You Haven't Lost Your Mind: The Ending of 'Constellation' Is Incoherent

By Dustin Rowles | Film | March 27, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | Film | March 27, 2024 |

To be honest, Constellation has been largely incoherent since about halfway through the series after a promising start that sees Jo (Noomi Rapace) return from outer space feeling not herself. That’s because she is not herself. For reasons that are not clear nor are ever properly explored, Jo switches places with a version of herself in another universe.

Jo dies in an accident in space, but she switches places with a version of herself in a universe where Jo lives. When the living Jo returns, she encounters a husband who does not recognize her personality, and the family car is a different color. Her daughter, Alice, is not how she remembers her, either.

Two (and possibly three) other astronauts had similar experiences after they returned to Earth, including Henry (Jonathan Banks). In one universe, Henry is a Nobel prize-winning scientist. In another universe, his name is Bud, he murders two people, and he is the worst. By the end of the finale, Bud switches universes with Henry, who is arrested for murders committed by Bud, while Bud is in the other universe, trolling the living people he murdered in his original universe.

Much of episodes four through seven involve Jo and Henry figuring it all out. This means the story alternates between universes and in the liminal spaces between them, and it is never clear who is where at any given time. It’s like watching two different stories involving the same characters mashed together indistinguishably. It is not only confusing, but the characters give us little reason to invest in them. It is not worth trying to parse out who is who because they are not compelling people.

In the end, it’s all moot, anyway. Jo realizes she’s going to spend the rest of her life in the wrong universe with the wrong family but decides to make the best of it. Unfortunately, she cannot take the lithium that would help her cope with this new reality because she’s pregnant; Jo’s sonogram, however, suggests that her baby may similarly experience involuntary interdimensional travel.

Alice, Jo’s daughter, decides the wrong Jo will make for an acceptable substitute for her real mom, while Alice, in the universe with the dead Jo, comes to terms with her loss, even as she knows that her real mom is still alive but in another universe because the two Alices can communicate using a tape player.

What makes the already confusing, incoherent finale even more confusing and incoherent, however, is that the final scene is of dead Jo—who only has half a face and is floating around lifelessly in an abandoned space capsule—startling awake and grabbing her iPad. It’s not shocking. It’s nonsensical, but apparently, room has to be made available for a possible second season.