In this surreal, fragmented episode, Cole splinters to the weird part of 1987 Japan where he inadvertently sets Goines on the road to starting a plague, before being killed. We learn the identity of the Witness as we spiral back through the entire season and learn what the Striking Woman and her associates have been doing. We don’t know why, however, they want the apocalypse to happen, nor do we know…
-Why they don’t appear to age.
-The significance of the Red Forest.
-What, exactly, the Rising of the Twelve will be.
-Why more people at this site aren’t watching 12 Monkeys
Has Jones finally run out of cigarettes? :)
Been thinking about the latest batch of clues and I think we got some strong indications about the “why” of the plague. It’s not pretty clear that the plague is both designed to wipe out humanity and it’s release is deliberate, so the talk about long term survival in bunkers is pretty illuminating. I’m going for a group that has decided mankind needs a do-over and the best way to achieve that is mass extermination while a chosen elite wait it out in a bunker somewhere.
Two more lingering questions for me:
People seem to have more knowledge than they should about future events. Ramse and Cole must have provided some of that information, but it seems like far more is required – another time traveller at some point, perhaps?
Why, given all that Ramse must have told them, is the Striking Woman’s group still set on making sure that history plays out to 2047 as perceived by Jones and the rest; purely for the avoidance of paradoxes or because it is what they want to happen? If I’m right about the elite in bunkers, could it be they are still waiting it out somewhere, and are perhaps responsible for introducing the new strains of the virus in an attempt to mop up those immune to earlier attempts?
It’s clear enough they want to wipe out most of humanity, so your theory makes sense. It also dovetails with popular tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, so it’s an easy sell to the audience. The latest developments give me confidence they do have a clear backstory, and this won’t turn into the final season of Lost or Galactica.
Yes, there’s clearly a well defined story arc for season 1, but Lost and Galactica seemed to have a good sense of direction for season 1 as well only to unravel into a mess of loose ends later on. If the writers have got the end-game mapped out along with a few key milestones along the way and they can address the problem of growing the audience mid-run as well, then things should hopefully be good for a few more seasons yet.