Constellation Season 1 Ending Explained: What Happened to Jo, Alice and Magnus?
CAUTION, SPOILER ALERT. Based on a concept by Sean Jablonski and created by Peter Harness, Constellation is an Apple TV+ series that tells the story of Jo (Noomi Rapace), an astronaut who returns to Earth after a disaster in space, only to discover that key pieces of his life appear to be missing. As the season progresses, Jo discovers the truth about what happened to her in space and why she is in another reality. Next, I’ll tell you what happened to the characters from both realities in the last episode of the science fiction psychological thriller. After surviving a disaster aboard the International Space Station and making it back to Earth, Jo feels like this life doesn’t belong to her and struggles to reconnect with Magnus and Alice. Many things don’t match her memories: her daughter speaking Swedish, her affair with Frederic, and the piano in her house, so she begins to question the nature of reality.
Constellation has arrived in the Apple TV+ catalog to join the series set in space. Another female protagonist at the head of a mission, another underlying mystery to be resolved after returning from that same assignment outside our atmosphere, this time a psychological thriller that throughout seven episodes questioned the certainties and truths of characters and spectators. To arrive at an epilogue, available from March 27 on the streaming service, which opens up new worlds and ways of reading the story. Let’s review them together in our explanation of the ending, obviously reminding you that if you continue reading you may come across some spoilers. And indeed there are many strange presences, which the characters in the series call ghosts, in Constellation, as well as intertwining plots. To try to bring order, therefore, we have put together this summary explanation of the finale of the first season of Constellation.
Constellation Season 1: Plot Summary
The plot of Constellation is based precisely on this assumption: the miraculous return to our planet of Swedish astronaut Jo Ericsson (Noomi Rapace) after a serious accident on the international space station (an unidentified object hit the structure, compromising the systems life support). After a desperate fight for survival in the solitude of space, the woman finally manages to reunite with her husband Magnus (James D’Arcy) and her daughter Alice (played by the twins Rosie and Davina Coleman), but something seems to be wrong. Several elements of the reality around her would seem different from how she remembered them, both in small details and in more macroscopic discrepancies. Is it due to the trauma suffered in space? And what if it was connected to the mysterious experiment carried out by Nobel Prize winner Henry Caldera (Jonathan Banks)?
Are you familiar with the term “Mandela effect”? This is how the phenomenon linked to false memories is defined. It has happened to everyone, at least once in their life, to be 100% sure of something – a historical fact, a curiosity linked to pop culture – which later turned out to be distorted or completely incorrect (for example, go and check what color C-3PO’s legs are). The name “Mandela effect” comes from one of the most widespread false memories: the belief that Nelson Mandela, future president of South Africa, died in prison in the 1980s, while in reality, he lived until 2013. Several shared false memories, such as the aforementioned, are brought by some as proof of the existence of parallel dimensions (a very popular theory among web conspiracy theorists).
In the middle of the night, Johanna is on the run with her daughter Alice and a mysterious technological device marked with the NASA logo. After reaching a cabin in the snow, the woman begins to experience some paranormal phenomena: the reality around her seems to constantly change, and Alice disappears into thin air. From outside she hears the little girl’s voice echoing, alone and terrified. Johanna finds her and takes her back to the safety of the cabin, but here she finds… another Alice waiting for her. Or maybe it’s the same Alice she left shortly before? Five weeks earlier: Johanna is in orbit, as a member of the team of astronauts on board the ISS, the International Space Station. Just as she prepares to go on an excursion outside, one of her colleagues at NASA, on the orders of the person in charge Henry Caldera, starts a scientific experiment in zero gravity which apparently should allow the discovery of a new state of matter.
Seconds later, an unknown object hits the station, causing a serious accident. Transmissions with Earth are interrupted, flames break out and evacuation procedures are triggered: not everyone manages to survive, and Jo finds herself alone in the abandoned station. On Earth, her daughter Alice, her husband Magnus, and all the workers are shocked and rooting for her. The cynical manager Caldera, on the other hand, seems to only care about the fate of the device that contains the outcome of the experiment: that object could change the fate of humanity, and for him, it is much more important than the life of an astronaut. In the end, Jo will be able to discover what hit the space station, and she will miraculously return home: here, however, she will begin to fluctuate between multiple parallel realities, and she will discover that some parts of her life seem to have disappeared into thin air.
Constellation Season 1: What happened in the penultimate Episode?
In Through the Looking Glass, episode number 7, we witnessed the peak of the tension in what we can call the “love triangle” of Constellation, that is, the one between the two Alices – the one who speaks Swedish and the one who doesn’t – and the only Johanna Ericsson left alive between the two dimensions (and played by Noomi Rapace). In what from now on we will call “World 1” Jo, after having accidentally injured her husband, took Alice 1 to the cabin to escape the attempts to lock her up and forcibly treat her, in world 2 it is dad Magnus who, after the disastrous funeral of Jo with Paul who freaked out seeing his dead colleague, agreed to Alice’s idea of going to that same cabin.
Here, however, the two worlds (without Garibaldi… ok sorry) came into contact. Alice 2 saw the car arrive with Jo and Alice 1, and Jo also noticed Alice 2. So, in practice a mutual search started, and Jo at a certain point took Alice 1 with her in search of the twin cabin where Alice 2 should have been found, but Alice 1 moved away from her mother (with the CAL, abandoned immediately afterward in the snow) and ended up in that cabin. Similarly, Alice 2 distanced herself again from Magnus, who had already found her cold in the tub (where Jo had put her when they met), and when she went to look for her mother she ended up in her sister’s cabin. dimension. In short, both girls end up in their respective closets in abandoned cabins, and through the Fisher-Price children’s tape recorder, which Jo had taken to listen to the recordings of the Danish twin observers, the two Alices manage to communicate with each other.
When she intercepts their communications and discovers that the girls are locked in the closet, Jo leaves her cabin, which catches fire due to a lamp. He manages to save Alice 1, while the twin cabin once again becomes theirs and therefore goes from abandoned to fire, but while he is reviving her, help arrives looking for Alice 1 (with Magnus 1 and the police who arrest Jo) and Alice 2 (with Magnus 2 and the police were alerted when they noticed their daughter’s escape). There is a moment in which Magnus 2 glimpses Jo’s silhouette, who meanwhile tells Alice 2 to go to her father, and that he will then find a way to go to her. Alice obeys, and she tells her mother that she loves her in Swedish, Jo replies, and the intersection between the two worlds ends. And in World 1 Jo is desperate not to find Alice anymore, while the police take her away. Alice 2 returns to the cabin with Magnus 2, she tells him that she saw her mother and asks him if he saw her too. “I don’t know” replies her father, while Alice 1 is in the hospital and has a vision of her in which she finds Valya, who speaks to her in Russian and invites her to follow her to find her mother. Alice 1 wakes up, and Magnus 1 informs her that Jo has been hospitalized and is with Irina Lysenko, the head of Roscosmos.
Before moving on to the last episode, however, there is one more thing to remember: in the heat of the search for Alice 1, Henry Caldera found himself alone, oscillating between one dimension and another and finding the CAL left by Alice 1. Meanwhile, Bud Caldera received a visit from Paul Lancaster, whom he shot to escape pressing questions about different dimensions. And while Henry finds himself in front of the cabin where Jo is recovering Alice 1, and while Bud shoots Paul, the dimensional exchange occurs: Bud finds himself helping Jo and Alice 1 without knowing who they are, Henry calls for help for Paul and he is arrested for the death of Ian Rogers (the conspiracy theorist thrown off the ship) and the attempted murder of Paul. Now yes, let’s move on to the final episode.
Constellation Season 1 Ending Explained: What Happened to Jo, Alice and Magnus?
The episode that concludes the season opens with the scene of Jo recording her message to Alice when her life is in danger, alone on the ISS with Paul’s corpse. “My eyes will always be on you, no matter what” are the prophetic words of her mother, which bring us to the present where in World 1 Jo is taken to a hospital run by nuns, in the presence of Irina Lysenko. While Bud in Henry Caldera’s body finds the tape recorder in Jo’s car and listens to the recording of himself – Henry marveling at seeing his companions alive when he was sure they were dead, our protagonist is subjected to an electric shock that seems more than more a threat to burn her brain. Bud realizes that he much prefers to live in this dimension where he is a Nobel Prize winner and not a drunkard shocked by seeing his comrades die, so he destroys the CAL with an axe, and Jo’s resistance seems to break too. But is not so.
Also in World 1, Alice tries to explain to her father that the Jo who came back to them is not their Jo, that theirs is dead, and that there is another Alice to whom Jo should return, but Magnus understandably tries to rationalize the matter by talking about his wife’s mental problem, which makes her say absurd things that Alice believed. Jo, theoretically Jo 2 in World 1, receives a visit from Irina while she is carrying out an ultrasound for the baby she is carrying, and the ultrasound technician tells Irina that the image is distorted, citing it as a problem with the machine. Poor Henry is also unjustly detained in Bud’s place, for the murder of Rogers and the attempted murder of Paul, but Henry rejects all charges by invoking DNA tests and truth tests. And even his explanations seem completely senseless to the detectives who question him in front of his bewildered lawyer. That scoundrel Bud tells Frederic that it was Jo who destroyed CAL, graciously accepting the apologies and promises of dismissal, and then immediately slips into a squalid speech about the inadequacy of women with “complicated machines”.
Jo wakes up in the night calling her daughter’s name and still feeling the effects of the electroshock, only to realize that she is confined in the room. The next morning at her house Alice asks for news about her (not) mother, and her father tells her that he won’t let her see it as long as she believes in his follies. Jo tries to assert her reasons to Irina, who instead persists in advising her to take the pills and believe in her new self. But Irina’s insistence seems somehow sincere, even if Jo doesn’t realize it, worried as she is about seeing (her) Alice again, and the head of Roscosmos insists on saying that she had her create some pills specifically for her pregnant woman condition. The discussion goes on until Jo hears strange screams coming from above, and Irina “threatens” her by talking about an incurable patient and then leaves: Jo holds her and when he touches her she sees the dead cosmonaut who had hit the ISS again. This means that Irina is that astronaut, as well as Valya who sees Alice, dead in a parallel dimension: but if her body is also present in this dimension, in world 1, it means that in the space of world 1, there is also the body of Jo 1. We will return to this aspect later.
Jo then realizes who Irina is and to make herself understood she repeats in Russian the desperate phrases she heard in that recording of the dead Soviet cosmonaut, and then Irina calls Henry to discuss the problem. Too bad Bud is on the phone instead, while the hapless Henry is still struggling with the interrogation, talking about things that simply don’t exist in World 2, like CAL and Paul’s death in space. In the hospital, Jo receives a visit from Ilja, who verbally invites Jo to take pills for her “burnout” and memory problems and informs her of his upcoming appointment as Irina’s successor, who is still struggling with health problems. Jo is angry because she fears that she too has lost her friend, but when he says goodbye she leaves the keys in her hand to get out of there. Magnus 1 and Magnus 2 also need to talk, and they tell their difficulties to the same psychologist Jo went to at the beginning (the shot with the psychologist and the two Magnus is beautiful).
And so Bud goes to Irina, who in the embrace immediately notices a different smell in her beloved. Bud gets straight to the point by revealing his origins from a world where Irina Valentina Lisenko died in space and where Henry now finds himself living the fruits of Bud’s mistakes, who instead enjoy the benefits of Henry’s life. So Bud says he will no longer take the pills and will remain forever in this dimension more favorable to him. That same evening Jo starts the escape with the keys given to her by Ilja, but first, she goes to see who the incurable patient is, and there she finds two very disturbing, apparently identical, Russian men who call her mother. And instead of running away even more quickly, Jo decides to go back to her bedroom, to think about whether it’s worth taking the pills before ending up like those two.
Alice 1 talks to Wendy, to whom she confesses her beliefs about two parallel dimensions. Wendy replies very intelligently that having that “half-mother” is better than having no father at all. Alice 2 also video calls Wendy, asking how her father is after that crisis at Jo’s funeral, so Wendy talks about Bud’s attempted murder and how her father has been strange since he returned. And even in this case, Wendy gives her friend a good lesson, reminding her how good her father Magnus is. So, Alice 1 goes to her father to tell her that she no longer believes those stories, only to convince him to take her to visit Jo. Magnus agrees and gives her a box of stuff found around the cabin, including the “bridge” recorder between her dimensions. Alice 2 also finds him during the move. The two girls then start talking, while Jo plays the piano in the hospital. Alice 2 would like to talk to her mother again, her mother, but Alice 1 says goodbye to her other self, to keep the mother she has, in the meantime heartbroken by the sadness of having to give up an Alice anyway.
But Alice 2 takes it philosophically, and in Swedish explains to her father that she is not angry with her other self, and bravely accepts that her mother has ended up with another Alice. Meanwhile, Henry receives the bad news that the DNA test confirms that he is Bud, while the lie detector only confirms that he believes the things he says. Innocent Henry is therefore arrested. Instead, it is mocking Bud who goes to visit the Ian Rogers of his size, who acts as a guide on a horror tour on the story of Jack the Ripper and gives him a bouquet with wishes for a long life. The next morning Irina returns to see Jo, who first asks who the men upstairs are. The answer “there is only one man above” is confirmation that Irina has always known everything. She explains that he is the first man to go into space, and immediately afterward she goes back to advising the woman to take the pills and do the exercises to actually “get into the character” of Jo 1, otherwise “you’ll break in two”. “Did I die up there? Can I ever go back? Are there two of you, one alive and one dead? Are there two mes?” Jo asks again, and Irina’s response sounds like “What’s the point of knowing that?”.
“Accept reality as it is, you’re also lucky, let go of the past” is the definitive advice of those who know that “you can never go back” (well, Bud and Henry would object). Jo finally seems to give in, and shortly afterward we see Alice 1 coming to her, while Magnus 1 remains on the sidelines. Alice 1 explains to Jo her belief that Alice 2 has finally come to terms with how things went (and she’s right). “Your mother would be very proud of you,” Jo says. “Are you proud of me?” asks the little girl. “Yes” is the answer that establishes a sort of alliance in the name of “I need a mother and you need an Alice, let’s be satisfied”. Afterward, Jo shows Magnus Alice’s drawing of Valya, which corresponds to what she saw up there; Magnus tries to rationalize this too, saying that she must have heard her mother talk about her, and Jo tells him that she is ready to take the pills, even if it means forgetting about her life in the other dimension and carrying on with the pregnancy. By the way: Irina looks back at the ultrasound with that strange interference and decides that enough is enough, the time has come to throw away the mask: she takes the computer and writes an email to all the astronauts she knows to confess that years she has kept quiet about the awareness that traveling in space it leads to madness, inviting those who have had strange experiences to contact it.
What Does the End of Constellation Mean?
Alice B tries to explain to Magnus that her mother died in space and that Jo who is admitted to the psychiatric hospital belongs to another reality. Of course, Magnos believes that her daughter was affected by the latest events, so he takes her to the psychologist, just like Magnus from reality A. For her part, Jo hears a mysterious man shout. Later, she receives a visit from Irena, who insists that she play the piano. Jo refuses and retorts that she doesn’t suffer from PTSD or any mental health problems, she just wants to get back with her real daughter. Before she can continue arguing, Irena reveals to him that she is pregnant and that she is receiving an alternative drug therapy to avoid risks.
Jo fears that this pregnancy will prevent her from returning to her real family, but she also thinks about the man who is locked up in that place and who Irena described as someone who will never recover. Alice B visits her and tells her that she must learn to see herself as a daughter and mother because they have no other choice. Meanwhile, Alice A and her father move house to get over the death of her mother. At the end of the first season of “Constellation,” Henry is convicted of Bud’s crimes; Jo meets with Magnus and tells him that Alice saw the cosmonaut who crashed on the space station in her dreams; Irena reveals to Alice that she is also called Valya. In the last scene, Jo’s body appears floating in the space station, but this time she wakes up.
