Netflix’s 1899 Ending Explained: The Question of Reality Answered

The creators of the German TV series Dark recently released a show on Netflix that questions reality instead of time. 

1899 premiered on the streaming platform on November 17, 2022, with all episodes available for a binge-watch, which will end with your neurons tangled and still firing, trying to figure out what the end meant.

The show started with a ship embarking on a journey to New York with various passengers looking to create a new life. But the Kerberos crew and guests are thrown in a tizzy when Prometheus, another ship on the same path, is found adrift. Its passengers tell stories that had Kerberos’ inhabitants questioning the very reality they lived in.

The show slowly unfolds how the Kerberos ship was a simulation, most likely created by the shipping company’s founder Henry, later revealed to be Maura’s father. Tugging at that thread, Maura discovers that the ship, and the simulation makes its passengers live their worst memories, but why? Let’s keep that question for later.

Maura realizes no one really has any memories of their life before they volunteered to be in the ship. But she then remembers Daniel is her husband and Elliot her son. The show then gives us another twist. It was Maura, along with Daniel, who had created the simulation to keep Elliot, who was terminally ill, alive.

While Henry searched for the key to exit the simulation, trying to beat the virus threatening the whole project, Maura tracked him down. But as we see later, his search was for naught since Daniel changed the code for the lock and key and even the syringes Henry used on Maura. Maura finds herself in another simulation, the first one the married couple created for their son.

There, Daniel uncovered another twist, revealing the mastermind behind this simulation and its purpose. Maura’s brother Ciaran had taken over his sister’s simulation when she’d locked herself in there without her memories after Elliot’s death. But what’s the purpose of the Kerberos project? We’ll come to that in a bit.

The simulation collapsed behind Maura, who exited using her ring and Elliot’s toy, which Daniel had reprogrammed to be the lock and key when he had installed the virus that took down the “ship” and, with it, everyone else.

Awake, Maura finds herself in a spaceship, the passengers and crew of Kerberos aboard the same in chambers, still connected to a simulation they had just learned was their reality. But Maura remains unsure if she indeed has a handle on her reality when Ciaran’s message, both the note and the screen, tells her otherwise.

The “reality kicks in” note, plus the spaceship’s name being Prometheus, might mean Maura is now stuck in a simulation in 2099 in space. Ciaran knows she now has her memories and is actively hunting him down, but his taunt, welcoming her to “reality,” may just be that – a tease letting her know she isn’t out of the woods yet.

As for why the passengers, or the volunteers who signed up for Ciaran’s simulation, went through their worst memories aboard Kerberos, and Ciaran’s actual plan behind these simulations and his coup, is still a mystery. But we have an idea about the first part of the mystery.

It could be that Ciaran is trying to figure out the mechanisms of the human mind and, at the same time, punishing her sister. But why and what lies behind these assumptions can only be answered when Netflix greenlights a season 2 for 1899.

About 1899

1899 is a multilingual German epic period mystery-science fiction streaming television series created by Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar. It premiered on Netflix on 17 November 2022.

Set in 1899, the series follows a group of European migrants traveling to New York City on a steamship named Kerberos to start new lives. But they encounter another migrant ship, the Prometheus, adrift on the open sea leading to a horrifying nightmare of staggering proportions.

The show stars Emily Beecham, Aneurin Barnard, Andreas Pietschmann, Miguel Bernardeau, José Pimentão, Isabella Wei, Fflyn Edwards, and Anton Lesser.

Source: Netflix