WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Raised by Wolves Season 1, available now on HBO Max.
HBO's Raised by Wolves left fans with many unanswered questions by the time Season 1 wrapped. Embedded in between the war with the Atheists and the Mithraic were supernatural threads that confused viewers at the time, but ultimately, it seems like the show was setting up plot points to be addressed in the second season. After all, no one expected all the mysteries to be unraveled, especially with the ghosts, giant cube in the desert and the snake that Mother gave birth to all still up in the air.
However, one lingering puzzle over exactly what the giant snake holes on Kepler-22b are could explain why half of the planet is so barren -- and it has to do with a theory suggesting that they're actually time rifts.
Interestingly, the Season 1 finale is called "The Beginning," with Mother and Father fleeing into the Tropical Zone where her giant snake escapes the ship and then goes on a hunt. Now, chances are it will raze this region, especially if it multiplies, which ties back into the snake skeletons seen throughout the season on the dusty side. It's possible this Tropical Zone is actually the beginning of the story, and thanks to the snake, it will devolve into the terrain that couldn't bear fruit, which Mother, Campion, Marcus and everyone else scoured in Season 1.
Now, when one thinks of time rifts, you image wormholes in movies like Interstellar. However, this idea is a twist that fans wouldn't see coming if Ridley Scott placed rifts right here, running through the center of the planet. Scott loves existential stories about survival and existence, so it's about time he crafted something on time and the effects it has on worlds. Seeing as Raised by Wolves had humans devolving into alien-like creatures, as well as cave paintings and mysterious technology, there must be a starting point. But it might not be that people came to the dusty half before and they've been going through the holes, meaning as they decay, the world begins to destroy itself.
It's a yin and yang take on a closed time loop, with half the planet as the present and half the past. And seeing as Tally fell into a hole and presumably died, this would explain her coming to the desert as a ghost. Speculation is she's a time anomaly, a temporal apparition in a purgatory of sorts, living in both eras, or at least being able to traverse them.
In reality, this may add up because if a snake and its offspring drains resources and if humans suffer due to an alien atmosphere and devolve, this all sets the foundation up for relics that will be found centuries later. It bridges why the colonies couldn't land in the Tropical Zone in the first place, since to get there, it has to be through a time incursion. This would also explain why messages and stories about the robots and kids are also present, as it started with Mother (who can make human hybrids still) and Father going back in time, crafting this finale as the origin point.
Created by Aaron Guzikowski and produced by Ridley Scott, Raised by Wolves stars Amanda Collin, Abubakar Salim, Winta McGrath, Niamh Algar, Jordan Loughran, Matias Varela, Felix Jamieson, Ethan Hazzard, Aasiya Shah, Ivy Wong and Travis Fimmel.