‘File 81’ is one of Netflix’s surprise hits that has been generating more and more followers for its hair-raising story that transcends time and space as the twists and turns disrupt reality for Dan and Melody, the two protagonists caught in a trap of paranoia, conspiracy and cosmic horror. Throughout its eight-episode first season, many puzzles and information-packed subplots are generated.
Its ending answers many questions, but leaves several mysteries to be solved and many new ones are generated that are supposed to be answered by a second season in which it is expected that Mamoudou Athie and Dina Shihabi will repeat their roles. The website The Wrap interviewed showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine and managed to clarify some questions, from the origins of Kaelego to the possibilities of the long-awaited season 2.
Clarifying the ending
After restoring the videotapes of Melody Pendras at The Visser apartment building, Episode 8 finds Dan returning to Virgil Davenport’s (Martin Donovan) compound to question him about the truth of the tapes. Davenport reveals that Dan’s father was one of those trying to prevent the demon from being summoned., took the tapes and burned down his house to destroy them. They then descend to the basement, where Kaelego’s statue and ritual room have been recreated from The Visser’s and the previous mansion.
Just then Bobbi shows up with Davenport’s gun and it is revealed that she is actually Melody’s mother and has been posing as the gardener. She then agrees to help perform the ritual, since she is a Baldung witch, to try to rescue Melody. Dan enters The Otherworld, is tempted by Kaelego, finds Melody, and is about to pull her out of it when Samuel holds him back. Melody returns to our dimension with her mother, but Dan wakes up apparently in the 1990s.
Where is Samuel? Has he traveled through time?
The final shot of the season is of Dan looking out the window, seeing that the Twin Towers are still standing; before a nurse tells him that he has just survived a fire at The Visser, and the TV has MTV News on, which is reporting the death of Kurt Cobain, the leader of Nirvana. Sonnenshine does not give much information on this matter.:
“Oh my God. I mean, I don’t know, where could she be? I would say keep an eye out for season 2. This is, for us, just a new twist on time travel, which is like going through another dimension. It’s not what we think of as time travel. But there is a lot within this series that deals with time, how it moves and what is and is it a flat circle? Is it an expanding universe? Is it a universe of blocks?
We don’t know, but the game of having this alternative dimension put on the table opens up a new field of possibilities. For us, in absolute terms, it means that someone left in the nineties and another left in the present. Does that mean there are little holes you can travel through? This was always the idea. It’s not a time machine. It is something different. It’s a way of bending time through an alternate dimension, so there are ways to go back and forth.”
What is the other world, exactly?
When in the final episode, we finally visit The Other World, we see spaces defined by the psyche of Dan and Melody more than a hellish place. According to Sonnenshine:
“I wouldn’t say that anything you see is real, but that’s what you perceive when you enter this other dimension that is ruled by a very powerful hallucinatory god or demon. So I think what we were looking for in the end, is to bring the Other Side to something that means something to the character…like a moment where everything changed for them and they were drawn there to revisit it or relive it, or have a life. different at that moment. It’s not the Upside Down of ‘Strange Things’, it’s something a little more connected to their own subconscious”.
Is Kaelego based on a real demon?
“It’s not based on anything except what’s in my head. It’s kind of a Lovecraftian element in this series, which is either an elder god or a demon depending on how you look at it. So it looks real, but it’s a fabrication and it’s obviously based on a lot of tropes and other ideas, but the monster or god or demon itself is not based on a concrete or existing one.”
Does Davenport want to let Kaelego out or keep him in?
One of the big unresolved issues in the end is Davenport’s real motives for organizing everything, who even explains to Dan that there are two factions: those who want to keep Kaelego locked up in The Otherworld, and those who will stop at nothing to get him out, without him telling us which side they are on. We know that the videos of Melody in the basement are meant to “unravel the spell” but there are no more clues:
“I think it’s something that will have to wait for a second season, but we already have the Davenport story planned. We just didn’t have time to go into that matter, even though we had already mapped out all of her motivations. I think for us it will all come back to an emotional place, but that’s definitely on the table to be explored with more additional story in a season 2, should that happen.” Did Davenport know that Bobbi was Melody’s mother?
“In our head, he doesn’t know that. But Virgil can surprise me. Sometimes a character surprises me at the weirdest moment where he says, ‘Actually, I knew that.’ And you think: ‘Oh’. So I think one of the things about doing mythology shows is that you have to make room and be open to being surprised by the characters at some point.”
“Bobbi’s story is definitely a topic to explore in Season 2, because at the end of Season 1, they know each other and still don’t say anything to each other, but obviously that’s very rich ground to explore. And again, that was another story we didn’t get to: in eight episodes, you only have a limited number of things that you can show. But we had already had a lot about where Bobbi had been and how he ended up in the situation that he ended up in.”
Will there be a season 2 of ‘File 81’?
Netflix has not officially greenlit a second seasonbut the numbers have worked out and Sonnenshine is hopeful:
“The idea is that we continue with these characters in a new season if we are lucky enough to have a second season. It was not conceived as a miniseries or limited series. I think there are more stories to tell. I think we ended up with a good cliffhanger that needs to be addressed. We introduce many characters surrounding Dan and Melody who have very rich and interesting lives to explore further. So yeah, we look forward to moving forward.”
“The writers and I have been brainstorming and we already have some clues for season 2. The text team is very excited to continue telling this story. We love our actors so much, we love this world… So, fingers crossed.”