“Undone” belongs to an altogether different genre of on-screen storytelling. It is rather genre-bending in its exploration of relationships and emotions via time travel. But it’s not as simple as it sounds. “Undone” compels you to think about what is real and what is not. Whether everything is real or if nothing is, And that’s the beauty of it. The show is easily able to tap into our minds and makes us believe just how cosmic we really are.
‘Undone’ Season 1: Short Recap
Alma is stuck in a mundane life until she sees her dead father in the middle of the road. This makes her run a red signal, and she has an accident. After the accident, Alma is able to see her dead father, Jacob, who died in a car crash and has somehow resurfaced for her. The questions that “Undone” Season 1 aims to uphold and answer are: Did Jacob die, or was he killed? How is he able to contact Alma? Is he a figment of Alma’s imagination or a symptom of Alma’s brain trauma due to her accident? Is Jacob traveling through time as well to help Alma find out the truth?
What follows is Alma being helped by her father, Jacob, to learn to travel through space and time as well as alter them. This will apparently allow Alma to find out the truth about her father’s death. But that’s not all that “Undone” Season 1 is about. Learning to travel through space and time is tough when one’s own timeline is difficult to face. Alma struggles to balance a frustrating life, one that jumps to and fro between her job at day-care and her so-called family that revolves around her live-in boyfriend Sam, way-too-normal sister Becca, and the quintessential traditional mother, Camila.
As Alma tries to uncover the truth, she has the opportunity to change the choices she has made in her life and to judge herself better, as well as literally think twice before judging others. By the end of “Undone” Season 1, she finds out that her father committed suicide, and is able to turn events so that his death never occurred. At the end of the Season 1 finale episode, we see her, with Becca, in front of a cave in Mexico, waiting for her father to come out.
Major Spoilers Ahead
‘Undone’ Season 2: Plot Summary – To Undo The Past And Fix The Present
While Season 1 dealt with Alma, as well as us, wondering whether whatever happened was real or not, the very beginning of Episode 2 makes it clear that it was. And while Season 1 was aimed toward a particular event (Jacob’s death), Season 2 takes Alma on a journey across the secrets and complexities of her past, and not just her past, but the past of her predecessors. And all of this is for the sake of the family.
If we are to consider the concept of “Undone,” then there are simultaneous timelines that are moving forward at the same pace. So, every moment of our lives has alternate versions, and each version leads to a different outcome. Each of these threads, composed of a series of moments and outcomes, becomes a timeline. So if one moment has one outcome and so on and so forth, it becomes a timeline. Season 2 begins with Alma realizing that she has reached a different timeline in which she has her father alive. To make it simpler, when little Alma is with her father on the night of his death, there are two outcomes (although there are a million possibilities, we will consider these two for the sake of the show): Either Jacob leaves her, or he doesn’t. And when Alma is able to prevent her father from leaving for his office (which Jacob helped her achieve as well), which would eventually lead to his suicide, Alma alters a moment that then leads to the formation of a new chain of outcomes, i.e., a new timeline (one that has an alive Jacob).
In this timeline, Alma has the memories from her previous timeline and, with time, remembers those from her new timeline. She is a Ph.D. scholar who teaches at a college alongside her father, who is now a gray-haired, withered being. However, in this timeline, Becca’s sister also has a special ability. She can access people’s memories. Alma tries to help Becca control her powers by calling upon a fog that allows them access to a particular memory. She also takes Becca to the wooden door that she has come across multiple times in this new timeline but is unable to open it. Alma tells her father Jacob about Becca’s powers. Alma and Jacob in turn tell Becca about her father’s death in an alternate timeline. Together they decide to find out what’s wrong with Camila and why she has been sad and secretive of late. When questioned about her calls to Mexico as well as a $5000 check she overdrafts, she doesn’t reveal who it is for. She rather drives off somewhere without telling Jacob, Alma, or Becca.
Alma and Becca track down their mother in Mexico, unbeknownst to their father, where they also have their maternal grandmother and aunt. Both arrive in Mexico but find out that Camila hasn’t been home. However, a picture at their home triggers Becca’s power, and she sees how her mother was heartbroken by a priest. When their love was discovered, the man chose the church over Camila. She left home, ashamed, and was, later on, tracked down by her mother to the very house that is in the picture. Camila’s mother accused her of having a physical relationship with a man outside of marriage. Alma and Becca find the house from the picture and are about to knock on the door when Becca passes out. A woman by the name of Alejandro owns the house, a name that the girls mistook for that of their mother’s secret lover, brings them inside. This seems to be the very woman whom Camila had been contacting all along. Strangely, Ms. Alejandro is also the woman whom Alma met outside the cave right after she arrived in this timeline. Ms. Alejandro knows Camila because it is at her place that Camila lived after she was disowned by her family, especially her mother.
Meanwhile, Becca, now better, has visions of holding a baby, which at first seems to be a manifestation of her fear of having a child. But later, it is revealed that she is actually having a vision of her mother, who also bore a child from the priest but later gave him up for adoption. As we later find out, Becca’s power (as a mystic) was also something that Jacob’s mother, Geraldine, and his grandmother had. Camila’s child was named Alejandro, after the very woman who gave her refuge. Alejandro would only find out about his mother after he was an adult. While Camila did come to see him, to see him was all she could do. Now that she had a family, she couldn’t possibly risk revealing the fact that she had a son (gay) from before her marriage. Meanwhile Jacob has come down from America as well after the girls tell him that they have found out a lot about Camila. Ultimately, when Alma, Becca, and Jacob reach Alejandro’s door, they find him as well as their mother Camila there. When Camila reveals that she did visit Alejandro but did not take him back, Alejandro is distraught and forces them all to leave his home. Later on, Becca manages to access their mother’s memory, which allows Alma to arrive at Geraldine’s timeline.
Alma somehow returns to her timeline to tell Becca and Jacob about Geraldine (who also has powers). Geraldine was admitted to a mental hospital due to her repeated unusual behavior, which was basically the result of her powers, but which others didn’t realize. The trio accesses Geraldine’s timeline again. They find out that Camila, who was very close to Geraldine, told her about her son Alejandro and asked her if she could adopt him and introduce him to her new family. But Geraldine disagreed, saying that nothing good would come out of it. Geraldine is then approached by Jacob (her son, who is from the future and whom she can see, thanks to her powers), who tells her to let Camila adopt Alejandro and that it will help fix many problems and free Camila of the cross she is bearing. But Geraldine denies it. Later, Alma, Becca, and Jacob find themselves in front of the same wooden door that Alma hasn’t been able to open all this while. All this time, Alma thought that it was Camila who was stuck inside. But now it seems that it is Geraldine.
Upon knocking on the door, a young Geraldine opens it and comes out. This younger version of Geraldine is what seemed to be Geraldine’s secret, one that she drew as a piece separated from the rest of the collage in her painting at the hospital. When Alma, Becca, and Jacob follow young Geraldine into her memories, they find out how her parents were taken away by the police, and she held herself responsible for it, although it wasn’t her fault. When Jacob tries to immerse him in the police officer as well as Geraldine’s father time and again so that he can prevent them from taking Geraldine’s parents away, Alma reaches out to the elder version of Geraldine at the hospital to ask for her help to stop Jacob from doing so (something that is clearly killing him). She agrees and comes to Jacob and tells him to stop. Finally, Geraldine also meets her younger version and reassures her that her parents’ absence was not her fault. This brings her the much-needed closure, and sure enough, all the Geraldines from the different moments of her life arrive to embrace her, along with Alma, Becca, and Jacob. This rectifies Geraldine’s timeline, which thus has a ripple effect and lets her agree to Camila’s request to adopt Alejandro, which in turn takes away Camila’s inhibitions. This ultimately sorts the entire timeline that Alma is in, and her family is happy and mended.
However, in the end, Alma loses her father to a stroke. He comes to visit her, along with Geraldine and her parents, bidding Alma the final goodbye. Ultimately, Alma returns to her previous timeline with the intention of helping her former self sort out her life, the self that has been waiting outside the cave for her father to return.
The World of Alma
“Undone” Season 2 stresses further on the fact that for Alma, the world is in constant flux. And the way in which we get the constant emotional revelations is only uplifted by the re-forming reality, which shows how every action has an effect on reality as a whole. And what makes “Undone” Season 2 an even larger take on this mind-bending nature of reality is how it is able to portray the depths of consciousness by reforming reality. Hallways turn into mirrors, history reveals itself through the present moment, and characters travel back and forth between childhood and adulthood. And the best part is how it shows that a single action committed by someone generations in the past can affect multiple people in the present.
Throughout “Undone” Season 1 as well as Season 2, we have seen Alma’s frustration with the people around her and how they always tend to turn their backs on the facts of life and demand her to do the same. But while in Season 1, she gives in to them, in Season 2, she overcomes this to become more self-aware. Perhaps one can say that in Season 1, her powers were a means for her to save her father, almost like an artifact that she was trying to learn more about and one which would help her save Jacob. But in “Undone” Season 2, she comes to know about space and time, how everything is connected, and that she is the very artifact that connects these two.
Geraldine’s Childhood
As made clear, it is Geraldine, Jacob’s mother, who is the source of Camila’s inhibitions. Geraldine saw her parents taken away by the police, and she blamed herself for it. If only she had been able to convince her parents about what she saw in the water bowl and that the police were coming to arrest them, her parents would still be there. And she wouldn’t have to travel all by herself to America from a location (probably Rotterdam, Netherlands, as mentioned on her cruise ticket). This loneliness and the fear of losing her family remained with her throughout her life. Perhaps this is what she didn’t want Camila to go through, i.e., Alejandro would be the reason for Camila to lose her family. A child from before Camila got married isn’t what worries Geraldine as to whether it will have a good effect on Jacob, Alma, and Becca or not. The reason she tells Camila to not adopt Alejandro is that she believes that it will ruin her life and make her just like Geraldine, alone and misjudged.
The pain that Geraldine has been carrying throughout her life has only increased with time. It has led her to shun an intrinsic part of herself from her life, and this has been portrayed beautifully in Episode 7. We see how her life is shown in the form of a separate artifact (almost like the tesseract in Nolan’s Interstellar) that carries every memory of Geraldine. However, it is the younger Geraldine who leads to those memories, without whom her entire life remains incomplete and broken. As Alma, Becca, Jacob, and an elder Geraldine embrace the younger Geraldine, a path begins to take shape that leads to the tesseract. This further allows the Geraldines from all the memories to come and accept the younger Geraldine and embrace her.
She would go on to let Camila adopt Alejandro, who would become an integral part of Alma’s family. And this would also have a positive effect on Camila, who would not have anything to hide from her family.
A Family Affair
“Undone” Season 2 is a family affair for the better. While Season 1 had her turn to Becca for help despite being reluctant, Season 2 shows Alma trying to bring her family together. Everyone is involved in the affair, and their powers are the thread through which this involvement spans across generations.
- Camila is distressed as she cannot reach out to her son Alejandro, no matter how much she wants to, out of fear that she will be disavowed by her family.
- Alejandro has realized that he is an out-of-place person in Camila’s family.
- Camila hides this, Alejandro’s secret, from Jacob.
- Jacob forms doubts in his mind about Camila, and so do Alma and Becca.
- Alma and Becca have different mindsets towards life and have temporary fall-apart every now and then.
- Geraldine and Camila had formed a strong mother-daughter relationship, which also fell apart due to Alejandro.
- Camila was disavowed by her mother, wrongfully.
- Geraldine held herself responsible for their parents’ being taken from her and was hurt when she was misjudged by her new family for her special condition.
There is a point where Becca tells Alma to stop her efforts to make Becca and their father join Alma on her “quest to be the big family hero.” Alma has been so much eaten up by herself and the way she was able to save her dad that she is willing to take any chance to make amends in the past, even if it means pushing the present away. Clearly, her steps to find out what happened to Camila were what strained her relationship with Alejandro, who, in turn, was the only way to amend things. Becca tells Alma that we all have to accept that bad things are going to happen and that it is a part of life. At Jacob’s death, the fact is established, and not even time travel can change it. Sure enough, at the end of episode 8 of “Undone” Season 2, Alma has to return to her previous timeline to sort things out for that version of herself that’s waiting outside the Mexican cave for her father’s arrival. This in a way shows how Alma accepts the “bad things” in her previous timeline.
‘Undone’ Season 2: Ending Explained – What’s Next For Alma? Will There Be A Season 3?
In the previous timeline, Alma tried to bring her father back, but it wasn’t successful. So she has to go back home and live her life the way it was. But this time, she has the memories of the new timeline wherein she sorts everything out. But will this be enough for her to go ahead with that version of her life? Will she be able to accept her old life that doesn’t have her father, Jacob, and her mother being the same old, traditional, distanced, and at-times-unrecognizable woman?
“Undone” Season 3 might show Alma revealing her powers to Becca and helping her meet their father too. And this might just allow the sisters to be stronger together, take care of their mom and understand her better. And not to forget, Alejandro also exists in this timeline so that they might have him back in the family. This will further result in Camila’s happiness, which is the very reason for her saddened self (the force behind “Undone” Season 2).
“Undone” is a 2019 Animated Fantasy series directed by Hisko Hulsing.
