Journey across the Atlantic Ocean in seven days, they said! You can leave your dodgy past behind, they said! It will be fun, they said! Listen, cruises are a tough sell these days as it is, and 1899 — in all its mystery-box, lost-at-sea, creepy-kid-in-a-cabinet glory — is certainly not going to help fix that problem. But it is, from the looks of this premiere episode, going to provide us with one trippy-as-hell adventure. So, welcome aboard … maybe?
I’m going to assume that most people embarking on this journey are fans of 1899 creators Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar’s other trippy mystery Netflix series, Dark. If you found yourself watching 1899 without having seen Dark, you should add it to your list immediately. Oh, buddies, are you in for a treat when you watch that. It’s a gorgeous, smart German time-travel story that will make your brain hurt and you will sit there, begging it to do it again and again. The high-caliber storytelling that Dark pulled off only puts the pressure on Friese and bo Odar to pull off another magic trick with 1899.
Wisely, 1899 establishes itself as an entirely different animal than Dark right out of the gate. Dark took place in a small German town, and even as it revealed more and more of its sci-fi layers, it always felt intimate. 1899 feels massive in scope from the very beginning. The setting is certainly grander — we’re on a steamship with over a thousand passengers from all over Europe and Asia in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The way 1899 is shot also makes it feel larger than life: Friese and bo Odar built a massive production facility to house “the volume†— basically giant LED walls — to shoot against realistic backgrounds rather than using a green screen, and it was worth every penny (I’m assuming it was a lot of pennies), because the show looks fantastic.
Another way 1899 differentiates itself is that while Dark eased the audience into how wild its central mystery was going to get, 1899 wastes absolutely zero time making you feel unmoored. There will be no getting your sea legs before you start questioning your reality, okay? (That’s right, baby, the sea and sailing allusions have arrived, and honestly, you should just get used to it.) Instead of kicking things off with a glamorous boarding of this impressive ship, we start in some sort of mental hospital. It’s unclear. It’s all so unclear! A red-headed woman is being dragged off into some room, screaming at someone she calls her father, demanding to know the whereabouts of her brother. “He figured out what you were doing on these ships!†she yells. She tosses in an “I’m not crazy!†and a “What have you done to my memory?!†just for funsies. And then something really wild happens: The woman’s father says “wake up,†and when she opens her eyes, she’s in her cabin aboard the Kerberos, a steamship traveling across the ocean to New York in 1899. She’s completely put together, aside from the need to look in the mirror and remind herself of her name (Maura Franklin), the date (October 19, 1899), and that she’s not crazy (to be determined, friends!).
From the very start, 1899 is forcing us to question, well, everything. Is the bit in the mental hospital a dream? Is everything on the boat a dream? Does the mental-hospital part come after everything we’re about to see? Are both realities somehow happening at the same time? Is this, like, a Matrix situation? Is Maura’s point of view to be trusted at all? Who knows! The unreliability of everything adds an air of unease and discomfort.
These feelings are echoed in our passengers, too: Another smart choice 1899 made was to have all of their characters speak their native language — sure, some people can speak and/or understand multiple languages, but for the most part people have no idea what their neighbor is saying, and when shit hits the fan like we know it will, not being able to effectively communicate with one another is going to add some layers of fear and frustration. There’s another reason for all the uneasiness, though: Everybody on the Kerberos is fixated on the fact that just four months prior, the same company that owns this ship had another one of its ships, the Prometheus, go lost at sea. One character is all like, There’s no chance two ships from the same company will sink back-to-back, get over it, dummies! So when things go wrong, we can all blame that lady.
While our passengers hail from all over the world, they all seemingly have at least one thing in common: Everybody’s got a secret. They’re either lying or covering something up or just being a little too shifty not to notice. In this sprawling ensemble, Maura is at the center of it all: We learn that she’s a doctor studying neuroscience. She’s on this boat not because she’s looking for a sweet vacation in New York City, but because she received a mysterious letter addressed to her brother Henry, who’s been missing for four months. The letter contains a newspaper article about the Prometheus and a postcard from her brother that says super-calming things like “I found out what our father did†and “Don’t trust anyone,†and written on the back of the envelope is the phrase “What is lost, will be found.†She believes her brother was one of the passengers on the Prometheus.
Elsewhere, there’s a French couple, Lucien and Clémence, on their honeymoon, although neither one seems particularly thrilled to be in the other’s company. Mrs. Wilson is an Englishwoman who, it turns out, is some sort of pimp, paying for a geisha and her mother to travel to New York with her. Although she seems to have no idea that those women are definitely lying about their identity: The geisha thing is an act, and Ling Yi and her mother speak Cantonese to one another while Ling Yi tries to learn Japanese. Olek is a Polish guy working down in the engine room who’s trying to get to New York to meet up with his brother and he looks very pained about it! Ãngel and his brother Ramiro are from Spain. Ramiro is dressed as a priest, but the way they talk about “people finding out†leads me to believe that the dude is not an actual priest and they probably aren’t even brothers.
While most of the people we’ll be following are floating up in first class, we’re also introduced to a Danish family riding in steerage: Tove is seven months pregnant and clearly not thrilled with her super-religious parents referring to it as “God’s childâ€; her younger brother Krester has a wild scar on his face that Ãngel caresses at one point as they share a cigarette because, apparently, Ãngel is v horny. They also have a younger sister, Ada, who is cute and dreams of being a doctor — something terrible is going to happen to her, isn’t it? Oh, and there’s also this French guy named Jérôme, who just suddenly pops out of a pile of coal and steals a crew member’s uniform. So that’s neat.
And then there’s the German captain. Eyk Larsen is bringing a real “sad boat boy†energy to the whole proceeding, and I am into it. He’s always rocking a popped collar, staring wistfully at a picture of his wife and three daughters, and guzzling booze so he can’t feel feelings. He’s a wildcard here because while he is stomping around the boat talking about rules that must be followed, the moment they get a cryptic message over the telegram that is just coordinates over and over again and he and his first mate realize it has to be the Prometheus, this boy turns the boat around and takes it seven hours off course to check it out. He doesn’t care that all the passengers are freaking out — they are terrified of not getting to New York because of secrets, remember? — and he doesn’t care that they aren’t even sure it is the Prometheus or that there’s very little possibility most of those passengers have survived four months at sea. He’s going. Perhaps his unwavering stance here has something to do with the fact that Eyk received the same type of letter as Maura, with the same “What is lost, will be found†note written on the back. Dun, dun, dun!
Despite a ton of objections, including one from his first mate, who wants to wait and signal their company, Eyk puts together a crew to head over to the Prometheus — it includes Maura and “Father†Ramiro, as well as Olek and Jérôme, who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Several strange things happen at the same time. When Eyk’s team reaches the Prometheus and climbs onboard, the telegraph that’s been receiving the message with the coordinates on a loop suddenly stops. Around the same time, a man climbs out of the water and onto the Kerberos. He heads straight for the room next to Maura, pulls out a little green beetle that he lets crawl under the door, and somehow unlocks the room, allowing him to enter. Meanwhile, over on the Prometheus, the team finds a boat torn apart. There’s no one on it — not even dead bodies. That’s weird in and of itself because, uhh, where did all the bodies go? But it’s also strange because someone had to have been sending that message with the coordinates. To make that mystery even more, well, mysterious, while on the bridge, Eyk sees that the Prometheus’s telegraph machine has been destroyed. WHO SENT THE MESSAGE?!
The team ends up in the dining room on the Prometheus. There’s still no one there, just a mess of tables and chairs. Then, Maura sees a shiny green beetle crawling on the ground. She follows it all the way to a cabinet that’s been locked shut with what looks like some sort of fire poker. Suddenly, there’s knocking coming from inside the cabinet. Well, it’s a little boy! Just hanging out in there! There are so many questions here: Who locked that kid in there? And why? And how is he seemingly physically okay after … however long he’s been in there? And what the hell is that small, black, stone pyramid he hands Maura? Ah, yes, nothing like a creepy kid who doesn’t speak to up the freaky factor.
The Manifest
• So what do we think the meaning of the pyramid is? There’s pyramids and triangles popping up all over the place. They’re all over the opening credits, but there’s subtle ones, too: Clémence’s earrings are an inverted triangle, and there’s one on Ling Yi’s kimono hanging in her cabin. We’re on triangle watch, baby!
• When Eyk makes the announcement that they’ll be delayed in their trip to New York, Lucien runs off onto the deck. He can’t stop his one hand from shaking and takes some sort of medicine. The guy looks worried.
• Another thing to pay attention to: While on the Prometheus, Eyk sees a ribbon with blue flowers embroidered on it. He seems unnerved by it — he doesn’t have any booze to slam down his gullet, but he does stash the ribbon in his pocket.
• If we’re looking for clues as to what 1899 is really about, it feels like opening the show with Maura reciting Emily Dickinson’s “The Brain—is wider than the Sky—†has to be pretty significant.
• How about the names of those ships? If you’re not up to date on your Greek mythology, Prometheus was a god who stole fire to give it to humans and ended up being tortured for eternity, and Kerberos (or Cerberus) was Hades’s three-headed dog who blocked dead souls from escaping hell. Very cool and not ominous choices at all!!