Constellation is chock-full of references to other pop-culture touchstones. We’ve heard Alice and Jo talk about Hansel and Gretel; for some yet-unknown reason, Bud and Henry’s narrative generously peppers overt references to The Shining. The “Paul is dead†Beatles conspiracy-theory tease from episode one ended up paying off last week. But none of the nods to OG storytelling seem more important than Alice in Wonderland.
Aptly titled “Through the Looking Glass,†the penultimate episode of this season of Constellation mostly follows Jo and both versions of Alice as they attempt to navigate the liminal space between their worlds. Because there are many moments when both versions of Alice are at play, we’re going to try to avoid any confusion by calling them Alice A and Alice B. Quick recap within a recap: Alice A is the one from the universe that Jo returned to. She calls her mother “mummy,†and their car is blue, not red. Her actual mom is dead. Alice B is from the universe that Jo disappeared from. She calls her mother “mamma,†speaks Swedish, and their car is red, not blue. Her mom is alive, but she’s trapped in the wrong universe. Since the two girls wear some seriously excellent winter hats throughout this episode, I would have loved to call them Beanie Alice and Ushanka Alice, but that’s just way too confusing. (For visual reference, though, Beanie Alice is Alice A, and Ushanka Alice is Alice B.)
The episode opens right where the previous installment left off. Alice B peers out of her cabin window to see her mother getting out of their (blue) car. She walks out into the snow and calls for her mother, but she can’t see anything. As Jo looks around, she hears her daughter calling for her. She also hears phantom footsteps crunching through the snow. Alice B doesn’t hear anything, but the potential promise of finding her mother motivates her to soldier on into the stormy night.
We had already seen a lot of the knotty interactions between Jo and the two Alices at the cabin in previous episodes, but we originally saw them through Jo’s eyes. As the overlapping universes intersect in strange ways, Jo vacillates between being confused, frantic, and heartbroken. But now, we’re seeing things primarily through Alice’s eyes. Unlike Jo, both versions of Alice maintain a sense of purposeful calm throughout the episode. Alice is an important character because, as her (home-wrecking) teacher said, she’s at a liminal age. The tween years are when a child can still believe in the fantastical but may also begin acting more grounded and mature. The Alices provide the bridge between the two worlds because they’re capable of believing that this insanely weird universe shift could be happening, but they’re also able to entertain a sense of logic within that construct. This is also a main theme of Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There.
Alice B struggles through the snow and ends up at an abandoned version of the cabin. As she enters, she sees a dusty version of “The Wounded Angel†on the wall and a dead cat on the floor. The cat is an overt reference to Schrodinger’s cat, and we see it alive, dead, and both alive and dead throughout the episode. We’ll circle back to this in a bit.
Looking for comfort, Alice B heads upstairs in the liminal cabin and pops into the cupboard. She gets locked in and somehow Jo hears her cries for help, breaks through the universe barrier, and finds her. She hightails it back to the real cabin to put her daughter in a hot bath (again, I beg, please don’t do this to people who might have frostbite), and then the worlds go screwy. Even though we’ve seen this sequence before, it feels important to note that Jo is feeling intermittent pain in the portion of her head that she hit when she died on the ISS. And, as she toggles between Alice B in the bath and Alice A in bed, we catch a glimpse of a two-paneled mirror and Jo can only be seen in one reflection.
After Alice B disappears back to her own universe, Jo loses it and demands that Alice A help her find her other self in the middle of the raging nighttime blizzard. Magnus is on his way with the cavalry, but a giant snowdrift is in the way, and they have to wait for a digger to come clear the path. Will no one be so bold as to drive across the lake?! On the drive to the cabin, Magnus wonders why Henry is there, and Henry responds with a chilling, “Because this happened to me, too.†He delivers an unnerving monologue during which he tells Magnus about his experience on Apollo 18. He also shares that Irena Lysenko is on her way to collect Jo, which feels more like a threat than a promise. Magnus isn’t quite sure what to do with all of that information, so he just stares back out the window.
The snowdrift roadblock gives Jo and her two Alices the time they need to find one another in the liminal cabin again. Both versions of Alice find the cabin at the same time, but they don’t actually meet. Instead, they communicate through the Fisher Price tape recorder. Somehow, the recorder is just there for both girls to use in each cabin, and they both intuitively know how to use it. There are four versions of the recorder, though, and both Magnus and Jo can hear their daughters chatting from their respective universes. To a panicked Magnus, it sounds like Alice B might just be babbling back and forth to herself, but Jo knows better. She hauls ass out of her cabin, carelessly leaving a burning lantern precariously perched on a table. The wind knocks it over, and the old, creaky cabin starts to go up in flames.
The conversation between the two girls is relatively simple yet riveting. The two versions of the same girl quickly share the truths that they know, with Alice A admitting that she thinks her mother is dead and Alice B asking for her mama back. (I’m so crying. All the versions of me in all the liminal spaces are crying.) Once Jo finds Alice A in the cabinet, she talks through her to communicate with Alice B, her real daughter. Yet again, Alice B asks when her mother is coming home, and it’s a heartbreaking moment. Jo isn’t sure how she can come home, but she’s going to try and work it out. Given what happens to Henry and Bud later in the episode, it feels like the idea of Jo swapping bodies to get back to her original universe might be something that Constellation explores if Apple renews it for a second season, but the original Jo is dead! And in space! So I’m not sure how that would even work.
Once the cavalry arrives, Henry does a lot of stomping around in the snow, and he finds his precious CAL. However, the CAL somehow triggers a window in which Bud and Henry swap universes, putting Bud in the cabin inferno and Henry in Bud’s dingy apartment. Bud is present to help Jo as she shoves Alice A into his arms to get her away from the fire and to safety. He promptly abandons her in the snow — what an asshole, am I right? — and Henry has to deal with the direct aftermath of Bud shooting his protégé, Paul. How all of this happens is ostensibly attributed to the magical CAL, but other than that, there’s minimal explanation.
I have a lot of questions about the concept of liminal space as it relates to this episode as well as the series at large, such as: why can people see through universes at certain times — when Jo saves Alice B from the freezing cupboard or when Alice A and B saw one another at Jo’s funeral, for examples — but can’t during other times even when they’re presumably in the same place? Are there multiple versions of liminal space? Does each universe have its own liminal cabin? If the cats, both dead and alive, are any indication, the liminal space can change based on its proximity to a particular universe. But how and why does the bridge between the worlds open and close? There don’t seem to be any rules, and if there are, I’m missing them. I love the vibe, but my brain just wants it to make sense!
In a coda to the universe-hopping hullabaloo, Jo finds Alice A in the snow and starts performing CPR. Alice B wanders over (with no explanation of how this one got out of her locked cabinet, but okay) and beseeches her mamma to come with her. Even though Alice B drops the absolutely devastating line, “But I’m your Alice,†Jo feels obligated to Alice A. She can’t leave at the moment, but she promises to try in the near future. As Magnus runs up to Alice B, he sees a familiar figure in the snow. Later, Alice B asks if he saw Jo, and he’s not quite sure how to answer.
Back in the alive-cat universe, Alice A is in the hospital, recovering from her ordeal. She dreams of the Valya who beckons her to come find her mother. It’s a creepy dream, and when she wakes up her father tells her that Irena Lysenko has Jo. Alice A immediately knows that they need to rescue her.
Alternative Orbits
• Jo keeping the multimillion-dollar CAL in a mini-cooler for safekeeping is objectively hilarious.
• Magnus, you dummy, if your daughter keeps escaping a remote cabin in the middle of a midnight blizzard, maybe don’t go back to sleep?
• There’s a lot of focus on the paintings on the walls here, especially on the Gollum-like changeling. The story of the changeling that Alice A referenced earlier in the series focused on a family putting a baby into a fire to bring their mother back. Other versions of the story — including the real-life inspiration for the changeling myth — involve burning an individual to restore order. No one actually burns in this cabin fire, but Alice B sure comes close.
• Did anyone else get serious Stranger Things vibes from the liminal cabin? The abandoned space felt very much like a version of the Upside Down, albeit with no monsters. At least not yet. Is the Valya the Vecna of Constellation? Discuss!