Oh my gosh, does my head hurt after this one. The pain…make it stop! I honestly had no idea this TV series would end up being what it was and that’s the beauty of not reading reviews or anything on the Internet prior to going into a show or movie. When I quickly glanced at the series description, I just thought it was going to be something where the astronaut would return home and find it difficult to readjust to ordinary life and her family. Like quite literally the kind of slow burn family drama kind of show. But with Apple TV being so good at creating science fiction shows, of course it’s much more complicated than that!

It turns out that Constellation is a parallel universe type of story and with it, of course one can expect their brains to be scrambled. While I admit that I had to read up a lot on it after the season finale for someone to explain the more smaller details that I may have missed, Constellation I found to be just a below average series. I somehow lost interest shortly during the halfway mark or so and had to watch the rest of the show speed up to about 1.25 and 1.50 speed. I’d like to tell myself this is the reason why I didn’t catch every single detail and not just because I wasn’t smart enough to handle it so I can sleep better at night. But honestly, it’s not too bad and like with so many other things, I was able to at least comprehend some of the more complicated issues but failed to do so on some of the easier one’s. I think it’s attributed to how much of the energy is spent on thinking of the ending and what it all means that at times, one can easily forget some of the earlier events of the series that help tie all together.

Anyways, I think Constellation just spent a bit too long in the beginning on making sure that the audience is aware that something totally weird is going on. In other words, I think the pace could have picked up just a bit more instead of dwelling too long on certain things. The first episode obviously set the tone but it wasn’t really until episode six until things really got moving again to make things interesting. I think what messed me up the most is realizing that a person can have a version of themselves, alive, in both universes as with Henry and Bud. However, we spend so much more time with Jo that we have to remember that she’s dead in the other universe and that the version we see her in after the incident is a version of Jo from the alternate universe but transported to the original universe we began in.

Writing this out and reflecting on the show has actually helped me out a lot more in understanding what happened. It’s obvious that Henry and Bud swapped places and Bud destroyed the CAL to prevent Henry from ever returning back. Henry now likely will go to jail in the alternate universe while Bud will live it up as the hero. But if you think about it, Bud actually has the right because they swapped places in the first place so technically, Bud, who is a drunk asshole, is the real Henry and he’s just reclaiming his spot back. But what I don’t get is how did they swap places in the first place if the CAL wasn’t invented when Bud saved the Apollo 18 mission many decades ago, leading to him swapping with Henry in the alternate universe and vice-versa? It’s also obvious that both Alices have accepted their situations and to live with it. Mom-less Alice is just happy that her real mom gets to be with other Alice somewhere else. Other Alice will try and accept other-version-Jo. Jo also accepts that she ain’t going back to her original family and will try and live a happy life with who she has now as her new family. It’s obvious Irina knows more than she lets on when she whispers to Alice that her friends call her “Valya”.

I only have two questions. I tell myself this so I can go to sleep peacefully tonight and not have to think of anything else. The first is to do with the CAL. As mentioned above, how did Bud and Henry swap places so many decades ago if the CAL hadn’t been invented? From what I can remember seeing throughout the series, the CAL doesn’t mess with the actual timeline or the past. Yes, it creates a liminal space where it’s strongest in certain areas but I didn’t see anything about it being able to alter the past. It’s likely a hint was dropped (because of course there’s always a hint) and I missed it. I’m not too shocked that Apple cancelled the show only after the first season. If there was a season two, how would it go? With Henry now in Bud’s universe, would he be able to escape law enforcement and create another CAL with the knowledge that he now knows it can work on Earth and not just in space? Will Jo come back alive in that universe due to that cliff-hanger ending? Since we won’t know due to the cancellation, my answer is a simple no to both. 😁