The Peripheral Season 1 Episode 8 Review: The Creation of a Thousand Forests
As far as season finales go, The Peripheral Season 1 Episode 8, “The Creation of a Thousand Forests,” is not a good one. It’s messy and doesn’t really answer any of the season’s big questions.
Sure, there’s a decent cliffhanger, but the build-up to that moment happens so quickly that you can’t really make sense of what’s happening until the credits roll — oh, and did you catch the end credits scene?
In a poor attempt to wrap up the Aelita mystery, we’re given lots of info-dumps. First, there’s the timeline of Wilf’s life to help remind us of the details before we get to his reunion with Aelita where she reveals the hidden truth behind their reality.
It’s unclear if we are supposed to be relieved Aelita’s alive or not, but, honestly, her survival was never in doubt. We were all just waiting for the moment when she would pop back up.
There’s still so much we don’t understand about how the world operates in the future, and it’s a huge issue.
We’ve been given a small taste of each of the groups — the Klepts, the Research Institute, the Metropolitan Police, and the Neoprims — and how they operate, but it is still hard to differentiate them from one another or have any idea where our alliances should lie in this war that is allegedly brewing.
The Peripheral spends the season attempting to set up this complex political war, but it never gave it the proper attention for it to be well executed.
Seeing as how 2032 Clanton more closely resembles our world, it’s not difficult to figure out the various groups in power around the town. The same can’t be said for the future, which is why the show should’ve spent more of its efforts there.
Ok, I’ll be honest. I’m still trying to understand what happened at the end, so let’s work through it together. Maybe you’ll confirm I’m right, or maybe you’ll have picked up something that I missed.
Flynne creates a continuum off of the 2032 branch, which is a stub from the “main” timeline of the future.
This new continuum is created to produce all new versions of her, Burton, and Conner that Cherise “has nothing to do with,” which is vague but perhaps means that there’s no top-secret data in that Flynne’s head, and they’ve never time-traveled.
However, Flynne’s original stub will still exist, so Conner has to kill her to let Cherise think it’s game over. In reality, Flynne is uploaded to her peripheral somehow and sitting across from Inspector Lowbeer in the future.
I don’t see the point in creating a new stub if Flynne’s not going to live in it unless the plan isn’t for her to stay in the future for long. Flynne probably needs to either swap peripherals to one that doesn’t look like her or leave the future because she’s too recognizable anyways, so a trip to a different stub could be a smart play.
A lot of this season can unfortunately be summed up by stating that the point of it all is unclear.
The goal of the season seems to be to introduce Flynne to the future and her new nemesis, Cherise. That’s the only real thing that is accomplished this season. Everything else is half-done or done so poorly that it is hard to figure out why we’re supposed to care.
The Peripheral started off with such promise. It’s a shame that the season overall turned out to be such a mess. However, for whatever reason, I’m invested enough to watch a second season, should it get renewed.
I’m curious where Season 2 will go, especially in regard to Flynne, Burton, Conner, and this new stub that she created. Meeting alternate versions of them could be interesting, assuming enough has changed from the versions we already know and love.
Stray Thoughts
- I could not watch Flynne’s death; I didn’t even want to hear the gunshot.
- Wilf thinking about his feelings for Flynne is so cute and definitely a shippable moment.
- Does anyone care about Jasper and his crisis of character moment?
- Something tells me Corbell won’t name Tommy as the shooter; he’ll use it as blackmail.
What did you think of this episode of The Peripheral? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Peripheral Season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.
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Allison Nichols
Allison is in a love affair with television that doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon. Slightly damaged fictional characters are her weakness. She loves to spend her free time curled up with a cat and a show to binge-watch. Allison is a Tomatometer-approved critic (Rotten Tomatoes).
12 comments
If I understood correctly it was made clear early on in this TV-series that it was not time travel but only transfer of “current” data. So no upload of an entire body or conscious to the future. This is confirmed by the idea Connor had to lie in a hospital bed for the remainder of his life in the stub where he can’t walk as a human and operate his peripheral 24/7 so he could as a cyborg in the future. It’s only remote operating of a cyborg body; thoughts and actions all originate in the past, the peripheral only acts on those inputs, making it a very small footprint of data that needs to transfer to the future and back. Like playing a game, a sim, but in this case the remote (future) world is real. The mind and body still exist in the here and now.
I just rewatched a second time and I am pretty sure that Flynne choose to die in the “original” stub in which we started the series. To make sure that there was no longer any incentive for Cherise to cause a worse and expedited version of the jackpot in the original stub, killing everyone Flynne cares about. She sacrificed herself to save everyone else.
But before dying Flynne created a new stub in which she is still kicking, its a branch of the original stub from before she died, and by destroying the pocket watch right after, Charise and noone else in the future knows exactly where this new stub exists, so Charise and Lev nor anyone else can impact her new stub to retrieve or destroy the knowledge library in her head.
The only one from the future she told the coordinates of the new stub was Inspector Ainsley (Lowbeer), in order to reconnect herself to her peripheral, who she is remote operating from the new stub. So now she can go and kill Charise (and probably everyone else from RI and the Kleps) without having to worry about anyone else impacting her world in the past.
The last bit where the peripheral comes back online should be Flynne remote connecting from the new stub.
So you think that the version in the peripheral at the end isn’t the same Flynne that chooses to die? I guess it depends on when exactly this new stub is created and how much that version of Flynne knows. I figured the new stub would start before Flynne ever wore the headset, so she never traveled to the future and never downloaded that data of the RI. Otherwise, that version would still have something Cherise wants and therefore be in danger. But you might be right because Flynne talks about how Cherise won’t have the coordinates to be able to find this new Flynne… My head starts hurting when I try to think of how the stub creation system works. I thought our Flynne is still alive in the peripheral and this new stub Flynne lives life without knowledge of the future and never put on the headset. I can see the logic behind your take on the finale though. Thanks for sharing it.
The one gaping plothole — stubs, once created, are timelocked (1 hour in the stub is 1 hour in 2099 London).
Flynne has created a stublet from her own stub while her consciousness is still quantum-tunneled to 2099 — where does that leave the substubbed Flynne? She can’t be simultaneously tunneled to 2099 London.
Other than that, it seems quite a clever move, with the substubbed Flynne knowing everything without needing to be brought up to speed (although there has to be a mechanism by which she knows not to get offed, which is the corollary to the mentioned plot hole).
And substubbed Flynne should still have the Library in her head as well.
You have misunderstood what happened. The show didn’t do a great job of explaining the concept, especially in the last episode, but here’s the deal (I think):
Flynn’s timeline (the “stub”) is a branch off what we’re calling the main timeline that we see in London 2100. Flynn’s plan involved creating a new branch (or stub) from *her own* timeline, so at that moment in the church, she essentially splits her own timeline in two. Has herself killed in one (just after the split), and so continues existing with the same brain, same headsets, same everything.
In one universe, she’s now dead. In a new branch, she’s alive, but Cherise has no way to access that specific branch.
The show definitely didn’t do a good job of explaining most things. I did wonder if this was an adaptation issue and people who have read the books would’ve been able to follow along a lot better than viewers who are unfamiliar with the source material (aka me). I was thinking that the new stub was created a lot earlier than where Flynne is in her own stub (meaning new stub Flynne doesn’t know everything our Flynne does), but I can definitely understand your explanation. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for the breakdown Allison. The last episode had me looking for answers online and most reviews I came across were just basic descriptions of the main scenes, without any further analysis.
While your review didn’t have all the answers, it made it clear I wasn’t the only one that was left confused by the ending. And it provides a platform for people to chime in. I think DKs interpretation is spot on.
I’m happy it lead to other people bringing up their take on what happened. We’ve all got to help each other understand this show.
Right, I believe that the Flynn connecting to the peripheral at the end is indeed a new version of Flynn from the new stub she created, but with the same memories and intentions of the Flynn who chooses to die. The Flynn who dies hatched this plan before creating the new stub from the original stub, so in all sense of purposes the Flynn from the new stub is exactly the same Flynn as the one who chooses to die. She explains her reasoning as a sim game where she had ended up in a blackhole and can’t continue and will always die (Clarise causing jackpot) and wants to reset. She essentially dies in the original stub to respawn in the new stub (game terminology).
What I find strange though is with her plan Flynn intends to fool Clarisse into thinking Lowbeer had someone kill her in the original stub. For this reason Flynn asks Connor to kill her from a distance, so no one exactly knows who killed her. To make it seem like Clarisse won and Lowbeer helped her do it. But this fails uterly when Clarisse loads into the peripherals guarding the timetable and sees what Flynn is up to, Flynn even goes on to explain in detail to Clarisse what she intends and her endgame is.
It wrecks my brain a bit too, but makes it interesting, as the sacrifice she makes is even greater. Just think about making the choice to die yourself and trust that somewhere an alternate version of you survives and will carry on the fight. I wonder if we’ll even see more of the original stub, or that the rest of the show takes place in the new stub.
What I found interesting is when Flynn mentions using the knowledge library in her head to try and prevent the jackpot … will she only prevent the jackpot in her new stub timeline, or will she impact the original stub from the future where she had died to prevent the jackpot there as well? Would make sense as she died to save everyone there in the original stub, would be a loss if the jackpot ends up happening there and killing everyone anyway. Maybe she’ll save all the stubs that exist!
I’m pretty sure on that timetable where she sees all the stubs the date of the stub she clicks on said 2032, which is the date of the original stub, and the new stub continues from that same date.
The way I see it is, the main timeline is the one we see in the future, that is the tree so to speak. And all stubs are branches on that tree. Once created a stub is identical to the main timeline on the specific date the stub is created, but the stub immediately begins to form its own timeline and path. The baddies from the future, the main timeline, will cause events in those stubs to alter their timeline and by doing this they gain power, wealth and insights via research and trial and error. If you pause the episode where Flynn stands at the timetable you can kind of see this as a visual representation. And now Flynn has created a new branch not from the tree itself but from the original stub she exists in. Her branch sprouted a new branch.
I do find your take on it beautiful as well, a separate stub where everyone lives happily ever after!
Random thought; if the original and new stub split once Flynn stands in the church … having decided on the plan to die earlier than that, how would Flynn in the new stub know not to kill herself as she’s the new Flynn, the new plan … how would Connor? I guess offscreen that is where Lowbeer must have came in and connected the peripheral to Flynn in the new stub. Something like “Try to load in with the headset, if you can’t, you are the Flynn meant to die”. Or a less grim version of that, maybe Lowbeer send a message to Flynn in the new stub like “You are the new Flynn, do not take that walk to the creek”. Can you imaging the relieve reading that?
I can’t decide if Flynne planned on Clarisse seeing her make the new stub or not. I literally just tried to type out an explanation for the part of the scheme involving Lowbeer sending someone to kill Flynne and made myself more confused. So I agree that that part of Flynne’s scheme doesn’t make a ton of sense.
I would love to know the details of when new Flynne existed in time and then yeah if she knew about the “I have to die bit” and thought about following through with it until Lowbeer intervened or what. Flynne’s going to need a lot of therapy, as will Conner. I hope the new stub version of Conner doesn’t have to live with the thought of a version of himself killing Flynne.
Fyi it’s “the Klept”, not Kleps or Klepts.
Okay you definitely missed what happened in the e dung. The way the time travel is that it is a transfer of data. So the reason the bacteria is in Flynne’s head is because the data was intended for Burton, who had the peripherals to store that data. The new stub creates a save of all data at that moment in time (this includes all physical and boliological traits) so Flynne 2 will still have the data in her head. By destroying the access to the machine to make the stub, Flynne has essentially blocked cherise from getting to her as Cherise does not know how to locate the stub Flynne created. So it won’t matter if Cherise see Flynne in her Peripheral because she won’t be able to comprehend that being the same Flynne.
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