The Key (episode)

## The Key

**The Key** is the eighth and final episode of the first season of the Netflix original multilingual mystery thriller, *1899*. It was released on November 17, 2022.

## Synopsis

Maura tells the passengers an unbelievable truth. Then, their memories shift and Daniel changes a code. Maura faces an unexpected reality.

## Plot

Elliot shows Maura a green bug he found, who he's named Alfred. He intends to keep it in a tin can, but his mother encourages him to let Alfred go, rather than imprisoning him. She tells him that sometimes they have to let things go because they can't keep them forever. One day, he'll be a grown man, and she'll have to let him go, but Elliot insists he'll live with her and his father forever. Elliot is embracing his mother one moment, and the next, he's in Henry's memory, with nothing left of his mother but a gown. Elliot then awakens after hearing his mother's voice tell him to "wake up." Henry is certain that Daniel likely left out the part about why they're all truly trapped in the simulation. He claims that Elliot had been fooled by his mother, as have all of them, and she's the only person who can set them free. He then offers Elliot an opportunity to learn the truth for himself.

Eyk swims across to the Kerberos, where Maura reveals that Daniel is her husband and that the boy is her son, though she doesn't remember either of them. Maura then takes this opportunity to reveal to the rest of the passengers that her father is the owner of the ship company, that he made them forget why they're on the ship, and that they're all inside a simulation, but Virginia doesn't believe her, not even when she nor the other passengers are capable of recalling how they boarded the Kerberos. She then pulls an envelope from her pocket, and the passengers follow suit, each of them pulling out an identical letter. Eyk questions if Daniel is the reason they're in the simulation, but Maura believes that he's trying to help. Meanwhile, Daniel is in the engine room attempting to hack into the mainframe.

Henry uses a shell device to take Elliot back to the Mental Hospital, where he claims the truth lies.

The black virus is spreading throughout the ship, and Virginia doesn't intend to take a step further until Maura explains what's happening. Maura, unfortunately, doesn't have many answers. The last thing she remembers before waking up on the Kerberos is finding the envelope in front of her door. She thinks her brother sent it with a key inside. She's not sure how, but she believes her father made her forget what happened and who she is. But she thinks whatever the key opens, it will help her remember and get them out of the simulation. Ling Yi admits that her mother was right that they never having should have boarded the ship and says that she's going to find a way off. Virginia agrees, planning to escape on a lifeboat, but Maura explains that nothing they're experiencing is real and that they're trapped. Virginia states that while she admires that Maura studies medicine and stands against the conventions and limitations women face, she isn't convinced that what Maura says is the truth. Virginia joins Ling Yi in searching for a way off the ship. With Clémence, Jérôme, Tove, and Ramiro following closely behind. Fortunately for Maura, at least Eyk continues to trust her.

Maura pries up the floorboards of her cabin in hopes that the tiled shaft is hidden underneath, but she is without luck. And without the shaft, they have no way of getting to the mental hospital, Eyk fears. But Maura has a plan, which starts by going down Daniel's shaft and into his memory. Maura looks at the pictures and feels no attachment to them, leading Eyk to suspect that maybe the memory is an illusion and that Daniel is working for her father. Maura recalls Elliot saying there was a Creator, someone responsible for the simulation, which she suspects may be her father, but she's not sure. Nevertheless, there has to be some kind of logic to it all, a blueprint. Inside the brain, memories are stored in different areas, but they're all connected to each other through neural pathways, which Maura intends to find. She realizes that much like in her memory, behind the walls lies the hidden passages of the ship, which they use to travel to different memories.

Back on the Kerberos, Daniel manages to successfully hack into the mainframe of the ship, causing the lighting to turn red and a siren to blare. Tove, Clémence, Jérôme, Virginia, Ling Yi, and Ramiro are the first to notice this change, along with the rapidly growing virus that almost seems to chase them through the hall. Ling Yi falls, and Ramiro helps her to her feet, but in doing so, they get split up from the group. Realizing that Maura may have been right, Clémence and Jérôme go searching for her, whilst Tove and Virginia search for a way out.

Henry takes Elliot into the examination room and offers to show him the truth. Elliot takes a seat in the chair, and Henry grabs a syringe filled with a white substance. Before injecting him, Henry reveals that the simulation isn't Maura's prison, rather it's Elliot's, who recalls a forgotten memory of his father trying to convince his mother that she can't stop the boy from dying. However, Maura refuses to lose Elliot, and so she injects him with a syringe, explaining that he'll forget this ever happened and that it's the only way for them to be together. Elliot returns from his memory and accuses Henry of putting false memories in his head, but he claims that they're trapped in the simulation so that Maura can keep the boy alive. When Maura was Henry's age, she found a paper on Plato's cave allegory in his study. She read it repeatedly, and the idea that their knowledge has limits and that they could never know if things truly are what they appeared turned her world upside down. One evening she asked him how they were supposed to know if anything is real, if Plato's argument was true, with Henry relating reality to God and his existence. Maura replied that if that were so, then the world God lives in is real, while they're just his doll's house, which is what Henry compares the simulation to for Elliot. Meanwhile, Maura and Eyk are traveling through memories.

With Daniel reprogramming the simulation, doors begin to disappear throughout the ship as the passengers desperately search for refuge from the growing virus. While the ship doors may have disappeared, new doors to memories appear in their place. Tove and Virginia enter Lucien and Jérôme's memory, whilst Ling Yi and Ramiro enter his memory, in which he finds his cross lying on the dirt.

Sebastian informs Henry that Daniel has hacked into the mainframe in an attempt to wake Maura up without delivering them the key, trapping them inside forever. Hoping to stop him, Henry orders Sebastian to find Maura and get the key.

Jérôme and Clémence have escaped into Ling Yi's memory. Elsewhere, Virginia repeatedly says that she doesn't want to die while being comforted by Tove. Meanwhile, Ramiro and Ling Yi hear a noise coming from the well. They pull on the rope, and on the other end is the crate, with Mei Mei trapped inside. Ling Yi panics and Ramiro drops the rope, losing the crate and rope down the well. She then flees into Olek's memory. She first finds his Stature of Liberty photo before finding him inside a tar pit. Ramiro hears Ángel from inside the well; Virginia begins to disintegrate in Tove's arms; Clémence and Jérôme open the crate where Mei Mei was trapped, unintentionally unleashing more of the virus. As Daniel fulfills his goal to hack the code, each of the passengers find their way back on the ship simultaneously through various doorways.

Henry fears that Daniel's attempt to hack the code will destroy the entire simulation. He tells Elliot that all of this is for Maura, and that if Daniel has to choose between him and his mother, Daniel will always choose her.

Maura and Eyk have finally made it to her memory, just outside the mental hospital, confirming her theory that all their memories are connected.

Ling Yi makes her way to the ship first, where she runs into Ramiro, before reconvening with Tove, Virginia, Clémence, and Jérôme. Ling Yi asks if any of them have seen Olek, but then Ramiro hears Ángel singing an old Portuguese folk tale and goes searching for the source.

Maura and Eyk tear the wallpaper off the wall in search of Henry's office, but all they uncover is the ship's hull. They are then confronted by Sebastian, who asks for the key, explaining that the simulation has been corrupted and that it's falling apart. He demands Maura hand over the key, and once she does, he used his shell device to kill Eyk and take Maura.

Sebastian brings Maura to Henry and Elliot, who is upset with his mother after learning the truth, which she can't even remember herself. Sebastian then hands the key over to Henry, who Maura asks about her brother, but Henry says that Ciaran is the least of her concerns before using his shell to bring her back to the mental hospital, where she is restrained to the chair, and he reveals that she's the Creator. She, along with Daniel, created this simulation and forced this path on to all of them, trapping them in a loop. Henry then injects Maura with the black substance to make her forget.

Ramiro, Clémence, Jérôme, Ling Yi, and Tove follow Ángel's singing to the engine room, where the simulation is becoming less and less stable.

Henry returns to his office with Elliot and Sebastian for the pyramid and inserts the key, but nothing happens, leading Henry to conclude that Daniel changed the code.

Ramiro, Clémence, Jérôme, Ling Yi, and Tove watch as the countdown begins for the deletion of the corrupted simulation.

Maura awakens on the ground, wearing nothing but a hospital gown. She climbs down into Elliot's bunker. Shortly thereafte, Daniel joins her. He reveals that his plan worked and that the simulation didn't restart. They're currently in the first simulation they ever created, though Maura still doesn't remember. Daniel explains that objects in the simulation are just manifestations of codes. So he exchanged their values and reprogrammed them so that instead of the black syringe taking her back to the Kerberos and making her forget, it brought her to their first simulation, where he also switched the pyramids. The one her father has no longer works, same for the key. Elliot's toy pyramid is the new one, and her wedding ring is the new key. Daniel also shockingly reveals that her brother, Ciaran, took over the whole program whilst she was in the simulation. He's been controlling everything, not her father, who is as stuck in the simulation as everyone else. Maura has to leave now and stop Ciaran before he realizes what's been done. Maura proceeds to place her ring inside the pyramid and awakens from the simulation.

Maura finds herself on a craft of some kind, surrounded by futuristic technology and the other passengers of the Kerberos, who are all still hooked up to machines and trapped inside the simulation. She then looks outside the window and realizes that they're in space on a spaceship called the Prometheus. A sudden alert catches her attention, and she finds a note on the computer monitor that reads, "May your coffee kick in before reality does." A message then appears on the screen that reads "Project Prometheus," with 1,423 passengers and 550 crewmen on the day of October 19, 2099. The message Is from her brother Ciaran, who welcomes her back to reality.

## Cast

### Starring

* Emily Beecham as Maura Franklin
* Aneurin Barnard as Daniel Solace
* Andreas Pietschmann as Eyk Larsen
* Miguel Bernardeau as Ángel
* José Pimentão as Ramiro
* Isabella Wei as Ling Yi
* Gabby Wong as Yuk Je
* Yann Gael as Jérôme
* Mathilde Ollivier as Clémence
* Jonas Bloquet as Lucien
* Rosalie Craig as Virginia Wilson
* Maciej Musial as Olek
* Clara Rosager as Tove
* Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen as Krester
* Maria Erwolter as Iben
* Alexandre Willaume as Anker
* Tino Mewes as Sebastian
* Isaak Dentler as Franz
* Fflyn Edwards as Elliot
* Anton Lesser as Henry Singleton