‘3 Body Problem’ Ending Explained: Why Is Saul a Wallfacer? What about the staircase project?

**Spoilers for everyone 3 Body problem Season 1, now streaming on Netflix**

“We are slow, stupid and die easily. We are bugs,” says Saúl Durand (Jovan Adepo) dejectedly in the 3 Body problem ending just when it seems that all is lost. The San-Ti have successfully blocked the progress of science with their sophons and are racing across the universe to conquer Earth. The Ladder Project is a failure, leaving poor Will’s (Alex Sharp) brain floating through the Milky Way for the next five million years. The brilliant Auggie Salazar (Eiza González) is so traumatized by the events of Judgment Day that she has turned her back on the fight and is hiding in Latin America, where she uses her nanofiber technology to save small towns from the dysentery. And Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham) received a personal visit from San-Ti’s “ambassador” Sophon (Sea Shimooka), promising that he will be watched every second for the rest of his life. All in all, humanity’s fight seems hopeless, leading Saul, the newly named Wallfacer, to agree with the enemy when he tells us, “You’re bugs.”

However, Da-Shi (Benedict Wong) is not so convinced that the war has already been won. In the last minutes of 3 Body problem In episode 8, “Wallfacer,” he takes the grieving Jin (Jess Hong) and Saul on a trip to the Florida swamps, where locusts have overtaken nature. He explains that humans have always hated insects, but no matter what they have tried, they have never been able to exterminate them all. He toasts the bugs and then tells Jin and Saul that they have work to do.

So the final metaphor 3 Body problem leaves us is quite obvious. If humans are insects, that only means it will be difficult for the San-Ti to kill them. No matter how small and weak we are, we have the ability to survive. The fight is not over.

However, the end of 3 Body problem Season 1 also leaves us with a lot of questions. Is Will gone forever? What does it mean that Tatiana (Marlo Kelly) has been invited to the game? What exactly is a Wallfacer? And why was Saul Durand inexplicably chosen to become one? And looking ahead, will there be a 3 Body problem Season 2? (And looking ahead, what exactly is the Dark Forest Theory?) Here’s everything you need to know about the 3 Body problem End of season 1…

3 Body problem Ending Explained: What is a Wallfacer?

3 Body problem Episode 8, “Wallfacer,” begins with the most discreet and roguish member of the Oxford Five, Saul Durand, waking up from a one-night stand. She gets offended because he doesn’t remember her name and asks him to order her an Uber. As the two walk to the car, Saul explains why he won’t worry about the imminent San-Ti invasion, centuries away. His one-night-stand lover is clearly angry at him for not caring about humanity. A skateboarder collides with Saul, triggering a series of car accidents that end with the death of Saul’s friend. “Nora,” she says, revealing that he did remember her name.

The reason I lay all this out is because it not only reveals the depths of Saul’s duplicity: he knew his name all along! —but because it is also taken directly from Liu Cixin’s sequel. The Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest. In that novel, Saul Durand’s “character” is the Chinese scientist Luo Ji, and like Saul, Luo Ji is about to be bound against his will to become a Wallfacer.

Project Wallfacer is a counteroffensive mission created by humanity to exploit the San-Ti’s only perceived weakness: they do not understand lies. Although San-Ti’s sophons are roaming the world monitoring everything humanity does, a brilliant inpidual with the ability to obfuscate their motives could devise a plan to block the invaders. That’s the hope, at least.

Saul is one of the four chosen Wallfacers and the only non-famous entity in the group. He is also the only one who rejects the charge. However, he is San-Ti’s immediate target for another assassination attempt. (Oh yeah, he was the target of that car accident; not Nora.)

Which begs the question: Why was Saul chosen to be Wallfacer? On paper, it’s perfect. Think about how he convinced that girl that he forgot her name. However…there is another reason…

Why was Saul Durand chosen to be Wallfacer? The punch line of Ye Wenjie’s joke

No one on Earth seemed to know who Saul Durand was before he was named Wallfacer, but somehow the San-Ti were into their business. Because? Well, think about the penultimate episode of 3 Body problem Season 1. In 3 Body problem In episode 7, “Only Advance,” Saul meets Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao) at the grave of her daughter and mentor, Vera Ye (Vedette Lim).

The two have a conversation in which Ye Wenjie shares a very strange joke with Saul that he doesn’t seem to understand. He has to do with Einstein going to heaven and trying to play his beloved violin, only to have the angels tell him that you can’t play with God. Saúl doesn’t find it very funny and even 3 Body problem Star Rosalind Chao mocked Jugo Mobile as less of a joke than a secret tip for handling the San-Ti. But why Saul?

“So at one point I said that he is really the smartest of the Oxford Five,” Chao said. “He had also taken Saul under my protection. There was a scene before [shows] He had really become one of my favorites… he brings me food.”

“The fact that he was a bit of the master’s favorite makes me want to impart this wisdom to him without the Sophon knowing what I’m imparting to him.”

As we saw in a previous episode, the narrative structure of fairy tales confuses the San-Ti. Therefore, Ye Wenjie uses the structure of a joke to convey information to Saul. However, Chao cautioned that we won’t know what that information is unless Netflix renews the series for a second season.

“You won’t know what I’ve imparted to him until Season 2,” Chao said. “So there has to be a second season. Otherwise, it’s just a bad joke, right?”

There will be a 3 Body problem Season 2?

Netflix has not yet announced plans for a second season of 3 Body problembut Jugo Mobile learned during a recent roundtable with creators David Benioff, DB Weiss, and Alexander Woo that they have long-term plans, even if they’ve already incorporated parts of Books 2 and 3 into the show’s first season.

“We’ve taken fragments of Book 2 and Book 3 and placed them in the timeline of Book 1 because Book 2 and Book 3 begin more or less in what is the approximate present. But that still leaves a lot of meat on the bone,” said Alexander Woo. “We still have a long way to go in the future. It’s just that, you know, the things that happened in the present we’ve put in season 1.”

“But as you know, if you know the books, season 2 has a lot of things that happen across time and space.”

So there is a rough plan! In fact, there may even be more than just a rough plan. During the same roundtable, Jugo Mobile asked the showrunners about the horrific events of 3 Body problem Episode 5 “Judgment Day,” and David Benioff hinted that the ramifications of that episode would have a big influence on Auggie Salazar’s character in the future.

“The repercussions of that continue throughout the season and, ideally, in later seasons, where Auggie, who witnesses this, is completely devastated by the fact that she was complicit in the murder of innocents,” Benioff said.

So the showrunners have a plan to 3 Body problem Season 2, but it’s up to Netflix to make it happen.

What does it mean that Tatiana Haas has been invited to play?

A character who feels really excited at the end of 3 Body problem It’s Tatiana Haas. She is arguably San-Ti’s most loyal human on Earth, as well as being one of the few survivors of Ye Wenjie’s organization. Not only is she sent to kill Ye Wenjie, who anyway seems ready to commit suicide in 3 Body problem Episode 7, but at the end they invite her to play. Tatiana takes it as an honor and it is clearly a sign that she will be in closer contact with San-Ti in the future.

However…and the program does not explain this…but someone he physically put the game in his trailer. Which suggests, along with Saul’s possible killer, that Tatiana is not as alone in her fight for the San-Ti as we have been led to believe. There are still people who welcome our alien overlords. Again, something for season 2.

So is Will Downing as officially dead-dead in 3 Body problem? Where does Will’s body go?

Will Downing donated his brain to his secret love Jin’s ambitious Ladder Project, and all he got was this lousy five-million-year trip floating to the edge of the Milky Way! Is Will gone forever? Well, we’ll have to wait until future seasons of 3 Body problem discover. (Or read the third book in Liu Cixin’s trilogy, The end of death.)

That said, as Woo himself said, a potential 3 Body problem “Season 2 has a lot of stuff happening across time and space,” so what’s a few million years floating around like a brain, huh? It is not a big thing!

3 Body problem: What is the dark forest theory?

Well, well, well… curious to know what the title of The three body problemthe sequel to the book, The dark forest, could I allude? Do you wonder why people talk about the “dark forest theory”? Please note that what I’m about to share is a major spoiler for Liu Cixin’s books, which could therefore ruin a possible future season of 3 Body problem…

The dark forest theory is the idea that the reason humans have not heard from extraterrestrial civilizations is not because aliens do not exist. It’s because aliens hide, and we should hide from aliens too.

The Dark Forest Theory imagines that the universe is just that, a dark forest filled with unseen threats, terrifying predators, and even helpless creatures that will resort to anything to survive. In a dark forest, the quickest way to die is to light a fire because it will draw attention to your position. (Remember how Haymitch literally says this to Katniss in The Hunger Games? Your intuition may be to light a fire to survive, but not when you’re prey!)

By relaying Earth’s location to the San-Ti, the young Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng) unknowingly lit that fire, drawing the alien race to them. The dark forest theory posits that the most damaging thing you can do to yourself or another species is to shine a light on it and reveal its position.

That’s all I’ll say… for more information, see 3 Body problem or read Liu Cixin’s books.