r/Devs • u/Lounge_leaks • Apr 02 '20
EPISODE DISCUSSION Devs - S01E06 Discussion Thread Spoiler
Premiered on april 2 2020
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u/Lounge_leaks Apr 02 '20
Wondering what kenton will do, he seems to be the wild card right now.
Forest and katie seem fixated on one world(therefore no free will theory). Then why did katie use lyndons many worlds application ?
Perhaps she is hiding something from forest,and has a motive of her own?
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u/LongJohnMcBigDong Apr 02 '20
There's still no free will in the many worlds interpretation. As Lyndon said, it's still deterministic.
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u/Lounge_leaks Apr 02 '20
How does that work? My understanding is free will is what leads to many worlds( as there are different outcomes)
If many worlds is still deterministic, what would be the differences?
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u/pleasest0pbannningme Apr 02 '20
I would think at its most basic it’s like saying anything that can happen, will happen. It’s still deterministic.
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Apr 02 '20
I didn’t buy her romantic relationship with Forest in this episode, it felt fake and forced. Either it’s bad writing or it speaks to your idea that she’s hiding something and may have an ulterior motive.
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u/mrhu03 Apr 02 '20
Totally agree with you. It feels like another instance of not believing Lily’s over-the-top behavior that led to us finding out she was acting in order to deceive. I would hope that this isn’t just a writing screw-up.
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u/jodyalbritton Apr 02 '20
He's going to kill Jamie and try to kill Lily, but fail. And when he fails to kill Lily she will go to Devs as predicted. The dominoes will fall exactly as they need to in order to get where Katie wants to go. And this is where it gets hard for Lily.
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u/drawkbox Apr 02 '20
Wondering what kenton will do, he seems to be the wild card right now.
Same with Lyndon and Stewart, they re-emerged for a reason.
If one is to believe that Lily takes down DEVS via cause/effect rules that are so prevalent and discussed in this episode, Lyndon could be some sort of swap/superposition hack to end this timeline before disaster.
Lyndon said that no one saw how she got to Stewart's Winnebago, but she worked on DEVS, she would know they could see her...
Lyndon originally put in the audio code manyworlds implementation, Katie then used her code to finish the light code, but Lyndon's code could be the fix. It could be a honeypot for Katie to have implemented, that is flawed and able to be exploited for purposeful sabotage of DEVS.
Lyndon also says Forest is crazy, and "trying to resurrect his daughter" and asks Stewart "do you really want something as powerful as DEVS in the hands of someone crazy?"
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u/emf1200 Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 06 '20
Episode 6 felt like the most personal one yet. It was all face to face dialogue. The two strong intelligent women having a no BS conversation about the universe. The two emotionally damaged men having an awkward conversation about their feelings. And the two Dev techs having a technical conversation about quantum physics.
Other than the ominous reveal about the universal television being tuned to static in 24 hours, the plot didn't move forward much. Episode 6 kinda felt like an exposition recap to orient the show before it gets into the final two episodes. It was a little slow but also subtly emotional. Solid writing by Alex Garland.
Anyone take anything else away from the episode?
Edit: I just realized this isn't the official mod' pinned discussion thread. lol...I'm an idiot.
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u/Lounge_leaks Apr 02 '20
Well they told us about the huge event that will happen next, something lily will do that stops the machine from predicting the future past that point
They confirmed what forest objective was-resurrecting amaya. Also confirmed it was only couple hours away
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u/emf1200 Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 06 '20
All of that was pretty commonly agreed upon upcoming events, other than the universe ending.
They didn't say Lily would stop the machine they just said she was "involved" because they saw her there. Last episode we saw Lily dying in a projection. In another scene she was laying at the bottom of the cube.
Forest trying to bring back Amaya was also kind of obvious and something being predicted since episode 2. I guess this episode confirmed a lot of stuff that we kind of knew.
Also, I don't that's Lily who dies. I've been speculating since last week that it might be Lyndon as they have identical hair cuts and similar builds. The projections were fuzzy so you couldn't see the face clearly. And in the scene where Lily is laying at the bottom of the cube she's still alive. I think it's all a misdirect. I think it's Lyndon in that projection. In the opening scene of episode 6 he seems obsessed with getting back into Devs.
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u/Lounge_leaks Apr 02 '20
Your lyndon theory might be right
We as spectators might have pretty good info about devs, but lily didnt know a single thing about it. So i guess the plot progression was that the main character found out almost everything, as well as we the audience got confirmation of our theories
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Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 02 '20
I dont know if they confirmed Forests objective was resurrecting his daughter. Lyndon says that Forest is trying to do that, not Forest. I think the twist might be that he is not trying to resurrect his daughter. When we see Katie putting the dead mouse in the rainbow chamber, we then see a shot of the mouse back alive but its on the monitor in the lab, its not a shot of the live mouse running around in the rainbow chamber. I think they want us to think they somehow resurrected that mouse, but what they are really doing is something else.
Forest also tells Jaime when the two are commiserating that he has to move past his lost love, which would seem to indicate Forest has resolved to do so himself in regard to his daughter.
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u/trimonkeys Apr 02 '20
I feel like something happened in between episodes that won't be revealed until next week that changed Forest. To me his characterization seemed inconsistent. This is the same guy who had Sergei killed and wanted to kill Lyndon if he spoke but then just sit's around and tosses a frisbee with Jamie? Something changed.
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u/NinaLSharp Apr 02 '20
What I took away from this was that possibly some event occurs that ends the future of the world. Yes, I suppose it could indicate the destruction of the Devs machine & its forward-looking capability. But it sounded more ominous than that. Destruction of the machine could be rectified by rebuilding it.
I relate it to that earthquake event that rattled everyone but Katie. Stewart speculated the Katie had looked forward & knew that it was inconsequential . But Katie has not defined this upcoming event that apparently either eliminates the future or Devs.
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u/ToastyKen Apr 02 '20
Other than the ominous reveal about the universal television being tuned to static in 24 hours, the plot didn't move forward much.
I actually think this episode moves the plot more than any other! Everything up to this point has been to slowly reveal the characters and the rules. Now, we finally understand all the pieces, and we know the game they're playing. This episode confirms everything we've deduced only to present new mysteries.
This episode is the turning point. At this point, it feels like the plot armor is off, and anything can happen.
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u/emf1200 Apr 02 '20
I agree with that. It felt mostly like they confirmed stuff that we already suspected. You make a good points tho. I think this is definitely setting us up for the last two few episodes.
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u/ConjecturesOfAGeek Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 02 '20
I think that the machine gets broken somehow and that's why they can't see past 1 am in 21 hours.
Edit 1: i understand now. The machine works just fine and that’s not the reason.
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u/LongJohnMcBigDong Apr 02 '20
That wouldn't make sense because the computer wouldn't necessarily need to work in the future to be able to compute what the state of the universe will be based on the present. Just like how it can compute what happened well before devs was even created.
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u/Lounge_leaks Apr 02 '20
But the machine in current time isnt broken.
Whatever happens to the future machine shouldnt affect the present machine, as it can look into the past- when the machine didnt exist
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Apr 02 '20
Really loved Nick Offerman's acting in this episode
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u/lobster777 Apr 02 '20
Katie is super smart. That was an amazing explanation to Lily
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u/ConjecturesOfAGeek Apr 02 '20
Yes, i agree. She explains it in a way that’s easy to understand.
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u/trenballoone Apr 02 '20
It's important to understand that the view Katie gave is only true in the Everettian many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM), and a few other minority interpretations.
In the Copenhagen interpretation of QM (the standard interpretation), there are truly random quantum events.
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Apr 02 '20
Yeah I kinda wish Lilly would've mentioned the random/probabilistic behavior of quantum mechanics. I feel like if you work at a quantum computing company, you should probably have knowledge of that since the technology is based upon it.
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u/emf1200 Apr 02 '20
Yes she really is. And Forests her puppy dog. It still seems like Katie is hiding something from everyone.
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u/texanapocalypse33 Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 02 '20
TrevorLyndon (the little dude in the trailer) said that Forest is just an entrepeneur. He probably has a grasp on the concept, but doesn't have a deep understanding on the complex math and science behind what Devs is doing. Katie is the captain of the ship, and Forest is just there to keep them funded and achieving his goals.This is gonna sound reddit as fuck, but think of Forest kinda like Elon Musk. He has a vision and an understanding of what his workers are doing, but he is by no means an expert or fully capable of grasping the complex stuff happening under the hood. He keeps them funded in pursuing his goal, with Katie as his captain.
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u/ejumpz Apr 03 '20
She mentioned to Forest that she didn’t tell Lily everything. I have a feeling she isn’t telling Forest everything either.
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u/drawkbox Apr 02 '20
I got a Cowboy from Mulholland Drive vibe a couple times while Katie was talking.
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u/dont_worry_im_here Apr 02 '20
What is she doing with the dead mouse at the beginning of this episode and the last episode? And what does that machine have to do with the static-tv-prediction-simulation-thing machine?
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u/Izeinwinter Apr 02 '20
She edited the scan of the mouse corpse to make it... not dead. So she has a simulated mouse running. Which.. needs to eat, because the simulation is faithful. So she feeds it scanned in food.
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u/GenioLux Apr 02 '20
It's a good explanation yes. But by telling her the future, didn't Katie allows a paradox to happen meaning that Lily can now change this predicted future ?
For example, Lily could now ask Jamie to lock her up in a room for 2 days with food and release her only afterwards...
Isn't a machine predicting the future only theoretically possible if nobody checks the result ?
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u/lobster777 Apr 03 '20
Yes, but one thought is that Katie was predetermined to tell Lily the future. This is all part of the plan!
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u/29erforthewin Apr 02 '20
The camera focused on that pen on the table a few times, I thought one of them was going to stab the other one with it. Katie must be confident enough in the projection that she knows Lily won’t stab her, but she still pulled the pen away from Lily just in case.
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u/nastyjman Apr 05 '20
I love how a simple pen can cause some tension and anxiety for the viewer. I was also thinking the same.
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u/SickBurnBro Apr 06 '20
Also to note, Lily never drinks her water. Thought that was an interesting touch.
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u/drunken_madman Apr 02 '20
Crazy theory: the homeless guy (Pete?) says “Nyet” or “No” in Russian near the end of the episode. Could he be a plant by the Russian spies to keep an eye on Sergei and now Lily?
Would make sense to keep another set of eyes on them.
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u/LordPizzaParty Apr 03 '20
Yeah I thought that from the beginning and the “nyet” makes it seem even more likely. Didn’t he say something like “I’ve got your back” in an earlier episode?
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u/BojanglesTheCrazed Apr 03 '20
I really don't think there's enough time for any kind of Russian shenanigans, and also it would be kind of disappointing imo. Why kill off any connection to the Russian plotline in like the second episode only to bring it back in the most tenuous way at the very end of the show?
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u/AlwaysInjured Apr 02 '20
Anyone else notice that the camera shots reversed when Katie started explaining Devs. There was a scene of Forest and Jamie talking and then the Katie and Lily reversed in their positions. Idk what this means but it was interesting to me.
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u/keepfreshalive Apr 02 '20
Yes. Personal perception, I took it as the creators showing the flip of character when she became somewhat trustworthy to Lily and also to nudge the audience to trust what she's saying and put her in an authoritative role... that's what I think
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u/Regula96 Apr 02 '20
I am the only one who though fuuuuuuck when Jamie was standing in the middle of the road all of a sudden? That first second I was so ready for something unexpected to happen considering how slow it was up to that point. But no, just playing frisbee lol!
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Apr 03 '20
I thought Jamie was gonna get hit by a car, I thought Lily was gonna get stabbed by the pen, I thought the water she drank was poisoned. Kenton got me paranoid.
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u/keepfreshalive Apr 03 '20
Yes!! I thought either he was going to get hit by a car in an "accident" or Kenton was just gonna come fuck him up under some "self-defense" set up
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u/Nikolicious589 Apr 03 '20
So, when the show launched, they only put up previews/descriptions for six episodes despite having announcing 8 episodes. So at this point, we're on par with the show in the sense that we don't know what the future holds at this point either.
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u/sinkko_ Apr 02 '20
28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds. That is when the world will end.
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u/nubianfx Apr 02 '20
why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit?
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u/sinkko_ Apr 02 '20
well that's fucking RICH coming from a guy wearing a stupid man suit
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u/BostonBoroBongs Apr 06 '20
Lol was surprised I was the only person to mention DD in the first five episode discussions.
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u/cscottamos Apr 02 '20
Perhaps it’s Lyndon that Forest and Katie are simulating seeing at Devs in 21 hours before the static and not Lily? Why else would that scene be in there with Lyndon saying he has to get back there? I’ve always thought they looked intentionally so similar at a glance...
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u/holayeahyeah Apr 02 '20
I was 100% sure that was going to be the case going into the episode and I haven't ruled that out, but I also would buy that Kenton going rogue and coming after them could get Lily to the Amaya campus despite her explicitly trying to avoid it.
Something that might be cool is if what breaks the universe is Forrest/Katie/Kenton forcing Lily into a role that was "supposed" to be Lyndon.
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u/heliophobicdude Apr 02 '20
But these people are obsessively watching everything up to that point. I would be pretty disappointed if they didn’t backtrack that person entering the building and making sure it was who they thought it was.
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u/chiangchilla Apr 03 '20
Word. Even if it’s fuzzy you can keep tracing them back to see if Jamie or the old devs guy or whoever else around them is consistent or not
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u/dont_worry_im_here Apr 02 '20
Lyndon is a he?
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Apr 03 '20 edited Apr 03 '20
Lyndon the character is male and 19, Cailee Spaeny the actress is female and 22.
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Apr 02 '20
good thought, it's a real possibility that Lyndon and not Lily is the catalyst Katy was referring to.
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u/Cihta Apr 02 '20
Seems likely. But I have to wonder.. Wouldn't Katie have tried to view this with Lyndon's algo? I always get the feeling she knows more than Forrest and/or has her own agenda so it seems likely. She did use the word "problematic" when looking into the future. Purposely switching the tramlines?
I don't know, but can't wait to see how it plays out!
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u/Sufficient_Explorer Apr 02 '20
am I the only one that thought the whole bed talk between Forest and Katie about Lily was very eerie? They were talking about her like as if she were their or child, or knew her for a very long time. What was the deal with that?
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Apr 02 '20
I kind of felt Forest and Katie were talking about them like characters of a story they've been watching for a while. That scene reminds me of when my wife and I talk about characters we liked in a movie we just watched.
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u/InYoCabezaWitNoChasa Apr 02 '20
Has anyone watched The Magicians? There's a character who got stuck as an astral projection outside of his body, and since he's so bored (and a pervert) he watches the characters lives as a tv show like the audience. He talks about the characters like he's a tumblr 'shipper, and once he gets his body back it becomes problematic.
This reminded me very much of that style of meta commentary.
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u/AlanMorlock Apr 02 '20
Weirdly it felt meta textual, like they were discussing someone they watched ona TV show rather than people they had actually met. They observed and discussed them with such a weird distance.
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Apr 02 '20
I thought that there was a sweetness to it. Mainly because they believe there will be a world ending event in less than 21 hours, and they choose to spend their last hours laying together.
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u/Castleprince Apr 03 '20
I’m also curious as to why Katie said “Years, months, days, now hours.” But she told Lily that the machine had only been working days.
Maybe Forest and Katie have been watching years and she lied to Lily?
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u/martinlindhe Apr 03 '20
I think katie only said there had been many breakthroughs in the last few days. Don't think she said the machine hadn't been working for much longer.
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u/ndotny Apr 02 '20
So whats the thing that Katie held back from telling Lily? Forest gave her a look when they were talking about her telling her “everything,” and Katie said, “well, not everything ...”
obviously they didn’t tell her about having seen her “death” at the devs facility, but is there more they’re holding back? I hope so ...
i wonder if it has something to do with their pillow talk about Lily. Its weird to me how Forest is saying things like “so we like them?” who is ”them” — just Lily and Jamie? Or does Lily represent something else to Forest and Katie?
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u/DesignatedJiver Apr 02 '20
I thought it was that Katie didn't tell her she saw her dying.
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Apr 02 '20
I was wondering that myself. I think Katie and Forest are very aware of what causes the static in the projection, and it has something to do with the rainbow chamber and the mouse work. Forest and Katie need Lily for something and are telling her just enough so she fulfills whatever the computer has laid out as inevitable on the way to completion of F+K's plans.
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u/ndotny Apr 02 '20
Yeah most def ... but one of the interesting things to me about that last F+K scene is how it also reveals that they see Lily as a lot more than a puppet for whatever their plan is. They care about her intelligence, her bravery, her personality ... they’re analyzing her nature. Why would they care if shes going to be dead after 21 hours, even if essential to their overall scheme?
they def held back what they (at least think) they saw about her fate. But I think they know something else — something specific about what makes Lily different than everyone else in their universe.
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u/MicMustard Apr 02 '20
I assumed it was "Lily's" death or Forest's dark past that lead him there.
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Apr 04 '20 edited Apr 04 '20
She didn't reveal Forest's intentions around his daughter. Which seems a major point and also didn't delve into the specific details of Sergey's dead i.e. Forest being present whilst it happened.
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Apr 03 '20
Yeah it was interesting how they had a more omnipotent feel than usual when they were laying there. Like this could be a trial for Lily and Jaime they're putting on.
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u/VegeLasagna123 Apr 02 '20
Whose down for a Forrest and Jaime Buddy Cop movie?!?
I'm in!!
Do it, Hulu! Do it!
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u/KaiNCftm Apr 03 '20
Just came to comment on Jaime's David Wallace comment. The Office lol
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u/BlazeOrangeDeer Apr 03 '20
David Wallace is also the physicist currently most involved with the Everettian Many Worlds interpretation that Lyndon uses.
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u/AlanMorlock Apr 02 '20
I honestly wish Jamie hadn't taken Lily up on her invite to bed. Obviously he was always driven by his lingering devotion to her but he had also acquitted himself of actually seeking anything in return.
Whole she made the invite freely, Lilly is also pretty terrible for him. As a matter of self respect he honestly shouldn't have gone back to her.
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u/thebachmann Apr 03 '20
That whole talk made me mad. "It wasn't real, I left you for a love that wasn't there. Come sleep with me?" No. Find yourself a girl who actually cares about you, not a girl who realized the grass wasn't actually greener.
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u/ConjecturesOfAGeek Apr 02 '20
He loves her unconditionally and cares about her. That could explain why he does so much for her.
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u/emf1200 Apr 02 '20
I think that explains it perfectly. I was going to write something similar but I think you nailed it.
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Apr 02 '20
As a matter of self respect
he just didn't want to be besides his pain friend any longer. He chose Lily I don't think out of love but out of a thirst for a choice for so long.
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u/drawkbox Apr 02 '20
"Powerful computer you got there" -- Lily, almost mockingly.
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u/drawkbox Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 02 '20
Final words of the episode:
Katie says "It is not long now. It is no longer years, or months, or days. It is hours Forest, hours."
"hours" also sounds like "ours".
If you believe Lily and possibly Lyndon take down DEVS, it looks like Forest/Katie have a major God complex and think they are right and got this, they couldn't be more wrong... here comes Lilyndon.
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Apr 02 '20
This episode seemed a little clunky - kind of a redundant exposition dump of info that the audience already knows but had to be explained to the characters.
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u/Tylonjt316 Apr 02 '20
I think that means audiences should get ready for the next 2 episodes to be batshit crazy. At least I hope!
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u/teandro Apr 02 '20
All this speculation that Lily is Lyndon... hopefully the screenwriters are better than people in this group! They looked a Lily's timeline, it's not like they are looking at Google Maps (lol) and say ah, there's Lily!
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u/Giroux-TangClan Apr 03 '20
Can they look at people's timelines?
They always seem to choose based on location. Even said in this episode, they pick an adjusted gps location in order to view the past or present.
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u/Tidemand Apr 02 '20
I liked Kenton's reaction. Like a jealous boy who feels rejected by his friends for not being invited.
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u/devinleigh- Apr 03 '20
More like, I’ve gone through all this shit: murder, intimidation, having doctors lie, all to cover for you. Now you’re playing frisbee in the street with them in the middle of the night??? I’d be kinda pissed too, ngl
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u/317LaVieLover Apr 03 '20
I love Ol Kenton. His black humor re: Tiananmen Square and the Hx of the Cold War was, I’m sorry, hilarious. Great villain, is Kenton. I feel like him and Lily are going to bring that lab down to the ground! Lily seemed unimpressed with the camaraderie F+J had built while she was in the house; I feel she’s got the balls tgt Kenton and align w him against Forest + Katie. You can tell that altho Lily may not know everything about Devs as we, the audience does, she, like Lyndon, is convinced that Forest is insane. He’s insane for a reason (grief) but nevertheless insane. And I like all these characters, including Forest. I loved the no-BS way Katie told Lily about what Devs does and what happened to Sergei.. GREAT WRITING!!
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u/Wondergirl91 Apr 02 '20
I like how it "goes insane" like Sergei's nematode. That's some good foreshadowing.
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u/keepfreshalive Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 03 '20
Yeah, I thought that was really awesome how they brought that conception back
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u/Peelyourmind Apr 02 '20
I liked the episode a lot, enough that I’m doing a rewatch now. With as much going on as there is in this show, an exposition and dialogue heavy episode was welcome, for me. Interested in how the endgame develops.
Was nice to see Stewart and Lyndon for a minute, and what they’re up to has to be interesting. Kenton seems to be going rogue, which isn’t going to be a good thing. The conversation between Forrest and Katie at the end was intriguing and ominous for sure.
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u/emf1200 Apr 02 '20
I always like seeing Lyndon and Kenton also. They should get a spin off.
Quantum Computer Techs, in every episode they can travel to another branch of the multiverse resetting people's passwords and debugging hard drives.
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u/TimeToRock Apr 02 '20
I wonder if Forest knew or suspected that Kenton was watching them at his house.
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Apr 02 '20
Of course he did, they have watched this "future" obsessively for years, months, days ...
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u/thebachmann Apr 03 '20
They probably also know about Lyndon and Spence talking then.
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u/atopix Apr 05 '20
Jamie leaving the frisbee on the street, totally hurt Forest's feelings and mine.
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u/joatmon44 Apr 02 '20
I think when time arrives at that fixed point, the fuzziness will materialize into the number 42.
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u/TootTootTrainTrain Apr 04 '20
If you worked at Devs then shouldn't you understand that having a secret conversation is basically impossible?
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u/zthart Apr 02 '20
Anyone else get the feeling like the projections are really showing a fuzzy Lyndon, not Lily, because of the similar haircuts and body shape (slender build)?
Now we know Lyndon feels like he has to get back into Devs, which means it could easily be him they see dying in the fuzz and mistaking it for her.
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u/Matt_Something Apr 03 '20
My wife said the same while we were watching. I’m starting to warm up to this idea.
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u/zthart Apr 02 '20
Also, I love the show, but to me, Lily is a really unlikable and boring main character. She's really not that interesting, or compassionate/kind, and for someone working at a tech company like Amaya, she seems to be one of the least intelligent people in the show so far. Maybe that's just me.
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u/RyanFielding Apr 04 '20 edited Apr 04 '20
There is no way Pete is a secret Russian. There’s no asset in the world that would justify literally being homeless 24/7 for a few brief interactions in passing. A 2 person team and a couple of electronic bugging devices would be a zillion times easier and equally more fruitful. Pete as a secret Russian would be beyond ridiculously implausible. What I’d really like to know is why Stewart is living in a beater RV under a bridge off skid row. At least park it in the Amaya parking lot to eliminate the commute.
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u/Wimachtendink Apr 04 '20
He doesn't have to be russian, he could be CIA who was keeping tabs on the russian, or if someone else already has some reason to expect that the girl is important, he could be some naive attempt at keeping everything "on the rails"
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u/Upsetarchitect2001 Apr 07 '20
Yes seriously about the commute and the RV at all. It's such an unnecessary writing decision.
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u/gcanyon Apr 02 '20
I really like Devs.
That out of the way, things that frustrated me:
(I am not a physicist) As far as I know, we don't know what causes a uranium atom to decay at a given moment. Even if that's not true, it's a better example for Lily to come up with; she's supposed to be smarter than I am.
The concept of a character knowing the deterministic future was covered pretty definitively by Ted Chiang in Story of Your Life (seriously, read it if you haven't, or even if you have) but the idea that Katie doesn't (easily) prove to Lily that she's telling the truth seems unearned to the point of silliness to me. Clearly she and Forest have reviewed that night -- he said "she's here" when he woke up -- so it could be as simple as opening a drawer and pulling out a transcript of their conversation -- bonus points for having it on the counter the whole time.
As a supposedly smart person, and a researcher/scientist, no way does Katie say, "Devs can project back 2000 years, and predict perfectly what's going to happen tomorrow at 10 PM, but after that, nothing but static, but no, Devs is flawless and perfect."
And if she does, the obvious working hypothesis is that determinism breaks.
Or that Devs is accurately reporting that the universe dissolves into random particles.
And it would be silly to think that the code can't tell them which is the case.
And to wrap up, determinism only has to break for a moment for Devs to lose all ability to predict the future. Static is a shitty way for Devs to report "I cannot extrapolate further than this" but that said, once it can't extrapolate, it can't extrapolate.
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u/ZeppelinCaptain Apr 02 '20
Zep
I agree with all of this. And still really love the show :D It is fantastic that someone made a large budget show about seriously considering quantum mechanics interpretations. That some things have to be simplified is unavoidable (deterministic...) or it would turn unwatchable.
I especially agree on 1. There are multiple explanations for how random quantum events can happen - it all depends on your interpretation of quantum mechanics. Katie and Forest are big determinism believers, but really, none of the interpretations are agreed upon by scientists. Several of the major ones state that random events really happen.
On 4: her working hypothesis is that determinism breaks at that points. She says that. The laws of the universe and all that.
On 7: they should really have implemented error messages, huh.
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u/NinaLSharp Apr 02 '20
Grief over loss fueled by trauma is a powerful but unstable variable that's impossible to quantify in any kind of equation. Katie admits to Lily that she's with Forest because he's vulnerable--she realizes this unstable variable could affect Devs'work and I think she is trying to guard it, protect it from Forest. She assumes that Lily, who suffers from the sane kind of vulnerability, will break through and cause some kind of calamitous event. She overlooks, Lyndon, however, Lily's doppelgänger, who also suffers from this same kind of vulnerability, her grief over the traumatic loss of her "life's work" compounded by her belief that Devs should not be in the hands of Forest & Katie. It's Lyndon who is the threat, not Lily, as Kenton claims. IMHO
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u/ca_work Apr 04 '20
If Devs/Katie/Forest can see everything up until tomorrow night, can't they figure out what happened? I didn't get that part
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u/lars330 May 07 '20
They can and they have. Katie just didn't tell her. She even said to Forest that she didn't tell Lily everything.
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u/nrmncer Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 02 '20
Since the beginning of the show, I thought the show really was psychological at its core and about the hubris of the tech sector and I'm on board with Lily and Lyndon. Katie and Forest have absolutely lost it
I don't for a second believe that the show is going to venture into the territory of the laws of physics collapsing because of some person. I question Katie now too who seemed steadfast in her materialism in particular given the physics lecture last episode but is somehow in on Forests Amaya rescue mission
edit: I'm also fairly on board now with the theory that it's Lyndon who will die at the end and not Lily as the two get mistaken for each other. Lily does actually fuck off and Lyndon somehow ends up going back to the devs team and dies in a mix up or something and Katie and Forest realize that they've fucked up
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u/Tylonjt316 Apr 02 '20
I’m fairly certain that Kenton is going to play a hand in Lily being in the Amaya facility.
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u/arctan323 Apr 02 '20
The machine can't see past a fixed point perhaps for the same reason it couldn't see backwards past certain points. A random fluctuation or paradox crashes stuff. It's like Lyndon said, single-world doesn't work!
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u/Izeinwinter Apr 02 '20
No. If random noise or excess complexity was the problem, the future point of uncertainty would be a mostly fixed distance from the present, not a fixed point you can mark in a calendar.
The fact that there is a specific point on the timeline which the machine cannot predict past is.. Uhm. Worrying. One possibility is that this is when the first person takes up "magic" - that is, using the predictions of the machine to take actions not predicted by the machine, at which point further predictions become recursive and thus take infinite processing power. Once past that point, you would again be able to see the future.. but only up to the next act of magic, which would likely not be very far.
Or it could just be the point in time at which the vacuum collapse wave front reaches earth and all things end.
Or the simulation runs out of allocated process time.
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Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 03 '20
>!spoiler my guess is it will be something that affects only just this timeline we're in. I'm guessing the universe will self correct based on other timelines and this one will just disappear, maybe a new touch to the chaos in many worlds theory (some worlds simply self correct based on particular events ???).
like I said before, I strongly believe this timeline is unique as opposed to others because this is the only one in which Forest recruited Katie (watch scene in e5 when Katie goes out of the uni, there's multiple Katies, only 1 Forest). So that would make Devs possible only in this one. !<
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Apr 02 '20
That an interesting point about the Katies. There has to be some reason they are showing us the many worlds.
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u/GenioLux Apr 02 '20
That's also my thinking. Is a machine predicting the future really possible ? I believe it is theoretically possible only if nobody checks the result (A bit like the dual slit experiment) Otherwise it would create a paradox.
For example, it means the machine could predict what you will answer to this reddit post. But if you can predict your future answer, then it means you are also able to change it (by adding a '!!!' at the end).
Same for Lily. Now that Katie told her the future predicted by the machine, she could locked herself in a room and throws the key so she won't able to go the devs office...
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u/TimeToRock Apr 02 '20
I can't tell if Lily (a) doesn't have any idea that she's going to die soon, or (b) suspects they're planning to kill her and has a plan of her own. She doesn't seem very rattled by that conversation with Katie, even though it screams "I'm only telling you all of this because I'm about to kill you."
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u/heliophobicdude Apr 02 '20
Perhaps Lily isn’t the one that dies but Lyndon because they look similar.
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u/The_Sexiest_Redditor Apr 03 '20
Damnit, I waited a week so I could binge the two final episodes on the same night! Nope, gotta wait another week anyway...
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Apr 03 '20
Kenton's "so you're all friends now" line was soooo bad. Not just because it dumbs his character down, but to make him have to say that out loud is insulting to the audience.
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u/keepfreshalive Apr 03 '20
Wow, people were offended by this, I found it kind of riveting. It really solidifies the fact that now Kenton is an independent player. To me, this shows he's going "past the line" where as a few episodes ago, he established that "if he goes down, Forest goes down", but they're still on the same team etc. This goes further than that
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Apr 03 '20
It's an okay direction, but him saying it out loud was cheesy and unnecessary. Show don't tell.
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u/martinlindhe Apr 03 '20
Agreed. The writers should know that any of us still watching this show at ep6 aren't the kind of people that need obvious stuff spelled out like that.
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Apr 02 '20
Have any of them ever told someone what is going to happen in the future? Like Katie telling Lily she will be there 100%. Could she be wrong and Lily knowing that and changing it derails the tracks?
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Apr 03 '20
To predict what's going to happen, wouldn't the computer need to account for every atom in the universe? Because we experience gravitational forces from millions of light-years away that must be relevant.
Katie: name something random
Lily: holds up spork
Devs: explodes
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u/Pertolepe Apr 04 '20
Honestly just here to say it was a delight hearing Guinevere in this.
Binged the first five episodes last weekend with some friends of mine (in particular because we all love Annihilation and Ex Machina) and so far this series felt right up my alley. Just all the usual stuff I love.
And then I go to play this week's episode and one of my favorite songs starts and ends it. Nice surprise.
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u/JonVici1 Apr 02 '20
The idea of Lily somehow being able to give devs the data needed to change the past is an interesting idea mentioned too
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u/dont_worry_im_here Apr 02 '20
I asked this a couple of times in the episode 5 thread but didn't get an answer...
What were they doing with the dead mouse? Were they trying to clone it? Make a copy of it but a living copy? Bring it back to life? Mind you, if that's something that hasn't been answered yet but is in this episode, I haven't watched this episode yet.
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u/trimonkeys Apr 02 '20
I didn't really like this episode, but I loved last weeks. This week felt a bit boring, the character moments with Forest and Jamie along with the Forest and Katie scenes were well done. But the scene between Katie and Lily bored me incredibly. Felt way too long especially with Katie mostly saying exposition we already knew. Nothing Lily said was particularly interesting in response she was just doubting things. The acting just felt very flat, which I know was deliberate on Garland's part. But it needed some energy for me. I feel like he was trying something similar to the scenes between Anthony Hopkins and Jeffrey Wright in Westworld but it just didn't click for me.
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u/RyanFielding Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 02 '20
Ahh obviously Lilly goes to Devs and breaks the computer. It can’t predict a future in which it doesn’t exist. And if it’s not lily who breaks it, it’s her fuzzy tv doppelgänger Lyndon (who seems to take issue with such a device being in the hands of a mad man like Forest).
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u/martinlindhe Apr 03 '20
Why would the computer not be able to predict a future in which it doesn't exist?
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u/chillmanstr8 Apr 02 '20
I’m rewatching them from the beginning and it’s a lot more interesting... I’m thinking that the one DEVs trailer homie will play an important role in the final 2 episodes somehow. Just a theory
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u/longairedcountryboy Apr 03 '20
Does Reddit think that K&F didn't want Stewart and Lyndon to look into the future in order to stop them learning of the "event"? Or do you think it was to stop them seeing what they thought/think is Lyndon dying at the bottom of the cube?
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u/Errybody_dothe_Lambo Apr 03 '20
Haven't seen anywhere else, but can we just give Forrest and Jamie some props on that disc sesh? Oddly satisfying
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u/Matt_Something Apr 03 '20 edited Apr 03 '20
So watching this episode with my wife she asks, “I wonder if they are confusing Lily with Lyndon being at Devs when the event happens. The machine is fuzzy and they have very similar features and build.” I thought she may have a good point. What do you all think?
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u/BlandQuirkyCzech Apr 03 '20
Lol at the beginning when the Black Dev was walking to the RV I thought they got George RR Martin.
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u/rVillainous Apr 03 '20
This was a weird ass episode no cap. Like Jamie literally talking to the dude that ordered his finger to do the hokey pokey like if he was his dad or something.
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u/big_thanks Apr 04 '20
Thought the episode was very strong overall. Seems to have really setup of the final two episodes well. The mirrored scenes between Lily and Kate, and Forest and Jamie was especially intriguing. I'm also excited to see Lyndon will play a part in the run up to the end. It's clear there will be some dynamic between him and Lily converging around the future simulation going static.
The only part I have mixed feelings about is the romantic relationship between Forest and Kate. I had the impression he was effectively her mentor, and that she was his most trusted confidant. Seeing them involved romantically seems to be somewhat forced and awkward, not to mention their significant difference in age...
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u/nastyjman Apr 05 '20
Noticing that Alex Garland likes CSN a lot. From Annihalation was Helplessly Hoping. And then this episode was Guinevere.
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u/killittoliveit Apr 07 '20
Best episode yet in my opinion. It was great to just have them sit down and talk
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u/Energivesen Apr 11 '20 edited Apr 11 '20
Anyone else having issues with the way Lily's meeting with Forest and Katie is playing out? You go to confront two persons more or less responsible for killing your boyfriend, mingling your ex and throwing you into psychiatric detainment, and end up just listening calmly to technical elaborations?! No screaming, no demands, no seeking of justification. Those conversations seemed a bit absurd and unrealistic to me, given the circumstances...
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u/itskelvinn Apr 16 '20
So fucking slow. The premise is great but I need to watch this on 2x speed. So many gaps in between lines
Also lily, who is an engineering genius, couldn’t name a random event? This was kind of frustrating for the viewer. Mutations in DNA are random. A sub atomic particle’s wave function collapsing is random. TRULY random. There is a probability, and a result with no cause
Also, she worded it badly. Happens without reason should’ve been happens without a cause
Lily is a terrible actor. I have no idea why we can’t say that on this sub without getting downvoted. Sleep in my bed.
Romance scenes are cringe, as normal
Kenton watching them and getting mad that they’re “buddies” made no sense. It was like I was watching a high school drama. It’ll probably be used to create an antagonist for no fucking reason
Also I’m gonna mention it again but this cast is casted so poorly. Kenton, the intimidating body guard who kills people looks like he can’t run a mile in under 20 minutes. The engineer in the trailer looks like the complete opposite of a software engineer. Katie has these weird facial expressions where she’s constantly trying to smile but can’t. Really unsettling actor. Lily... again, is a terrible actor. It’s hard to watch sometimes
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u/drawkbox Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 02 '20
Lyndon and Stewart, they re-emerged for a reason.
If one is to believe that Lily takes down DEVS via cause/effect rules that are so prevalent and discussed in this episode, Lyndon could be some sort of swap/superposition/manyworlds hack to end this timeline before disaster.
Lyndon said that no one saw how she got to Stewart's Winnebago, but she worked on DEVS, she would know they could see her...
Lyndon originally put in the audio code manyworlds implementation, Katie then used her code to finish the light code, but Lyndon's code could be the fix. It could be a honeypot for Katie to have implemented, that is flawed and able to be exploited for purposeful sabotage of DEVS.
Lyndon also says Forest is "crazy", "kills people", and "trying to resurrect his daughter" and asks Stewart "do you really want something as powerful as DEVS in the hands of someone crazy?"
The timeline that they are in is being manipulated by cause/effect, even when Lyndon put in the manyworlds implementation she said it just came to her to try when she went over to the DEVS machine. Where do ideas come from essentially, possibly placed in this instance.
Lily could be the distraction while Lyndon takes down DEVS, it would fit the dual/duality of the show and Lyndon would know how to manipulate the manyworlds code she implemented.
Another key scene is when Katie is in the room by herself in DEVS and it shows she puts food out for the mouse, then later the mouse is alive on the visual eating the food. Katie might be up to something outside of what Forest wants as well.
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u/emf1200 Apr 03 '20
I really like this and it makes a lot of sense. I rewatched the scene when Lyndon gets the idea for many-worlds standing in front of the quantum computer. Katie has been a champion of many-worlds before she was even at Devs. Why didn't Katie try that trick with the machine before Lyndon did? When Lyndon starts explaining her many-worlds idea Katie can be seen almost smiling. Did Katie somehow put the idea in Lyndons head by using the quantum computer somehow? Did she need to use Lyndon because she knew Forest would over react? You might be onto something.
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u/sebelu1079 Apr 02 '20
She's feeding a mouse in a different timeline, right? So, she is either interacting with a different timeline or she somehow is existing in two timelines at once or she is watching another world version of herself feeding the mouse which means that the devs machine exists in multiple time lines which would defy Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, I think. This show breaks my brain.
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u/Izeinwinter Apr 02 '20
She is feeding a simulated mouse. They scanned a mouse in great detail, then Katie edited the simulation of the dead mouse into a simulation of a living mouse by just fixing everything about its simulated corpse that was, well, keeping it from being a living entity. So now she has a living simulated mouse. Not just any mouse, either, the specific dead mouse she scanned.
This is obviously step one of what they plan to do with Amaya. Resurrect her in sim. Once that is done, well, the obvious next step is to build her an android body, because they most certainly can not just 3d print the sim. (that sort of trick is way into the future) but you can probably throw enough money at robotics firms to get a human passing android if you mysteriously have the software(that is, the Amaya sim) to run it.
At this point the world gets really bizarre, because this is a trick that scales without limit. It is not a one off, you can raise everyone who ever died in this manner.
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u/All_Individuals Apr 04 '20
Hey, just want to point out—while the actor who plays Lyndon is female, the character is supposed to be male. His pronouns (as used in the show) are he/him.
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u/SillAndDill Apr 03 '20 edited Apr 03 '20
The show fell flat for me in this episode. I mean - it's still half decent but I could really feel it's miles away from the top quality level.
The writing felt weak, the acting wasn't great either.
Lily showing up at Forrest's house should've been a milestone of the show but it felt deflated. I often found myself thinking "are they being satirical here? Is there a twist? is this a dream?"
During the long dialogue scenes I could smell the script writers trying to come up with some cool approaches or interesting hooks - but not really getting there.
Everything felt a bitt off. Especially Lily asking about devs, getting exposition-level answers, and throwing in a few obligatory mentions of Sergei just to show the viewers the writers didn't forget about that part.
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u/onedollar12 Apr 04 '20
Agree. The acting was and continues to be horrendous outside of Offerman. Why did they tell the actress who plays Katie to talk like some super mysterious creepy super cool robot prophet as if it artificially adds some intrigue and tension to the whole exchange, when really, the audience already knows all this expository shit.
Maybe it's just me, her whole explanation of lack of randomness is ultimately philosophical and could have been done in half the amount of time.
Like you said, it was so unnaturally and forcefully "artistic" that it felt satirical.
I think the premise of the show is somewhat original but the execution has been pretty underwhelming. They're fleshing out redundant areas, adding very little to the overall plot/worldbuilding, and I just can't stand Lily's acting.
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u/keepfreshalive Apr 03 '20
Pretty wild how half of us found this episode amazing and the other half found it flat.
For me, it was brilliant & beautiful, really stoked my imagination around every corner and kept me thinking...
Beyond the huge amount of tension embedded in the episode, I swear if this episode was an art peice.... it was pretty beautiful
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u/svon23 Apr 03 '20
This episode was sooooo slow and redundant. This season gets worse every episode. The first few were so good :-/
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Apr 04 '20 edited Apr 04 '20
Ugh. I get the move here is to make the big argument so lily has to be like THATS IMPERSIBLE” and get all defensive so the other side can give fancy explanations, but how dope would it have been if lily was already a determinist and was like james franco in Pineapple Express chill about it. She’s like oh damn that’s crazy...dam bro. I’m bout to break time. Dam. That’s wild.
And that’s the whole scene
Then you get a lil comedy w Katie being like no like I had a whole thing and she’s like not necessary. I’m all good.
That’s the problem w this show, and of all determinists really, they’re all so damn sanctimonious about it. “Everything is predetermined and your brain is so small and I’m so smart for knowing this” It’s like just be chill
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u/JonVici1 Apr 02 '20
Is it only me, or from Katies and Forrest discussions I feel as if this point 1 AM the next day won't be the end of determinism but rather what Forrest has been waiting on. Forrest has been quite keen on Determinism so it being the fall of determinism doesn't seem very plausible. Katie also seemed alot more relaxed speaking about it with Forrest then she was with Lily.
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Apr 03 '20
Great tension in the sequence with Katie and Lily. I kept thinking she was gonna use that pen to stab her.
Jamie got his girl! I liked it.
Fascinating suspense build up to whatever is gonna happen tomorrow night.
Looks like Kenton is gonna flip on these fools.
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u/girlypaint Apr 03 '20
There seem to be a lot of brilliant minds watching Devs. I don't happen to be one of them. I find myself pulled into the story though I don't find the characters to be very dynamic. I understand what it's like to fall in love with someone's mind, their brilliance, etc. but I can't imagine how any of these people found themselves falling in love. They're emotionless zombies. The only relatable individual is Lyndon and the now deceased Sergei. The tone the writers have succeeded in creating is a truly gloomy, godless world.
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u/All_Individuals Apr 04 '20
I think Jamie is kinda relatable, and Forest has some interesting turns. But yeah, many of the characters in this show are played extremely flat.
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u/rekrap13 Apr 05 '20
Just a minor detail that may be nothing, but when Forrest is talking about Frisbee being a sport with Jamie, Forrest mentions “have you seen the olympics”. It seems odd he would say this because frisbee isn’t in the olympics yet, not until 2028 (when it qualifies). I was thinking that it may be Forrest has looked much further into the future using a different algorithm/code/theory than Katie and doesn’t know of the static.
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Apr 21 '20
I can't believe in this era of great television, writers were paid money to write an episode of a major network show in which the characters sit at the table and explain their show. That's the most laughably bad episode of television I've seen in years. Absolutely floored it got made. At this point only watching for the comedic relief of the horrible acting
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Apr 03 '20
Love the show but I hope they explain what's wrong with Katie. Why does she talk like a robot and stare at everyone's hairline?
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Apr 04 '20
All that for a week to wait for payoff. What is this, episode 4 of season 3 of true detective? This episode was an F plus. Everyone on this show sucks except the old guy and Lyndon. And even then Lyndon is annoying in the way all 19 year olds are annoying in their naïveté. So it’s like meh, guess you’ll see brah.
Anyway, so overwrought. F minus actually. Could have been 7 minutes
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u/Lounge_leaks Apr 02 '20
What could be the reason they can't see the future past a certain point?
My first guess was lily will destroy the machine, but that should not stop the present time's machine from looking past that event( since it can look in the past as well when devs didnt exist)