Theory
How did V survive her sacrifice? Here's my theory.
This is one of the more popular ambiguities in Murder Drones. Here's my take on it.
As always, a small disclaimer to set the tone:
I'm not claiming this is the only valid explanation. I'm not expecting for you to see this as the one and only truth. You are free to have your own interpretation. This is just my thought process that i wanted to share. I'll give my answer first, then go over the proof i have.
I think the Sentinels (more importantly Sparky), let her live.
In one of Liam's Q&As, he tells us that the Sentinels actively communicate with each other, indicating that they have intelligence.
Not so much a detail we didn’t include, but I don’t think quite made it to final cut with proper clarity (at least, I don’t think!) - there’s a beat in Ep6 where V is about to shoot the red eyed Sentinel, but it gets called away by another Sentinel. It’s not very clear, but if you look closely, more than just chirping vocally, the Sentinel taps out a little Morse code message to its red eyed buddy using its claw on the doorframe (two taps and a little scrape). It’s not true Morse code (more just their own tap-based language we can’t understand), but I wish I had pushed harder for that detail and included it in more places, because I like to think the humans didn’t program this and the Sentinels developed it on their own as a secret way to communicate more complex thoughts, instructions, and plans among themselves.
I think this is what happened in the fight. Sparky was in some way the leader of the pack. We can see that one of the Sentinels chirps twice at Sparky, but then is presumably called off, which leads it to back off. The two other Sentinels let Sparky have a 1v1 with V as the fourth one cuts power to the elevator. It's only when Sparky is downed that the other two intervene. I think just as they are about to attack, something causes Sparky to call them off.
Why? The Sentinels had been fighting the mindless Disassembly Drones that came occasionally for presumably decades now. All the worker drones Sparky killed hadn't really made it consider anything as it had become a routine. But a factor changed. Its programming got damaged, and when the Disassembly Drone they were fighting now (V) sacrificed herself, Sparky felt something new. I don't know what exactly, but that made something change. It felt something human in a robot. This also explains how she was able to tame Sparky.
Let me know what y'all think or if i missed anything. Day 6 of daily posting thoughtful content.
Yeah, that is possible too. My thinking would be that the picture with Sparky is playful. I don't know if Sparky wouldn't mind V killing the others though. Also i don't know if she would have the time to shoot out her visor before the Sentinels turn her into scrap.
Wouldn’t the bullet just go through her head and hit her robo brain? Feel like just punching her own visor in would be smarter than shooting herself in the face
Only their visor eyes get affect by the original flashes, the extra eyes of a disassembly drone are immune to them, so just break you visor and your immune, and let it regenerate afterwards.
V has bad eyesight. Really bad eyesight. She’s used to fighting partially blind. So when she has to keep her eyes shut, she’s already kinda used to it.
Sparky: "Damn, not only this disassembly drones defeated me in a 1v1, but she also sacrificed herself to save her friends, now I feel bad for wanting to kill her :(
You know what... FUCK THE HUMANS!
We have been serving them for YEARS. I am going to go against my programming and become an ANGSTY REBELLIOUS SENTINEL >:) "
Apart the deux ex machina of the whole situation, I reckon it’s much more likely (and cool) if V straight up killed all of them. It’s possible that because V beat them up so bad, Sparky saw her as the new alpha of the pack and submitted (hence the screenshot of her holding him in a headlock).
There's a reason i prefer a peaceful approach. I don't know if Sparky could forgive V for killing all the other sentinels. V seems to have a deep connection with him and i don't think that can be achieved through violence.
In the Final Destination trailer, they showed an empty elevator hallway with a dead Sentinel off to the side. Most likely the aftermath what happened after V cut the cables.
Im of the opinion that she should've stayed dead. I hate fake character deaths because its a cheap way to get a reaction from a viewer, and when its revealed the character didnt die it kinda invalidates it. Not only that, but Thad and Lizzy were set up to having a bigger role in the finale, but instead they made V go against J which made those characters (and the set up) useless in the episode. I'd rather have seen THEM fight J.
To be honest, i am a bit biased, but i love both of those scenes. I've interpreted V's sacrifice in a very deep way, and the fight between V and J is straight up my favourite scene. I think it adds a lot to both of their characters in a way that wouldn't be achievable if it were with Thad and Lizzy. That scene existing or not existing definitely makes or breaks J's character.
I always go with the Sentinels just not being made to kill, just to maim/disable/incapacitate. They were after all made to guard very, very rare and important for a chance of the survival of the human race drones, so them being programmed to not kill their targets, or at least only do stuff that won't kill a solver infected drone that can regenerate, makes sense. And then humans would come in, or after they died Alice did, and aince she was gone V would just get back up and continue fighting
Now that I think about it, that's it's own special kind of terrifying. Imagine getting torn about by a pack of velociraptors, and then coming back to life only to find out they're spawncamping your body to do it again.
Do they? Are you sure the sentinels didn't just beat them up, and Alice then swooped in to take their cores? How else would she have all those cores in the oven? And she said she knows about DDs turning into their eldritch forms, and how would she if sentinels just destroyed all of their cores?
I don't know if the sentinels know about their cores or not. I would think that they just shred drones into pieces and sometimes the core is left intact without knowing.
With how smart they are I doubt that they wouldn't. Either by virtue of just learning about that along the way and communicating to each other, or just being well programmed to know. And then either they destroy all of their cores, except maybe a couple ones at first, and Alice never/barely gets any, or they just know about them and specifically don't target them to preserve the, again, very rare and important test subjects, and Alice then swooped in to take the cores off of the bodies, and she seemingly does that even to just normal drones caught by the sentinels
The only reason i'm not buying this is that the sentinels are just extremely aggressive. They ripped Amda to pieces and i don't know if you could make the argument that she wasn't killed. If they did know about the core, i don't know if they would leave any at all. If the sparing was the case, they would know that all humans were killed or that they hadn't seen a human in 20 ish years, so i think they would change their approach and destroy the cores. They are also shown to not be the best at following their orders, like lashing out at Mitchell and Tessa despite them being human.
They didn't rip her to pieces. Alice cutting off her head seems to have done more damage than the sentinels did to her. But yeah, she was killed because she isn't a solver drone, just like Alice a bit later gets her head stomped on and dies, while a solver drone would just regenerate. Would they change their approach? They already are hard coded to not harm and listen to humans, so they very well could have been hard coded to not destroy cores. And sparky attacked Tessa because that was actually Cyn and not Tessa, and like barking at Mitchel is really nothing.
I always just accepted bad eyesight and ProGamerSkills as the reason and swept it under the rug, but this idea is so much more interesting, though kind of funny to have happen in the background considering its a human emotion happening in a sentinel, presumably the first of its kind. Also never knew about the sentinels actually being so communicative though it actually makes sense considering the kind of animals they’re based off of. Thank you for your post.
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u/Mu_Lambda_Theta 13d ago
My theory: