Devs thoughts
2 August 2022
EP 1
did we ever figure out what was Up with those obelisks that appeared? was that an art project?
oooo elliptic curves. I gotta find that textbook on elliptic curve discrete logarithm problems.
mm georgean chanting (?) when they walk into devs like religion => like they're playing gods
what's with the watch???
so my first guess would have been that they proved multiverse theory, except forest said he wasn't a fan of that theory. or maybe he's just not a fan of other worlds?
second thought is they created actual artificial intelligence. and the giant girl is the like physical avatar of that. so his work with the nematodes was him showing he could handle it
oh my god did they prove that there's no free will? maybe they're computing the future. hence katie's comment that "it doesn't change anything"
oh the watch stole the code. or recorded it.
"YOU COULD HAVE ONLY DONE WHAT YOU DID" IM SCREAMING
oh no are they gonna kill my boy sergei. oh sergi :(
wait so. if they're computing the future. is he basically saying that they always knew they were going to kill him?? so they just gave him the promotion and did all that stuff knowing??
oh lily babe :(
wiping and resetting a phone- she wanted to know what was on it from the last backup?? man she went into detective mode like Right Away
hm did forest's kid die? is that who that giant girl is?
jeez is katie really like "yeah isn't it so sad that we murdered that guy like poor us we didn't even have a choice :("
oh jamie :(
oh ho ho she did the praying hands. a la "most logical person will start praying when their child is in danger".
oh wow does lily suck? maybe she kind of sucks!
okay but that's a really smart way of covering up a body, just fake video of him setting himself on fire and then burn the body. no muss no fuss no autopsy.
I feel like lily's killer mental math skills are going to make an appearance again.
lmao I am not surprised one bit to see that the director and writer for this is the ex machina guy
EP 2
okay so what's the significance of where they burn sergei's body? at the feet of giant girl? like a sacrifice?
oh okay so forest's daughter definitely died. oh the whole company is named after her.
huh okay so that's why he doesn't like the multiverse theory. because he says when she died he felt like he was split into two states.
huh he's being so nice to her!
hm so forest has dogs, fish. left her room as is because of course he did.
ah yes we love an emotionally unhelpful immigrant mother.
yo that's a nice apartment for san francisco right
literally why does she think jamie can do anything about that. like obviously brute force is no good. she's the best person to try and guess it.
what the flying fuck is that a person on the machine screen?? HOLY FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE JESUS ON THE CROSS WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY LOOKING INTO THE PAST
I mean if you can extrapolate forwards why not extrapolate back
why does sergei message his theoretically russian handler in english lmao
"don't feel invaded no one has a private life anymore" lmao
omg he wants to see his daughter again I bet
oh called it! oh is that the weird hand position on the statue? she's blowing bubbles? hm, is that those glowing rings around the trees? the bubbles?
the mortifying ideal of being knowwwnnnnnn jamie knowing that lily would absolutely use the app
EP 3
we have two rules: only look back never forwards, and we don't invade privacy. so like guarantee they're gonna break those rules lol. has katie already looked forward? to know what sergei did?
so is it gonna rain tomorrow? doesn't look like it oooooo I love u doublespeak
lily maybe has schizophrenia ?? is jen for real??
WHAT WHAT BROOKLYN WHAT
omg JEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH KEN'S COMPUTER
OH MY GOD JEN IS IN ON IT.
also how tf did they come up with a plan that fast?
EP 4
who is forest watching on the screen? is that sergei in death or lily in the future?
HMM lily stayed the niiiight
huh okay def future
"I'M SCARED WE MAY BE MAGICIANS"?????
also, at this point lily and jamie have no idea what devs even does right?
what's up with the homeless guy and why isn't he scared of kenton? also has anyone even told him that sergei is dead?
"are you close with your mother?" "more or less" "what does that mean?" "I don't know. we act close" I'M FUCKING SCREAMING LILY
okay so is jamie gonna try and win her back and that's why he's fixing up his place?
okay so if lyndon swaps it for many worlds, how can he possibly know if he has the right world? we want to know what X said in this world. oh okay forest is on the same page. also, side note, I loved that actor in bad times at the el royale so love to see them here. also I love him and stewart's friendship
oh jesus fuck FUCK INVOLUNTARY HOSPITALIZATIONS
oh fucking power move, katie was really like "are you gonna fire me too asshole"
also. why is the "deeply damaged older man grieving the loss of a loved one" always obsessed with a wife or daughter. like it's never a son. or a husband. or a brother or best friend. I suppose counterpoint is silent sea, with song ji-an. she was obsessed with her dead sister.
KENTON IF YOU HURT JAMIE !!!!!! oh fuck oh fuck
EP 5
oh i'm loving this multiverse apartment scene
symbolism of the go scene ? => lily acts intuitively ?
hm okay so she didn't meet sergei until after she broke up with jamie
"I'm in love with you" "Whoa." LMAO. "cool" LMAO
lecture on quantum mechanics— okay so if they're observing the past, does that mean changing the past?
WAIT OKAY SO DOES THAT MEAN MAYBE FOREST WANTS TO BE ABLE TO OBSERVE THE PAST SO THAT HE CAN CHANGE IT SO THAT HE CAN GET HIS DAUGHTER BACK
what are these objects? rat, sugar cube, clock, shell. oh shit is this like the infinite perspective machine from hitchhiker's guide?
GHOST IN THE MACHINE GHOST IN THE MACHINE
oh my GOD he had to watch her die just like that. and presumably he thinks it was his fault, because maybe he distracted her while driving. ah yup katie's on the same page.
JAMIE TO THE RESCUE!!!! lol they're always climbing through windows. wait but katie knows??
EP 6
also it's sort of interesting that all forest's grief seems focused on amaya, and not his wife
OH that shot of forest with flowers in his beard. im getting like ophelia vibes from that one painting. drowning, death, madness, grief.
stewart & lyndon bffs <3
lyndon ur my fav pls don't die I beg
how long has it been since amaya died? all her pictures are still up on the fridge
are katie and forest sleeping together? or did katie just know lily was coming and that's why she's there? does lily have any idea who katie is?
wow katie really does not give a fuck about the things she's done.
okay but if katie knows lily is going to die in however many hours from now, what is still doing? why did she sent forest out? is katie trying to protect him? because he "didn't want these things to happen/intend for them to happen"?
"you look like defense" wtf does that mean forest
sergei realized what devs was and threw up, lily is just like "okay" lol.
forest: "better to have loved and lost" does he actually believe that? it feels like a very cliched thing to say. does everyone really know forest's loss? does jamie really know?
AND THEY THINK IT INVOLVES LILY??? is katie bullshitting here because she knows lily is going to die? is this her plan to get lily to die like she thinks is "supposed" to happen? god I hate Chosen One bullshit plot lines
lmao forest and jamie playing frisbee in the street? how is forest not fucking traumatized by that car accident?
"what if you're wrong?" "wrong?" as if katie has never heard of the word "wrong" before
omg kenton go away
okay I don't think that this singularity point katie talked about is real. I think forest would be freaking out more about it if it were true. I suppose from lily's point of view it's the same. her future is unknowable past a certain point, because she's going to die.
"stay in my bed" im dead. I feel like this is a bad idea. just bc you didn't really know who sergei was doesn't mean that you didn't have feelings for him. you can't just swap him out for your ex. this feels unfair to jamie
katie and forest pillow talking—do they see themselves in lily/jamie?
okay fine I guess that point is a really thing. hm. maybe lily's going to destroy the machine. like presumably the world isn't going to end.
EP 7
okay first here are some questions I have going into this
we still don't know why sergei tried to steal the code, or really just what his deal was. the russian dude died and there was no follow up there.
are we gonna get more of an explanation for the giant amaya statue? is there something in there?
how did katie and forest get together? why do the quantum predictions break down after a certain point?
okay here we go
this sounds like inuit throat singing? was that a vision of the past?
"so..." "don't." lmao. I maintain this is a Bad Idea
how does katie feel about hanging out in her boyfriend's house with all his odes to amaya still up? oh yikes is that the multiverse kid she might have had? or is that kid also supposed to be amaya? okay maybe also amaya. which is interesting because if amaya lived/lianne would have lived, katie would never have gotten together with forest
idk like I just don't know how much I trust katie/forest's relationship. is katie really into forest, or does she just see just know that they're "supposed to be together"? does forest love katie for katie or is she just the blonde woman who is helping him prove his innocence? the pillow talking thing from last episode was sweet, but like where is the chemistry with them?
OH MY GOD WAIT ONE FUCKING SECOND STEWART. IF THEY'VE CREATED A SIM OF THE UNIVERSE?? you know it's like that thought experiment right—it goes like this: if we can create a perfect simulation of the universe, then in that simulated universe, those people could create a perfect simulation of the universe. and then those people could create a perfect simulation of the universe. and so on. so then how likely is it that we are the top-most level? that we are not simulated? well. not very likely at all. so if we create a simulation of the universe, it immediately becomes likely that we are ourselves in a simulation. AHHHH. (although I suppose there is a slightly different emphasis here, the computer isn't simulating a universe, it is specifically looking backwards/forwards at ours. even so)
WHAT THE FUCK STEWART. also what do they feel in that moment? are they compelled to act as they see themselves acting? UH OH INDEED STEWART
"remember Lyndon's in your car. there's that whole thing" GOD THE IMPLICATIONS. but also NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO HURT LYNDON PLS
"they're having the tech nerd's wettest dream" lmao
I feel like the smartest option here would be for lily to like make it impossible for her to go to devs today. like hop a plane to india. can't go to the creepy vacuum vault if you're on one of the longest flights in the world. so long as she is in sf she could conceivably be kidnapped and brought to devs.
then again we did just get that whole moment where stewart and the other devs really did do exactly as they were predicted to, one second away. so at this point are we meant to believe that the computer is/always will be correct? that lily must go to devs?
also. interesting choice of location for the lyndon/katie talk. mm a dam. symbolic of man's ultimately futile attempts to control nature. all dams must some day fall. why did lyndon want to go there? im worried someone's gonna try and push the other off the dam and into the water
"do you want me to pretend I don't know what happens next?" oof. "while I have the illusion of free will I have the illusion of free will".
YES lyndon it's beautiful because it's elegant and it's beautiful because it's true and it's true because it's beautiful but ALSO pls bb don't fall
oh my god he's totally gonna die isn't he. god katie ur so fucking cold. NOOOOOOOOOOOO
"I don't mind that you don't know who I was quoting but I do mind that you can't even guess". YES like you know you don't have to be right all the time, you don't have to know the past and the future and everything in between. it's actually OKAY FOR SOME THINGS TO BE UNKNOWABLE
also. who was the interior designer for this place. all the golden curving inlays. it's beautiful.
one sec I gotta google mark antony. hm okay worked for julius caesar. was part of the triumvirate with lepidus and octavian. married octavia and had kids with cleopatra. civil war. committed suicide with cleopatra. not immediately seeing why stewart is calling out him in particular but maybe it will come up later
god it must be so fucking weird for jamie to be back in the apartment he shared with lily, but with sergei in between
this song choice "sweet little mystery"!!
sneaky keaton get tf out of here
JAMIE!!!!!!!
deus ex pete????????? pete is russian???????????
my orders?? from WHOM? and WHY?
katie:"he's quoting shakespeare or something" was it shakespeare though?? there's no way. okay yeah no the scansion was all wrong. it's aubade by philip larkin. so (1) yeah katie doesn't care about the past in the sense that stewart does/wants them to. and (2) idk anything about philip larkin but 'aubade' is a name for a poem or music that is about/played at dawn. so. lots to unpack there.
at the end of the world, katie and forest watch dinosaur movies and his home videos.
lily walking through devs, security sees her, presumably with the ability to kick her right out, but she's cleared to go. from her perspective, nothing just happened, but actually she's been approved/allowed to continue on her path
love the way those glowing circles around the trees cast light only down, so that it looks like the trees just cut off above. something something nature/the universe extending into the future, unknowable after that point
stewart just hanging out at the devs entrance like a cryptic guardsman. "oh you can't turn around? okay then, i'll open the doors to this super closed access facility for you, no prob"
Stewart the Pschyopomp: An Interlude
(a) okay so I had to look that word up but oh my GOD ur so right. like lily is arriving to possibly her death, and if not hers then possibly the end of the world, and he's like yeah go ahead. iconic behavior(b) i love when tv shows/movies play a song as like background music and then it fades in (out?) and it's clear it's actually part of the scene. stewart's voice over poem does that too here. we think it's just narration but actually he's reciting the poem down in devs. love that
(c) he's reciting the poem out loud. it feels very theater-monologue-y. he is speaking to an unseen audience. in the context of "this is a tv show" he's talking to us. but with the fourth wall unbroken, he's talking to himself. why?
(d) because the acoustics are good. someone told me once that poetry as an art form isn't meant to be read silently, but aloud. and that totally changed my entire relationship to poetry. stewart def seems the kind of person to respect poetry as an art form, so of course he's reciting it out loud.
(e) I think he's thinking about lyndon. lyndon says earlier he's in charge of getting the sound just right. acoustics, sound waves, lyndon. stewart's conversation with forest ("do you appreciate art and culture or not?") mirrors earlier conversation with lyndon
(f) aubade. dawn. death. beginnings and endings. lyndon is dawn, young, bright. (lyndon is also dead, although presumably stewart doesn't know that yet and also i'm choosing to ignore this bc I don't want it to be true and it doesn't fit the point im trying to make here.) anyway if lyndon is dawn/youth/life, that makes stewart, his foil, death. which brings us back to the original psychopomp concept
EP 8
okay before I start
are we going to get anything more about lily's dead dad/emotionally unavailable mom?
I would like 2 know who is giving pete orders. and how sergei came to work for them in the first place. also would like more on the sergei/lily relationship. sergei wasn't just using her as cover, right?
would love to see early days katie and stewart at devs. we see katie's recruitment scene, what was stewart's like?
narratively I think i'm okay with jamie being dead actually. like it's shown that he can't ever tell lily no. he was always going to get dragged into this mess. that's the real tragedy here—he couldn't have done anything else. by who he was as a person, he was doomed from the start. (to some extent also that for lyndon. of course he was going to climb over the dam railing. he couldn't have done anything else.) although I suppose that's the whole theme of the show right. "everything happens for a reason, not necessarily a good one." but here, these are "good" reasons. jamie and lyndon behave as they do because they are consistent to themselves. tragic heroes.
honestly just fuck kenton. messing everything up for everybody. I mean great character though. I feel like I dislike him because he's the like brute force bull in a china shop. you could argue forest and katie are more to blame for sergei's death because they know ? believe ? in the quantum machine, and they do absolutely nothing to stop it. they let it happen. they looked, and decided they were fine with it. is kenton more or less innocent? he doesn't care about what the machine says is going to happen. he's just looking out for himself
also im gonna say that it's wild that the actress who plays lily is also araminta in crazy rich asians. the Range
and most importantly can this world be the world where lyndon never fell pls and thank
okay go
the falcon cannot hear the falconer !!!! things fall apart !! SLOUCHES TOWARD BETHLEHEM TO BE BORN GOD I fuckin love that line
"the best lack all conviction" => who lacks conviction? katie? "the worst are full of passionate intensity" => oh forest for sure.
who is the rough beast? the future? lily? the breaking point when the computer can't see the future anymore? the end of the world?
the pattern on the walls at devs looks like sierpinski carpet
"hi lily" i'm dead
"I don't know what I am anymore" => for lily, lack of choices makes her less human?
"I haven't taken anything from you" UH FUCKING SERGEI ????? like quit the philosophical discussions here forest you MURDERED HER BOYFRIEND
"it is amaya" yeah but you can't talk to her, can you? are you saying she's in the machine?
"she's not alive. she's a simulation" "explain the difference" i'm screaming !!! okay back to the simulation point I was making from ep 7, if he's simulating the universe perfectly, then amaya is there, then he has CREATED THE WORLD IN WHICH SHE IS STILL ALIVE AND ALSO HE GETS TO LOOK AT IT. HE'S THE GOD OF THE UNIVERSE WITH AMAYA IN IT. IM UNWELL
when forest says "this is the moment you take the gun out", when katie says "should I pretend I don't know what's going to happen". it's so. condescending? somehow? idk. they're flexing their knowledge. they don't let you forget that they know. and in that way elevate themselves? or do they see it as being honest? they know what's going to happen, why should they pretend otherwise? it feels so circular. they could just let it happen without interruption but nooo they're super special and they know what's going to happen. but also they know that that's what they're going to say. around and around and around we go
"not yet???" chekov's gun!!!
haha who does the camera work on the universe
daughter's statue time!!
shoots him in the eye!!! no more seeing amaya for you!!!!
and stewart sees it happen!! oh my god oh my god
wait how is she alive in the vacuum? shouldn't she be like smushed? maybe I don't understand vacuums. where is she trying to go?
ITS THE GOD PROJECT FOREST YOU PRETENTIOUS MOTHERFUCKER
once again i feel like the move here for lily is to do something that makes this vision impossible. I don't know. take off the hoodie and put it back on upside down. (I gotta rewatch everything everywhere all at once) like i'm begging for something Else to happen
so katie and forest always knew this was going to happen??
SCREAMINGGGG YOU GO LILY THROW THAT GUN AWAY
GOOD JOB BB GIRL
is stewart going to kill them anyway??? STEWART NOOOOO
STEWART AS DEATH STEWART AS DEATH
AND IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER BECAUSE THE END RESULT IS THE SAME????
NOTHING SHE DID MATTERED AND NOTHING SHE DID MATTERED
"don't blame me katie it was predetermined" WHAT
so stewart's going to disable the machine?
so yes it was lily but also no it was stewart all along
WHAT THE FUCK
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK
IS FOREST TRAPPED IN THE MACHINE
AN EVERLOOPING HELL FOR FOREST
IS THIS HEAVEN OR HELL WHAT THE FUCK HE'S IN THE SYSTEM
"she committed the original sin. disobedience" oh fuck off. okay wait but that makes lily god? maybe? making choices makes us gods? compare against earlier when lily says she doesn't know who she is anymore without choices
???????????????????
is he gonna try and enter the universe where amaya is alive??
also what made the mouse die? sometimes it's alive and sometimes it's dead
oh god lily's back in her apartment with sergei oh fuck oh my god
okay so what is this? is this the universe simulated for lily? it's not forest's universe because amaya is clearly still dead in this one right
LYNDON AND STEWART TOGETHER AGAINNNNNN OKAY EVERYTHING'S FINE
but like. how close is it to the universe we just saw? does devs still exist? sergei still seems to be a russian agent of some kind. lyndon still works at amaya, so if not devs, what's he working on?
oh wait okay so amaya is alive?? just wait until she grows up and gets to see her baby pics all over everything
is this heaven or hell?????????????? they resurrected in the simulation but they're the only two people who know ???
okay so not heaven or hell but life?? they went beyond the afterlife and they're back now??? how do you like meaningfully live your life like this? how do you not go fucking off the wall??
we gotta act like we don't know it's all predetermined or go mad. we all know death is coming but we have to act like it isn't. most things never happen, this one will
"LET'S GET COFFEE SOMETIME"?????????
WHOMST THE FUCK IS THAT
keep it switched on???? so if katie shuts it down is it gone forever??
okay now I believe that katie loves forest
also wow cold @ forest, never looking back at katie
and jamie just opens his arms no questions
well holy shit.
10/10