It all comes down to this. Or does it?
The Peripheral Season 1 Episode 8 promised a big, explosive finale, and while the episode’s quality was terrific, there was an audible whimper when the credits rolled.
So, what happened?
The season finale of any kind of epic series usually promises something of epic proportions.
While The Peripheral’s finale didn’t lack in quality, it did leave us wanting a lot more.
But we don’t just mean more of the series; we mean more from the episode.
A cliffhanger isn’t usually a problem, but we never like seeing cliffhangers when the future of the series is unknown.
We don’t know if The Peripheral is getting a second season, and we also didn’t expect the finale to feel like it was missing something.
While some things came to fruition (the hunt for Aelita finally ended), others (like stopping Cherise) didn’t make much headway.
In the end, Flynne came up with a plan, but she only got through part of it before the credits rolled.
A lot of different (important) events did go down throughout the episode.
Ash sold out Flynne and Lev to Cherise, Wilf and Flynne found Aelita, and tensions continued to rise in Clanton.
The execution of these scenes went off without a hitch, but we cannot help but feel robbed of something more intense.
A lot of the episode boiled down to planning for a big attack on Cherise, but not the attack itself.
The series made an interesting choice by doing this, as they clearly were banking on renewal when they wrote it.
Flynne’s plan to remove herself from Cherise’s line of fire involved her getting shot and killed in real life, and activating a new stub.
Wilf finally found Aelita, and she revealed her plan and her true involvement with the neoprims.
Removing her implant didn’t just lower her immunity; it gave her back some of her childhood memories.
She tried to convince Wilf to join her in her cause to take down the powers that be, because of their shared childhood trauma.
Also, the train of violence in Clanton continued, but not by Tommy: by Jasper.
Tommy’s attack on the Sheriff and Corbell came to a headway when he found out that Corbell still had a pulse, and Tommy couldn’t do anything about it.
Corbell ended up in the hospital, and Jasper got left with Corbell’s lackeys, who treated him like shit (now that Corbell isn’t around to coddle his nephew).
Jasper took his life into his own hands and decided to end their lives.
He drove a car with the three other men in it (passed out because of alcohol) right onto the train tracks and let them get hit by a train.
When he tried to change his mind, he couldn’t as he locked the keys in the car, and the train came full speed to hit and kill the other men.
This may signal a changing of the guard for their small town, that is, if they survive.
Corbell’s reign may be over, and Jasper may take over: or some form of law may finally make headway in taking control.
But that’s all speculation because we don’t have season two confirmation, and we don’t even know if everyone in that timeline will have much longer.
Thanks to Ash’s shocking betrayal, Cherise decided to speed up her plans to end Flynne’s life.
But it wasn’t just Flynne’s life that she planned on ending: she planned on destroying everyone and everything within Flynne’s stub (timeline) by making the Jackpot happen.
The Jackpot is a fancy word for the apocalypse, as we learned in The Peripheral Season 1 Episode 4, and it left most of the world destroyed, and the population diminished.
Flynne concocted a plan to separate herself from the stub while also removing herself from Cherise’s tracking: A hard reboot.
The plan proved to be a bit confusing, and while we may not understand the exact nature of how it works, we understood one thing: Flynne got shot on purpose.
Conner was in on the plan, as was Lowbeer, and Conner shot Flynne in the real world, and we presume that she died.
She then reappeared inside The Peripheral and met with Lowbeer to enact the next part of her plan (whatever that may be).
There are many unanswered questions and unresolved plotlines, and one more question was introduced in a post-credit scene involving Lev.
Lev met with men from his institute, and they threatened him and his family. Unless he takes care of the loose ends, they’ll all die.
We don’t know who these men are or Lev’s involvement with them exactly, but it’s not good.
Introducing new characters and a new plot thread in the post-credit scene of the season finale baffled us, and hopefully, we get to understand more of who these men are.
A lot of this episode hinges on the renewal of the show for another season, and we really hope that Amazon renews The Peripheral for a Season 2.
So, Fanatics, what did you think of the season finale?
Did you hate the cliffhanger as we did? Hopefully, we get a season 2! Until then, what are your theories?
Let us know in the comments below! The Peripheral is based on the novel by William Gibson and airs on Amazon Prime on Fridays.
Michael Stack is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.
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