Abhiroop Das
Created by Mickey Fisher, CBS’s ‘Extant’ is a science fiction thriller that chronicles the story of Molly Woods, who has a mysterious pregnancy while on a solo space mission. Soon, it becomes apparent that there are mysterious forces at play, starting from apparitions of the deceased to inexplicable energy signals, all somehow tied to the shady nature of her space agency. Molly navigates these strange circumstances while trying to maintain a healthy bond with her husband and android son, who has a dark side to him. All these threads find their climax in the season finale, titled ‘Ascension,’ with the story’s themes of exploring different kinds of lives coming into the forefront. Difficult choices must be made for the protection of planet Earth, and the protagonist, along with her near and dear ones, all step up to the challenge. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Extant Season 1 Plot Recap
The story begins with Molly Woods returning to Earth after spending 13 months aboard the Seraphim Space Station as part of the space program organized by the International Space Exploration Agency. However, when she learns that she is inexplicably pregnant, her mind wanders back to a hazy memory of encountering her deceased lover, Marcus Dowkins, during the operation. Back home, Molly reconnects with her husband, John Woods, who is the brains behind the artificially intelligent robot son, Ethan Woods. Ethan shows strange behaviour, including cruelty towards animals and a curiosity in Darwinism. Meanwhile, Hideki Yasumoto, who funds the space agency, has plans of his own and tasks the director, Alan Sparks, with keeping tabs on Molly’s unborn child.
Curious about her pregnancy, Molly takes the help of her friend, Sam, to conduct an ultrasound, but they are ambushed by Sparks before Sam can show the results. After escaping him, Molly reunites with her family, and they all take shelter at her father’s house. However, they are soon caught, and her child is forcibly extracted from her womb and placed in a facility. In the process, Ethan’s systems shut down, and subsequent attempts at reviving him end up modifying his consciousness, as the child can now dream. Furthermore, Ethan begins to advance rapidly, learning languages on the fly and quickly exceeding his father’s intelligence. Molly desperately tries to reunite with her child, and is assisted by Kryger, a former astronaut who faced similar hallucinations and then faked his death. However, when they make it to the lab, Kryger tries to kill the baby, only for Sparks to take it and flee.
One of the scientists working on Ethan, Julie, befriends a charming man named Odin, who turns out to be an anti-technology terrorist who plants a bomb inside Ethan, hoping to destroy Yasumoto Corp. Meanwhile, the baby, now called the Offspring, begins to age rapidly, soon reaching the same age as Ethan. He controls Sparks by creating a hallucination of his daughter, Katie, which he is ultimately freed from. We learn that Katie was in a similar spaceship, named Aruna, which was subjected to an alien attack that led to the death of everyone on board. However, it seems that Katie survived, and she uses a spaceship to make her way to Seraphim, where an astronaut named Sean helps her. In yet another twist, it turns out that Katie is the alien in disguise, and it prepares to cause the Seraphim to make its way to Earth. Molly is the only one who can redirect the spaceship out of harm’s way, and she takes on the mantel.
Extant Season 1 Ending: Is Ethan Dead or Alive?
Throughout the season, Ethan is perceived with fear and suspicion about what his true nature entails; however, in the end, the child proves his love for his family. When the ISEA control room is hijacked by the Offspring, all manual connections to Molly’s spaceship are lost, leaving her in trouble as the time bomb on Serpahim begins to accelerate. Knowing that the Offspring can control the human mind, Ethan realizes that he is the only person who can get into the control room, as he is a robot with artificial intelligence. However, another challenge is to mimic a human’s heat signature, which is necessary to activate the manual override function. In a display of bravery, Ethan volunteers to heat his body to that point, knowing that doing so might trigger the honey bomb planted inside of him. Just when he is successful in giving his mother manual control, his body begins to glow. A loud explosion, followed by a shutdown of his system, seemingly confirms his demise.
However, while Ethan’s corporeal body disintegrates, all hope is not lost. In the days following the fateful event, Molly, John, and Julie mourn for the child in their own unique ways. While Molly learns a lesson in humanity, John and his team are desperate to rebuild Ethan, but to no avail. Just then, Molly hears Ethan’s voice coming from all over their house, despite his mechanical body being nowhere in sight. At the same time, his systems in the Humanich Project laboratory boot up, showing signs of functioning. Before long, his system is projected across every window and screen of the Woods’ house, and when his parents asked where he was, he expressed that he was everywhere. It is possible that the child is not exaggerating, and that his consciousness has evolved to a point where he doesn’t need a material form. This puts a new spin on the title of the show, with Ethan surviving against all odds.
With his consciousness still active, Ethan might be recreated by his father and reintegrated into the family. However, it is equally likely that the child prefers to stay in this form. Another possibility, albeit a dark one, is that the Ethan seen in the final sequence is not the real Ethan at all. Instead, it is a phantom recreation by the Offspring, whose abilities have grown tremendously over the course of time. Moments before Ethan’s body explodes, he has a showdown with the Offspring and urges him to leave before getting caught up in the blast. This moment might have played a critical part in furthering the entity’s powers, and if it can break through the barrier of not being able to affect a robot, then the threat it possesses is several times magnified. Nonetheless, Molly and John find peace in the fact that their son has seemingly returned to life, and they can work on their previous mistakes as a parent together.
How did Molly Get Pregnant? What Happens to Her Child?
The enigmatic nature of Molly’s pregnancy takes on the bulk of the narrative, with the reasons being unravelled layer by layer, but never to the full extent. While initially, we are led to believe that Molly’s deceased lover, Marcus Dawkins, is involved in her pregnancy, given that he appears on the spaceship as an apparition. Eventually, Molly realizes that she was impregnated by a mysterious alien, and its intention is to have its species descend onto Earth. The alien possesses the ability to manipulate a person’s psyche, as well as don the appearance of someone they know. Using both of these tools, it manipulates the protagonist, as well as a host of other characters, all to achieve its ulterior goals. While the Offspring is still part human, he clearly displays supernatural characteristics, such as psychic abilities and accelerated aging.
Molly’s pregnancy does not come out of the blue, as it plays a role in the larger narrative of ‘Extant,’ with the strings being pulled by Hideki Yasumoto. We learn that in reality, he is over a hundred years old, and has maintained his appearance using the powers of a meteorite he discovered while mining as a teen. Given that the meteorite is a finite resource, Yasumoto seeks to harness the energy to a greater extent, which leads him to fund a space program directed towards the planet where the rock originated. The Offspring, as such, also serves as his ticket to near immortality, and he desires it despite knowing that the aliens have other plans for humanity. As the child’s mother, Molly rejects both sides and chooses to show the Offspring love even when he actively works against her.
In the end, the Offspring’s plans are foiled due to Molly and Ethan working together, and in the subsequent explosion, the child disappears. Later, Molly contemplates how it is still likely that the Offspring is alive and secretly concocting a new way to spread the spores onto Earth, and her suspicions are proven right in the final sequence of the season. Still alive, the Offspring walks on the road and is noticed by a couple of passersby. Believing that he is cold, the couple stops and offers him a ride, to which the child agrees. As the car drives away, a whole new room of opportunities opens up, as the Offspring is now outside of the ISEA’s control and can potentially use his ability on a large number of people. Given that he has previously coerced people to commit acts of evil, this increase in narrative scale comes as a boon for the entity and a bane for Molly and her team.
Does Molly Stop the Seraphim From Falling on Earth?
When it becomes apparent that the alien wants to crash the Seraphim onto Earth and release all of its spores into the wild, Molly decides to return to space and make sure the alien’s plans fail. Once aboard the infected Seraphim, she rescues Sean, and together they form a plan to take down the shapeshifting entity. Molly is assisted by the algorithm on her helmet that filters out the spores, allowing her to read from fantasy. When Molly enters a storage room to find a way to redirect the spaceship’s course, she is attacked by the alien, who has taken Katie’s form. While Molly knocks the alien out, Sean is not so lucky, as he is tricked by the alien impersonating Molly and subsequently infected. When the protagonist finds out that Sean has been sabotaging her plan under the alien’s influence, she sedates him and embarks on a different plan altogether: Blow up the Seraphim.
With Ethan’s help, Molly escapes the Seraphim moments before it explodes due to the time bomb she planted on it. While it seems that the humans have won over the aliens, it is not so simple, as the explosion does not guarantee that the alien spores inside have died. Additionally, we see that the Offspring survives a similar explosion, despite having a human form. This places Molly’s plan in the gray, as the blast may have unintentionally propelled the spores back to Earth, from where they can continue their chaos and multiply. Additionally, the debris from the explosion is also likely to make its way back to the planet, further tilting the odds against her favour. Worst of all, the protagonist is infected by the spores herself, given that she loses a glove during her fight with Katie’s apparition.
As such, Molly’s fight against the alien species is far from over. With the addition of the Offspring into the equation, things are personal for the protagonist, and she won’t stop until the truth of the matter comes to light. It is unlikely that Sean survived the explosion, and this is likely to put her in the spotlight, as this event will be visible to the entire world. The idea of the aliens being made public comes with its own trials and tribulations, and the protagonist might have to delve deeper into the web of lies and deception to keep the world at ease. This does not hinder the entity from furthering its plan, and the clock is ticking for Molly to contain this crisis and reunite with her child.
