Surface season 1 follows the story of a woman named Sophie Ellis, who lost her memory after a terrible accident. Some believed that Sophie had tried to take her life by jumping off of a boat, and there were a few who suspected some foul play. Apart from that one tragic incident, there were other things too about Sophie’s life that nobody had any clue about. She hailed from the United Kingdom, but one day, she’d decided to come to the USA. Nobody knew what had influenced her to make that move, what happened to her friends and family, and how she didn’t have even a single person from her past life with whom she was in touch. Since season 2 is going to be released in a couple of days, we thought it would be best to do a quick recap of all the major events that transpired in Sophie’s life in Surface season 1.
Spoiler Alert
How did Sophie lose her memory?
At the beginning of Surface season 1, we got to know that Sophie had lost her memory after she apparently attempted to take her own life. Sophie had jumped off a cruise ship, but fortunately, she was rescued and immediately taken to the hospital. But as a result of the fall, she suffered grave injuries, and she ended up losing her memory completely, to the point that she didn’t even recognize James, her husband, or her closest friends.
Sophie wasn’t sure if she actually wanted to take her own life or if there was someone else who’d tried to kill her and then made it look like a suicide attempt. Sophie, for the first few episodes, kept uncovering certain details, which made her unable to trust her husband, James, completely. She had a feeling that James had had something to do with what happened to her, as she kept getting visions of this man responsible for her accident, and she wasn’t sure who he was. Sophie wanted her therapist, Hannah, to do something about her situation and help her get back her memory, but that was easier said than done. From “neurofeedback” to all sorts of other techniques, Hannah tried everything she could, but she told Sophie that there was no shortcut to her problem and that they would have to keep meeting and putting in the hard work. Sophie wanted to try some experimental therapy where hallucinogens were used on a patient, but Hannah didn’t allow her to do that. Sophie felt extremely claustrophobic at times because she felt that she didn’t know who she was. Moreover, inconsistencies in her husband’s narrative made her even more suspicious about everything. Sophie kept having these weird dreams where she saw an unknown woman smeared in blood and calling her Tess. Sophie didn’t know who Tess was and what she had to do with her.
What did Thomas Baden tell Sophie about her past?
Now, firstly, Sophie realized that James was not telling her the entire truth. She realized that even Caroline, who was a common friend of the couple, was also hiding something from her. Caroline was actually James’ ex-girlfriend turned best friend for the longest time, and after James met Sophie, she became close to her too. Caroline and James had dated back in the day, but eventually, they had decided to be friends since things didn’t work out between them. One time, Sophie found her medical records, and she got to know that, before her alleged suicide attempt, she had gone to consult a doctor after she had suffered injuries. In the medical report, it was clearly stated that the injuries indicated the possibility of the patient being abused, but Sophie, at that point in time, had denied any such allegations. Sophie met Officer Thomas Baden around that time, and that made her life even more complicated. Thomas was an undercover agent working for the narcotics department. Sophie got to know that she had had an extramarital affair with Baden, and he believed that it could have been one of the prime reasons why James wanted to kill her. But Baden also hid a lot of facts from Sophie, and he only told her things that conveniently favored his narrative in order to complete his mission. He had done background research on James and gotten to know that he had lied about his whereabouts on the day Sophie jumped off the boat. James had told the authorities that he had gone to Portland for a conference, but that was not true.
Meanwhile, Ascendant Global Management, the firm where James worked, launched an internal inquiry to find out about the misappropriation of certain sums of money. Around 10 million dollars was missing from the accounts, and nobody had any clue where that money had gone. When Sophie got a whiff of James’ involvement in the matter, she presumed that her accident and the fraudulent activities that James was involved in were somehow linked. Baden and Sophie got really close at that time, and the latter told him everything about James’ involvement in the scam. Baden wanted to tip off his seniors about it so that a formal inquiry could be launched, but before that, he knew that he would have to collect enough evidence to show that his claims were not baseless. Baden managed to win Sophie’s trust, and they started meeting on a regular basis. Baden, with Sophie’s help, was able to gather all the evidence that he needed to expose James, but then there came another twist that neither Sophie nor Baden had foreseen.
Did James steal the money from his firm?
Sophie was trying very hard to just be calm and do what was right, but then one day, all hell broke loose after she consumed some hallucinogens and went missing for an entire night. Baden and James both got really worried for her, but then she recovered the next morning and asked James to tell her everything. That’s when James told her what had actually happened and why he had kept the truth hidden from her. So James was in a junior position at his firm when he met Sophie for the first time. James had gone to a restaurant to get a client on board, but the meeting didn’t go his way. Sophie worked as a waitress in that same restaurant, and after James’ guest left, she went and had a conversation with a disappointed James. It can be said that Sophie gave James the hope that he needed at that point in his life, and she was one of the prime reasons why he could climb the ladder of success. Sophie was a confident woman, and she was pretty good at grabbing people’s attention and stealing the spotlight. There were times when Sophie convinced clients on James’s behalf, and she spoke with such conviction that it became impossible for people not to get persuaded. Harrison, James’ close friend, had her doubts about Sophie from the very beginning. At times, Harrison saw how, just to woo the clients, Sophie created fictional narratives and how casually she told lies. There came a time when James became wary of Sophie’s presence, and he felt that every time they were at a party, she stole his thunder. He started to feel that whatever he had been able to achieve was because of Sophie’s smooth communication skills. James felt invalidated, and that created a big gap between him and Sophie.
One thing led to another, and Sophie started meeting Baden on a regular basis. James also got intimate with Caroline at that point in time, and their relationship really went through a bad phase. Sophie and James decided to give their relationship another chance and mend things between them. Sophie met a prospective client at that time who was starting a venture for which he needed investments from a third party. After going through the brochure, James decided to invest in that project, and he told Sophie that she could be at the forefront of the deal. That’s when James took 10 million dollars from his firm’s account, hoping that he would return it once the venture made a profit. But soon, he realized the blunder he had committed. Sophie kept all the money for herself and shelled it into an offshore account under the name Tess. Sophie was basically trying to start afresh. She was securing her future in case things didn’t work out between her and James. James found out about it, and he confronted Sophie. Just after that confrontation, Sophie got on a ship and jumped off it. That note she had left behind was, in reality, not a suicide note, but her parting words to James before she vanished from his life. After Sophie learned the truth in Surface season 1, she felt like she was a terrible human being. She didn’t know why James still wanted to be with her after all this as he had endured so much. But James told her that he loved her and that he was ready to forget everything, as he still wanted to spend an eternity with her by his side.
Who killed Baden?
There were also things about Baden that neither James nor Sophie knew about. After James told Sophie the truth, she went and asked Baden to just let them be and not go ahead with his investigation. Sophie asked Baden to destroy all the evidence he had collected, and she told him that it was because of her that James was in a mess. Baden didn’t want to do that, because he wanted Sophie to run away with him. Baden was madly in love with Sophie, and he just didn’t want to lose out on the opportunity to have a life with her. But then came another revelation that stirred things in Sophie’s life. So, back in the day, when Harrison was skeptical about Sophie’s intentions, he’d hired a private investigator to track her movements and find out about her hidden motives, if there were any. That private investigator was Baden, but instead of reporting to Harrison and doing the job he was hired for, he got obsessed with Sophie. Once Sophie got to know about it, she went up to Baden and told him to stop following her as she didn’t want anything to do with him. Things would have been fine even after all that had Harrison not acted on his own accord. Now Harrison, just to look out for his friend, told the drug mafia that Baden was an undercover agent. The mafia got Baden killed, and nobody got to know that it was Harrison who had tipped them off. Before Baden got killed, he gave Sophie a pen drive, and told her that though he was hired by Harrison, he didn’t have any bad intentions for Sophie. He told her that he actually fell in love with her because he felt that they both came from pretty similar backgrounds. Baden’s death shocked Sophie, and she decided that she needed to get to the root of the matter and find out everything about her past.
Why did Sophie fake her death?
The pen drive that Baden gave Sophie had a video from the day Sophie jumped off the ship. The recorded footage came from a camera installed on another ship. In that video, Sophie saw that she had jumped from the ship on her own accord, and nobody had pushed her or forced her. A police officer named Sager from the SFPD came to James’s house as he wanted to ask a few questions of Sophie about Baden and his untimely demise. Sager told Sophie that a man was present on the deck when she had made the jump, and the moment he saw her jumping off the ship, he came running to see what had happened. Sager told Sophie that, if she wanted, he could arrange for a meeting between her and that guy. Sager also said one more thing: he told Sophie that it seemed as if she had decided on that specific spot where she wanted to make the jump, indicating that probably she wanted herself to be captured in that camera installed on another ship. I mean, Sager’s point did make sense. If a person wanted to take their own life, it should not have mattered to them where they jumped into the water. Sophie knew that she needed to find some answers. She wanted to know who that woman was whom she kept seeing in her visions. She knew that she was not merely a figment of her imagination and that the woman actually existed. Sophie checked the clothes she was wearing on the day she jumped off that ship, and she found a key there. Apparently, Sophie had bought space in a storage facility near the dock just before she jumped off the ship. She went to the storage facility to find a passport under the name of Tess Caldwell, which I believe is her real name. She also found some cash in her bag, which I believe she would have intended to use in the future. One thing became very clear to Sophie: the last time too, she’d wanted to fake her death, and her intention was never to take her life. Things didn’t pan out the way she had planned and she met with an accident. It could be possible that the man who came running after her the moment she jumped might know something.
So at the end of Surface season 1, Sophie left her belongings near the San Francisco Bay area and then took a flight to London using her old passport. Sophie withdrew money from her account, under the name of Tess, and she wired the entire amount to Caroline, as she knew that James had taken money from her to make up for the amount he had taken from the firm’s account. The authorities presumed Sophie to be dead, but James and Caroline both knew that she had faked her death because she wanted to disappear from their lives. Sophie left a video for James where she asked him to accept the fact that their relationship was over, and she urged him to carry on with his own life. I believe that James won’t be able to do that; he will keep looking for her in the next season as well. As for Sophie, she met the same woman whom she saw in her visions. That woman’s name was Eliza Huntley from England, and she was extremely shocked to see Sophie standing in front of her. Eliza addressed Sophie as Tess, which made it clear that that was her real name. In season 2, we will get to know what exactly happened in Sophie’s past and what role that woman, Eliza, had to play in it.
One thing that became quite clear from the trailer of season 2 was that Sophie or Tess’s mother had been murdered, and Eliza Huntley, her family, and a lot of other influential people had some role to play in it. It would be interesting to see what Sophie finds out about her past and if she is able to expose the perpetrators.
