher, or his brain, was so special, though it was never explained in the Netflix film. The Convergence, who had a ton of money, just like Ethan Skate, always knew that Christopher was a special child, which was why they hired Walter, just like Skate enlisted Colonel Bradbury, to find the boy. The Convergence wanted to breed the boy and spread his non-human genome.
Why Did Michelle Kill Christopher?
Simon Stalenhag, on his social media, further revealed that he’d written a subplot centering around Christopher’s superhuman abilities through which he could explode peoples’ heads just like Victoria Neuman in The Boys series. This particular piece of information was missing in the graphic novel, which made it quite confusing as to what really convinced Michelle to remove her younger brother’s neurocaster which she knew would likely kill him. Earlier, Michelle’s foster mother, Birgitte, who got addicted to the headset device like the rest of the folks in town, passed away after her husband, Ted, removed her neurocaster.
Stalenhag’s social media post further revealed that Michelle also knew that her brother had special powers which could prove fatal to humanity, which was the reason why she embarked on a journey to the other end of the country to find her brother’s body and give him the peace he yearned for. Michelle and Christopher were separated from each other soon after their mother’s death. As soon as she passed away, Christopher was taken away by social services while Michelle ended up at her grandfather’s place in Kingston where she lived for three years. After his death, Michelle ended up with her foster parents, Ted and Birgitte, and she was on the brink of killing herself when she spotted a Kid Kosmo drone on the driveway holding the same toy she had given to her brother some nine years ago.
How Did Christopher Die In The Book?
The Kid Kosmo drone marked a location on the map and finally brought Michelle to her brother’s resting place in 2139 Mill Road in Point Linden, where she found her brother’s body no better than a corpse. It was quite similar to what we saw in Netflix’s film where Millie Bobby Brown’s Michelle saw her brother all wired up with life-support machines that were keeping him alive. In the graphic novel, Michelle found Christopher wearing a caster, through which he was piloting the yellow robot. It was obvious that Michelle didn’t want to take the little life left in her brother’s body, but she didn’t have a choice anymore. If she didn’t do what was necessary then someday or the other the Convergence would eventually find him and experiment upon him to unleash a monster upon the world from which humanity may never recover. This could be the reason why Michelle, just like her film counterpart, made the hard decision and took her brother to the beach where she removed his neurocaster, therefore giving him the peace he yearned for. The novel further suggests that Michelle took her brother to the ocean on a kayak as she didn’t want anyone to ever find him. The graphic novel keeps the ending ambiguous, though I am quite certain that Christopher didn’t make it, as his end was necessary for the survival of humanity.
Meanwhile, the film’s ending suggests that the yellow robot that was thrown into the scrap yard was somehow still functional. The ending shot implies that maybe Christopher’s consciousness was still alive in the drone. One of the details that I forgot to mention from the novel is that, on her way to Point Linden, Michelle came across hundreds of people on the road who were linked together, their neurocasters connected to a large drone that looked like a gigantic wild animal. The visual implied that the Intercerebral Intelligence might be trying to conceive another child to take physical form, maybe because it knew that Christopher was going to die soon. We never really see Christopher’s dead body, so if he is to make a return in a sequel, we can speculate that he would be using his powers to fight the hive mind and destroy it for good.
