WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Eden, now streaming on Netflix.
The first season of Netflix's Eden may be just four episodes long but it still comes off as a well-mapped, thought-provoking mediation on how life would be if mankind disappeared, leaving Earth for robots to rule.
The anime mini-series details the journey of a young girl, Sara, who becomes a 'Chosen One' meant to reawaken the last bastion of humanity and reintegrate them into a healed planet. But when the series ends, it leaves several unanswered questions hanging.
HOW DID SARA AND FIELDS WAKE UP?
Eden opens with a baby Sara being found in an apple field by E92 and A37, compassionate robots who'd become her parents and take her into their clan. But we never discover how Sara woke up or why. It could be a malfunctioning stasis pod in the chamber in the ground, faulty programming or maybe someone ('bot or man) woke her up.
The same applies to Dr. Weston Fields, the scientist who created this setup after realizing humans were a poison. He wakes up to see the planet flourishing and ends up transferring his mind into the robotic Zero. His rise from the chamber is also something we'd like answers for -- did it happen randomly or was it automated?
WHAT HAPPENED TO SARA'S FAMILY?
When Sara finds the sleep log, the archives confirm she was the only member of the Grace family to survive. But this leaves us wondering what happened to the rest of them: did they die beforehand or in stasis? The world was consumed by something apocalyptic, so it may be that violence or the planet's disintegration wiped them all out and she was the last one left.
It's unknown how people were selected to enter the pods, either, so all of this, once unlocked, will shed insight into her past. She might even have some other extended family members who are now alive following her waking everyone up in the finale. Hopefully, a possible Season 2 answers this and reveals if she's the last of her bloodline or not.
WHERE'S EDEN ONE AND TWO?
The zone that Zero's ruling is Eden Three but Sara finds his first hub, Eden Zero, where he created the prototype utopia. Here, he and his sick daughter Liz plotted the future, so it seems there are two other simulations out there. Where's Eden One and Two? Why they didn't work?
The fact Fields is one with Zero, caring and kind, to begin with then taking a villainous turn hints that these two zones might have contributed to him spiraling into depression and ending up designing the cruel hub the series finds him in. These two missing zones may even reflect his past and changing personality as he toyed, fiddled and refined his paradise.
WHY WASN'T FIELDS TAKING CARE OF ASHLEY?
Fields' wife, Ashley, is seen only via teleconference at St. Irene's hospital, bedridden and seemingly hinting at how Liz got her disease. Yet Fields is only physically taking care of Liz and not his wife. We'd love to know why he didn't do the same for Ashely. Liz was non-contagious, after all, so Ashley might have been as well.
It could be that she got better care at the hospital, despite Fields being a genius working to solve illness and mankind's end via technology. This would inform why he created his first A.I., Zurich, from Ashley's memory and confirm what happened when gunmen seemingly stormed in and killed his wife in her bed. There must be a reason for Ashley's distance, especially as Fields grieves and blames himself for losing his wife.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OTHER HUMANS?
35,000 humans went into the pods but we never find out what happened to the other non-pod humans. It could have been due to a world war, famine, viruses or simply nature striking back. Fields pointed to pollution as the main cause, but it's never confirmed what really took everyone else out and how the others were selected to be saved. For all we know, he might have even engineered a genocide so he could reboot the planet.
This is another key issue Season 2 has to address: Fields isn't fully redeemed at the end as he moves into the canine robot Emily, which was Liz's pet. While it's cute and all, it opens a dialogue for him to tell Sara what happened to everyone else that wasn't in his cryogenic ark.