Constellation Episode 4 Explained- Theories On The Duality Of Man, Alice, And That Painting

One person’s Heaven is another Hell, and a demon is only a demon because we perceive it to be. Apple’s latest dalliance in the sci-fi pool is the reality-bending Quantum Physics heavy twister that feels like it could be a distant cousin to Netflix’s 1899 from Dark creators Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese has unleashed another episode from The Twilight Zone. Constellation Episode 4 reminds you we are only who we are because of our perceptions. Those can change in an instant.

At least two and possibly three or more realities play out across similar but different timelines. To say it is confusing is an understatement. To say I am hooked is also an understatement. Apple has a knack for finding and packaging these weird stories with incredible creative teams and acting talent. They deliver them to us with more ambiguity than should be appreciated. Yet, here we are, obsessing over every detail and researching theoretical physics as if we can understand it.

Jo knows something is going on

Jo tries to understand what happened to her, but she knows something is wrong. Her husband doubts her, and her daughter no longer knows the foreign language she was fluent in before Jo left. Countless details have changed. Car colors shift, memories warp literally and figuratively, and friends are suddenly foes. Jo, from the other reality, did cheat on her husband, and he suspected. While she was gone, he started to move on. Unfortunately, Jo didn’t cheat on Frederic. With the confirmation that there are others like her out there and they are all being drugged with Lithium, Jo finally has a sense of what has happened to her, even if she doesn’t understand the ramifications.

In a moment of anger, Jo pushes Magnus, and he hits his head at the end of Constellation Episode 4. Presumably, he is dead since Alice and Jo are always alone in the future cabin scenes. It is also important to note that the “observer effect” led to this tragedy. In Jo B’s reality, she doesn’t have a piano or know how to play one. In reality, A, where she has been accidentally stuck, that Jo does have a piano. It isn’t a coincidence that Magnus hit his head on that piano. If reality A didn’t have a piano, Magnus wouldn’t have struck his head and potentially died. Think of it like Chaos Theory, more commonly, the Butterfly Effect. One tiny change, even a world away, can alter things irrevocably. This one minuscule detail means life or death for Magnus.

The painting on the wall in Constellation Episode 4

Hugo Simberg’s “The Poor Devil by the Fire; The Devil by the Pot.” represents the duality of man. The devil is undoubtedly there to hurt those people, but he will make them something first. Looking closely at the devil, he is a naked, skinny wretch as well. He doesn’t look like the powerful supernatural being we think of. In the case of Constellation Episode 4, he would be the misunderstood person stuck, someone they didn’t want to be. It would be scary if another observed that person, just as when the worker saw Jo. She became the devil. However, she is also the shocked villager looking on in horror and disbelief. This is further supported by the painting changing by the end of the episode. Realties are converging and evolving with each ripple. Heaven and Hell are only a thin membrane apart.

Why can Alice see the other reality(s)?

In a weird television version of quantum entanglement, it makes sense that Jo can see into other realities. She was exposed to CAL directly, and she is the one who has fazed into another reality. What is less clear is Alice’s abilities. She can instantly see into at least one and maybe several realities where her mother is dead. We have no context to know if that is reality B, where the Jo we are following should be, or if this is yet another reality made possible by whatever is happening in space. Other astronauts have Jo’s symptoms. Some, like Henry, weren’t exposed to CAL because it didn’t exist yet. That means there is something in space that occurs naturally, and Henry/Bud has been trying to recreate it.

Traditional “observer theory” posits that the observer affects what is observed. Schrödinger’s cat is both alive and dead until someone opens the box and looks. The minute they do, they force the cat to be either alive or dead. Notice that there is never an instance where the cat gets to decide for himself, and everyone around him has to act accordingly. That is the main difference between what is happening on Constellation Episode 4 and our current understanding of quantum physics.

Think the Mandela Effect only real. We aren’t just all glitching and remembering things wrong; we are sliding in and out of realities as easily as we climb out of bed. Wake up at 6:29 AM before your alarm; now you exist in reality B. If you don’t wake up until your alarm goes off at 6:30 AM, you remain in reality A. If an infinite number of realities exist, with more being created every time someone observes the phenomenon, then there would be countless versions of us as well. Some would be kind and happy, others miserable turds.

Henry’s original thoughts based on current theory are that the act of observation alters the subject, which was only half correct. Constellation Episode 4 seems to confirm that the subject and the observer are changed. This is why Alice can now see multiple universes. She saw the CAL experiment on the IPAD just before the accident in space. She became an observer, and as a result, she can now see what is happening even though it isn’t exactly happening to her. Maybe closer proximity is required to allow people to switch realities like Jo. Presumably, now that the FBI agent has seen the effect, she can also see into other realities just like Alice.

Henry knows something has happened, and he and a handful of others aren’t where they should be. His conversations with Irena earlier in the season seem to indicate that. What they refer to as their siblings are probably their alter versions. Neither of them knows how to control or reverse things, though. Henry seems pretty anxious to continue his work, making me believe he wants to get to another reality. Maybe neither Bud nor Henry are in their original realities.

The duality of humans

Jo has become unstuck from her reality and now has to contend with her alter’s choices. That Jo, think of her as Jo A was having an affair with Frederic. She was cold towards her husband and likely her daughter. She never taught her child Swedish and played the piano. The Jo we are watching is Jo B. Jo B loved her family desperately. She never would have cheated on Magnus, taught Alice Swedish, and never learned how to play the piano. The problem is she is in the wrong reality, and the more time she spends in this other reality, the more it seems to be affecting her. It’s not just the obvious ways, either.

Of course, she will be confused and think she is losing her mind. It is also reasonable to begin believing there is some vast conspiracy against her. What is less understandable, however, is why she now knows how to play the piano. This is an example of how the object, in this case, the Cal experiment and shifting through realities, affects the observer, i.e., Jo.

The painting and the dueling snowy views of Jo and Magnus with Alice fighting through the snow to get to the remote cabin are evocative of the two sides of a coin. They run parallel to one another, but each is different. We know Jo at least hurt Magnus in reality A. She is now running with Alice from the police sometime in the future. At the same time, I think Magnus is running with Alice to the cabin in reality B. Maybe Jo B didn’t die at the space station, but she was killed. What if Magnus killed her during an argument in the same way that Jo B killed Magnus A.? Maybe Alice has figured out what is going on and is leading her father to the cabin where they might be able to interact?

If we stop thinking of characters being stuck in realities, then Paul Lancaster’s death and subsequent appearances also make sense. If he is also untethered in reality, he could have branching realities converging in the moments Jo sees him. In this interpretation, realities are fluid and flow in and around us. Some people can surf on them, floating between spaces, never truly belonging anywhere because they exist above them. The minute something happens in one reality, it changes everything for all of them but in different ways.

There is a Jo in some reality who injured her left eye and is probably still in space. This version of Jo keeps bleeding into Jo B’s reality, so she keeps getting pain in her eye and visions of space. Simultaneously, she flips in and out of realities, which is why the men can’t see her until she crosses directly in front of one of them in her office. She had inadvertently shifted into another reality. We cannot know if this is the reality she originally came from or another of endless possibilities.

The men packing up her office were in Jo B’s reality. Jo B probably died on the station, and when Jo B scared one of them, it was because they were seeing a ghost. Jo B is alive in reality A but also dead in reality B. Therefore, when the man saw her, he was seeing a ghost.

In the office, when Henry/Bud is talking to a version of himself, the one on the monitor is wearing glasses, indicating it is either Henry from Jo B’s current reality or a new Henry. This means that Bud was in the room with Jo even if he didn’t realize it. He could be the Bud we have been following on the cruise ship, or another Bud/Henry lost in time and space.

Ripples through space and time

One last crucial theory. Henry believes that the object affects the observer, not vice versa. Could it be that whatever happened with CAL and previously happened naturally in space is widening its net of interference? Like the ripples seen on the monitor in the CCTV footage, the ripples are widening and will eventually affect everyone. At first, it was just a few people in the early days of space, but the more we sent up, the more people were affected, leading to even more. If this theory holds, then there would be a point where everyone was slipping in and out of their primary reality, and everything would collapse in on itself.

If you want one more brain-melting thought. What if whatever happened to Bud/Henry that made them get unstuck in the first place was created in the future by one of the Henrys(the CAL), and the ripples reach all the way to the past, affecting Bud? It’s a bootstrap that even Dr. Who might be impressed by. It’s a lot to think about. Watch for all our Constellation coverage here.