Debris Review: Celestial Body (Season 1 Episode 13)
Debris closes out Season 1 with Episode 13, “Celestial Body,” an end that is equal parts anticlimactic and leaves us eager for what comes next on the series. This assumes that a second season will ever get ordered, which is a fairly substantial leap to take.
A large part of this episode feels born out of the production needing to comply with Covid restrictions, something that has probably been consistent throughout the season but feels particularly clear here. The show ends up going for something that is rather small in its scope and feels that way.
There are little details here and there that are intriguing and seem pretty promising room for the series to broach in the future but the problem is that the actual episode that it inhabits is more anticlimactic than anything.
“Celestial Body” introduces a Big Bad played by John Noble and that’s an exciting prospect but the show isn’t ready to fully give us that in full yet. The episode brings up that Bryan has a more intimate relationship with the debris than we know but, nope, not ready to get into that yet, either.
What this episode feels like is if you ever go to a Marvel movie and a mid-credits scene shows a peek into something cool and promising and it makes you want to see that next installment that will have that specific thing but it isn’t technically the movie you just watched. That’s what this finale is but stretched out and far less satisfying.
It’s a bold move but it’s also the writers trying to set themselves up to get picked up for that second season. The network needs to pick it up or there will be these dangling threads for all of time that will drive fans mad and that is a strategy that has almost never worked. It just ends up putting the onus on the fans to fight for it.
The resolution of what Bryan has been injecting into himself is as satisfying as something like that was ever going to be and it works for the most part.
It solidifies why the debris has often reached out to him and serves as a nice continuation for the relationship that he has with it. It implies that they are a part of him and, by extension, him in it. There’s a lot of really interesting places to go with that but, again, that’s not a part of this episode.
What this episode lacks in any kind of large stakes — beyond the group of people losing their memories — it gains with the cementing the conflict in emotion and familial ties. While the show has been telegraphing George’s reveal practically from space, it works because we have that investment in Finola and how she responds this.
The show doesn’t have much but it does have a strong anchor in its characters and the way they react to things and there are far worse things to have at your disposal.
What did you think of this episode of Debris? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Debris airs Mondays at 10/9c on NBC.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.