#RenewRaisedByWolves! We still have far too many questions about HBO Max’s mind-bending sci-fi show.
Sometimes, the universe just isn’t fair. Despite being a solid show with a fascinating story, great production values and an amazing cast, HBO Max has pulled the plug on its heady science fiction drama Raised By Wolves after two seasons. Wolves was a weird show, and certainly not for everyone. But those who loved it loved it.
Beyond just the immediate sense of loss, Wolves’ cancelation stings twice as much because season 2 ended with a slew of cliffhangers. While season 1 told a relatively self-contained story that left room for a follow-up, season 2 ended much more abruptly, likely in anticipation of a third season. Creator Aaron Guzikowski was already hard at work on season 3 when HBO Max decided not to renew, per Collider. As such, there are a lot of lingering mysteries.
Personally, I’m still very much in the camp that hopes some other network will #SaveRaisedByWolves. Because there’s much more to this story. Here are seven mysteries we still need solved.
Earth and Kepler-22b’s connection
One of the largest mysteries in Raised By Wolves is the exact nature of the connection between Earth and Kepler-22b. By the end of season 2, we’ve discovered that ancient humans lived on Kepler-22b, where they eventually came into conflict with Sol. And we know that those humans were devolved in order to put Sol back to sleep and keep the planet from being destroyed.
But what we don’t know is how exactly the humans from Earth fit into this equation. There are texts about Sol that reference things on Kepler-22b, like the Tree of Knowledge and the temples. More, the Romulus tooth relic that Marcus breaks while fighting the half-devolved creature below the Mithraic temple in season 2 causes it to devolve faster and die. That tooth came from Earth, which means that technology that previously existed on Kepler-22b made it there.
So did the humans on Earth originally come from Kepler-22b? And if they did, how does that fit into Grandmother’s devolution master plan, which turned Kepler-22b’s human population into sea creatures? Did some survivors escape before they could suffer that fate and make their way to Earth? Or were the humans of Earth and the ancient beings of Kepler-22b two totally separate populations that just happened to come into contact with one another?
The connection between these two planets is a huge piece of Raised By Wolves mythology, and by the time season 2 ended we were just starting to understand it.
Marcus Drusus and his destiny
Marcus Drusus (Travis Fimmel), or Caleb, as he was known back before he murdered the real Marcus and stole his face and identity, was a fascinating character whose delusions about his own grand destiny often led him to commit horrible acts. Back when Earth was on the verge of destruction, Marcus and his wife Sue (Niamh Algar) murdered two Mithraic and then had an android perform plastic surgery on them so that they could take the fallen zealots’ place on the last convoy leaving the planet.
When last we saw Marcus, his former Mithraic comrade Lucius (Matias Varela) had just crucified him upside down on the tree which sprouted from snake-baby Number Seven’s corpse. This was done at the instruction of Sol, who was speaking directly to Lucius in his mind, so we knew there was some kind of crazy ulterior motive to the whole thing.
The final shot of the Raised By Wolves season 2 finale is Marcus, who mysteriously escaped his crucifixion and was floating in the air above the tree in an upside-down facsimile of the Necromancer flight pose. Season 2 spent a lot of time exploring the idea of “botanitech,” or biologically grown technology, from the Tree of Knowledge to Grandmother being “regrown.”
So did Sol transform Marcus into some kind of android using this botanitech? Of all Raised By Wolves season 2’s cliffhangers, this might be the biggest.
The true nature of Sol
Speaking of Sol, the alien signal which was masquerading as a deity, there are still an awful lot of questions we have about it. Season 2 established that its signal seems to be coming from the center of the planet. From a few previous sequences, like Marcus’ descent into the Mithraic temple in season 2 and Mother and Father’s journey through the planet’s core in season 1, we know that there’s a vast network of tunnels and unknown mysteries beneath the surface of Kepler-22b.
How did Sol get down there? Has it always been down there? What exactly is its true nature, and what does it want? Grandmother explained during the season finale that Sol was trying to destroy Kepler-22b back in the ancient days, which is why the human population was devolved into sea creatures; apparently, without humans to control and manipulate, Sol fell back into slumber.
But clearly that didn’t take, since Sol found ways to manipulate the human population of Earth to seek out Kepler-22b.
Really, Sol is the mystery of Raised By Wolves, the one that all other mysteries revolve around. To end the show without explaining it more thoroughly is the hardest pill to swallow.
Will Campion become humanity’s leader?
Season 2 of Raised By Wolves introduced us to the Atheist Collective on Kepler-22b, a sect of humans who followed the strict orders of a sentient quantum computer known as the Trust. Despite the fact that the Trust was seemingly programmed to lead humanity with an iron fist, it always insisted that it would one day “pass the baton” once a human with the suitable traits to lead had been identified. After Mother (Amanda Collin) deactivated the Trust in retaliation for it nearly killing Paul (Felix Jamieson), she assumed de facto control of the Atheist colony but insisted that she too would pass the baton when the time was right.
But unlike the Trust, Mother knew exactly who she wanted to pass the baton to: Campion (Winta McGrath), the sole surviving child who was artificially birthed by her and Father on Kepler-22b. On the one hand, Mother has always seemed a little biased in her belief that Campion should lead humanity. On the other, Campion has demonstrated time and again that he’s the only one who truly empathizes with both humans and androids equally. Because he never knew Earth and grew up raised by androids, he has a unique worldview that does feel particularly well-suited to bringing everyone together. And technically, he’s the only human aside from Tempest’s baby that’s actually native to Kepler-22b.
Season 2 spent a decent amount of time exploring how Campion might react to leadership, with Mother pushing him to gradually assume the role. Whether Campion would one day bring the inhabitants of Kepler-22b together is a lingering question that Raised By Wolves surely would have addressed in future seasons.
Are there any more snake-babies out there?
Another huge element of Raised by Wolves season 2 was Number Seven, the colossal flying serpent that I very affectionately took to calling snake-baby. During season 1, Mother found out that she had been somehow impregnated by Sol, but was horrified when the thing she gave birth to turned out not to be human, but a flying snake. Despite her best efforts to destroy it, Number Seven survived and went on to grow to a massive size in season 2.
Snake-baby had a pretty huge arc throughout the season, beginning as a scary but seemingly harmless herbivore. However, once the Tree of Knowledge was planted (aka, botanitech gruesomely transformed Sue into the living tree), Number Seven lost it and flew off. We found out that the true nature of the Tree and its disgusting fleshy Sue-fruits was that they existed for the serpent to devour. In doing so, it gained a hardwire to Sol’s power that worked even in the tropical zone. As a result it grew eldritch tentacles and became much more powerful and aggressive.
After killing a bunch of people and chasing after Campion out of brotherly jealousy, Mother finally put an end to Number Seven once she donned a sensory dampening veil that would let her harm the serpent in spite of her caregiving protocols. Their showdown in space was the most breathtaking moment in the season 2 finale.
However, after snake-baby died, another small tree popped out of its corpse. Marcus would later be nailed to it and seemingly transformed, so we can presume it had the same hardwire connection to Sol.
What is the connection between this serpent and Sol? Were these ancient creatures of Kepler-22b? And most importantly, would we have seen more of them if the show had gone on?
Even though snake-baby was killed, it definitely felt like there were still more layers of its mystery to be unraveled.
Will Grandmother succeed in her master plan?
Perhaps the biggest twist from the Raised By Wolves season 2 finale was Grandmother’s coup. Early on in the season, Father (Abubakar Salim) discovered the ruined remains of an ancient android, and gradually discovered he could “regrow” her. The result came to be dubbed by Campion as Grandmother (Selina Jones), an ancient android from the olden days of Kepler-22b, back before the planet’s original population mysteriously devolved. At first she seemed to have benevolent motives, offering to transplant her sensory veil over to Lamia (Mother) so that she could stop Number Seven’s killing spree.
But that, it turned out, was just a step in Grandmother’s plan to get Lamia out of her way so that she could begin working to devolve the new humans who had settled on Kepler-22b. It turns out that when the ancient human society was contending with Sol however many thousands of years ago, it was Grandmother and her fellow androids who put a stop to the conflict…by devolving humans into the sea creatures we saw throughout season 2. Apparently, once there were no more “human” life forms on Kepler-22b, Sol went back to sleep and the planet stabilized.
The coming of new humans has reawakened the alien entity and given it a new opportunity to destroy the planet. So Grandmother is falling back on her old tricks and begins distributing a new video game module to the bored residents of the Collective, which will ultimately cause them to devolve. This is a huge cliffhanger, because literally every single human character on the show is now in immense danger. We already saw the effects of the devolution beginning in the season 2 finale, with some humans commenting on how the algae they were farming from the acid ocean was becoming more palatable.
The only one who knows about Grandmother’s plans and might be able to stop her before it’s too late is Lamia, but she’s…indisposed.
How will Lamia escape her imprisonment?
In order to implement her human-devolution program, Grandmother needed to get the one being on Kepler-22b that was strong enough to oppose her out of the way. Mother realizes that humans are beginning to devolve at the eleventh hour, but by then it’s already too late. The sensory veil she wore throughout the finale stretches out into a cocoon that traps her, leaving her helpless.
Grandmother took advantage of the opportunity to put Lamia into a stasis pod. Their final confrontation, where Lamia swears to get out and destroy the ancient android, is a chilling scene. But in the moment, she’s powerless to resist, and Grandmother locks her safely away so that she can continue with her plan to turn all the humans on Kepler-22b into sea monsters so Sol will go back to sleep.
But if this show has a main character, it’s Mother. There’s no way she’s going to stay locked up in stasis for long, especially once a character like Father or Campion starts to see through Grandmother’s layers of lies. Eventually, someone will find out what happened to Lamia, and they will help her get out.
But who, and under what circumstances? And how much damage will Grandmother have done by then? This is a cliffhanger that would have needed addressing right away in season 3.
These are just a few of the many questions we needed answered in Raised By Wolves. What were you most looking forward to seeing in Raised By Wolves season 3?
A fan campaign is currently going strong to try and save the show after its untimely cancellation. As of this writing, there’s a petition with nearly 14,000 signatures calling for its renewal, and cast member Abubakar Salim has hinted that there is still hope for the series since it has such a strong creative team and vision behind it.
#RenewRaisedByWolves or #SaveRaisedByWolves. There are too many questions left unanswered in this breathtakingly original science fiction universe.
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