1899 ending explained: what happened on board the Kerberos?

Confused about the 1899 ending? We're here to help!

Netflix’s new series 1899 comes from the creators of Dark, Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, is the enigmatic story of a migrant steamship traveling from the old continent toward America with an array of passengers on board coming from all around the world.

But their journey takes an unexpected turn when they discover the Prometheus, a ship that has been missing for months, adrift on the open sea. What they find on board quickly turns their voyage into a terrifying nightmare. Maura Franklin (Emily Beecham), who came aboard the Kerberos in hopes to find out more about what happened to her missing brother, starts working with the ship’s captain to understand what is really going on and why she seems unable to remember who she truly is.

As the story develops, it becomes clearer and clearer to viewers that things are not exactly what they seem on board the Kerberos, and the show ends by providing some answers to its mysteries, while raising new questions. So what happened in the last episode of the series? Was it all a dream? 

Read on to find out everything you need to know about the ending, but beware of spoilers ahead.

Who are Maura, Elliot and Daniel?

Towards the end of the season, 1899 reveals that Maura, Daniel (Aneurin Barnard) and Elliot (Fflyn Edwards) have a very legitimate connection between one another: Daniel is Maura’s husband, and Elliot is their son, but she has no memory of them. So why are they all on this ship and how did they get there? Well, it appears that both the Prometheus and the Kerberos are not really ships after all, but part of a simulation that was created by Maura and her husband. 

The episode actually opens with Elliot waking up in his grandfather’s office. Henry (Anton Lesser) then takes the boy to room 1011 of the mental hospital to show him the truth. There, he tells Eliott that the simulation was not created to keep Maura trapped, but to keep him trapped. Henry then injects Elliot with a white substance that causes him to relive a memory in which Maura and Daniel argue about Elliot’s health before she injects him with a black substance that seems to be what sends him into the simulation. It appears the reason Maura did so was to prevent Elliot from dying, but whether Elliot is dead in reality remains unclear.

What happened to the other passengers?

In the season finale, Clémence (Mathilde Ollivier), Jérôme (Yann Gael), Ramiro (José Pimentão), Ling Yi (Isabella Wei), Tove (Clara Rosager) and Mrs. Wilson (Rosalie Craig) run around the Kerberos trying to escape the ship. Despite Maura telling them that she believes this to be a simulation created by her father and therefore not real, they have a hard time believing her and are eager to get away. But as they try to reach the lifeboats, they keep encountering black crystals that spring out from all parts of the ship and stop them in their tracks. These crystals are the manifestation of a virus spreading through the simulation, as Daniel is down in the engine room trying to hack into its mainframe to prevent the simulation from starting over. By the end of the episode, the virus has successfully corrupted the simulation and deletes the Kerberos, along with the six passengers still on board.

Meanwhile Eyk (Andreas Pietschmann), who is back from the Prometheus and did believe what Maura told the passengers, is trying to help her find her father to get some answers. They go to the trapdoor in Daniel’s cabin to travel down the tiled shaft into his memory. There, Maura tells Eyk she thinks all the passengers' memories are connected and they find a tunnel that allows them to travel from one memory to the next. They eventually land in the mental hospital where they are stopped by Sebastian (Tino Mewes), who works for Henry. He demands the key that unlocks the small black pyramid and should allow them to leave the simulation, and Maura has no choice but to give it to him, before Sebastian kills Eyk.

Is Maura’s father the Creator?

Maura’s father is not the owner of the ship company that built the Prometheus or the Kerberos, nor is he the Creator. He is just as trapped in this simulation as everyone else. In fact, Maura is the Creator. She isn’t a doctor but a computer scientist who created this simulation to forget and get rid of the pain of (presumably) losing her son. 

However, that does not mean Maura is the one who is in control of this whole simulation business. Indeed, Daniel reveals that while she has been stuck in this loop for who knows how long, her brother Ciaran has taken control of the whole program, and that she has to stop him. 

While he was reprogramming the simulation, Daniel changed some of its code and altered the key that is supposed to allow them to escape. Instead of being the golden key she gave Sebastian, the key is now Maura’s wedding ring and it goes inside a toy pyramid in Eliott’s room. So when Henry tries to unlock his black pyramid, it does not work and he doesn’t get to leave the simulation. But when Maura puts her ring into the toy pyramid, she gets to escape this infernal loop at last.

Were they really in the year 1899?

There were many clues throughout 1899’s first season to hint at the fact that we were not actually in 1899. Between the electronic devices used by Daniel and Sebastian, the televisions in Henry’s office, and the whole concept of a fake reality inside a simulation, it became quite obvious that this story took place farther in the future.

When Maura finally wakes up, she is connected to a large machine. Stepping out of it, she sees that she is in a room with the passengers who died on the Kerberos, and they are all in deep sleep attached to machines. Looking out the window, Maura realizes she is in fact on board a spaceship called the Prometheus. A console in the middle of the room flashes a message on its screen, detailing a mission and a date: 2099. Maura is not living at the turn of the 20th century after all, or so it seems. Another message then appears on screen, from her brother Ciaran: “Hello sister. Welcome to reality.” But is this spaceship reality truly real or is it another simulation? One can only hope there will be more episodes to clear that out.

All episodes of 1899 are available on Netflix.