‘3 Body Problem’ Episode 6 Recap: “The Stars Our Destination”

In 3 Body Problem, humanity’s reaction to the revelation that aliens are real, watching us, and en route to Earth feels on point with our current reality. Riots. Mass protest. Hoarding of food and resources. Religious fanaticism, plus brand new sects devoted to worshiping the San-Ti. Suicide cults. The aliens won’t reach Earth for 400 years, but the freak out starts now, and we catch a quick glimpse of CCH Pounder as UN Secretary General Lilian Joseph telling earthlings to touch grass. Ye Wenjie sees all of this behavior as representative of the darkness within us. But under a withering line of questioning from Jin, Ye does not waver in her resolve. Destroy the old world, forge a new world. “Is that what you think you’re doing?” Jin asks. “You betrayed everyone alive, everyone who’s going to be born, for what? So that aliens who think we’re bugs can come here and kill us all?” 

Thomas Wade is not one of the people freaking out. To fight the San-Ti threat, he hired the best nerds he could find. But as the most capable physicist of her generation, it’s Jin who designs a nuclear bomb-powered plan to launch a light speed probe at the alien fleet. “If we can precisely time the detonations as the probe passes, and impart 30 kilonewtons of force on the probe per explosion, the compounding rate of acceleration will mean we can reach 1.12% light speed after 1,000 explosions.” This whole season, it’s been cool to see 3 Body Problem leaning into and highlighting science and rational thought as bulwarks against an incomprehensible threat. The sophon revealing itself to the world with the Eye in the Sky event is Marvel movie-like in its scope. And when the series starts talking about unknown higher dimensions, it borders on Dr. Strange territory. But 3 Body Problem doesn’t look to the MCU for its aesthetic. Even as a global threat looms, it stays rooted in the righteous concept of saving science itself from its attackers. In 3 Bod P, humanity won’t be rescued by caped crusaders with superpowers. We will survive by fighting back with whatever we have left. You know, like repurposing weapons of mass destruction as propulsive agents in a project to produce light speed travel.

Of course, the notion of well-funded scientists using their brilliance to unleash a new age of destructive power on the world also feels a lot like Robert Oppenheimer’s moral despair and nightmares about nuclear fire. And in the wake of the boat and people-slicing Panama operation (episode five, “Judgement Day”), Auggie’s been considering Oppi’s quandary as she drinks herself to sleep at the seaside cottage. There, with Saul as his steady companion, Will spends his days gazing at the English Channel as the cancer continues to destroy him. Despite her misgivings about Wade and his tactics, It’s Will who finally convinces Auggie to join Jin’s research team. The space probe’s nanosail design requires Auggie’s revolutionary new tech, and they’ve all been friends too long not to help each other out. But with his own days seemingly numbered, Will also decides to use his sizable inheritance on the purchase of a star. The Stars Our Destination is a fundraising project for the war effort. But it also allows the world’s wealthiest people to acquire ownership rights over stars in the Milky Way, which definitely feels like something that would be happening in our own real-life timeline. Why take a ten million-dollar ride in a spaceship or even build your own rocket when you could plaster your name across a supergiant.

“You spend all your time in a lab or behind a computer. You think you’re above it all. But we’re fighting the same war.” Raj is on Wade’s Wychwood Manor R&D team, too, but it seems like Jin and her boyfriend are drifting apart. It sounds like he’s moving to the Moon, anyway, though, because another one of Wade’s San-Ti-fighting projects is the construction of a base at the lunar crater Mare Imbrium. Lower gravity allows for larger ships, and Wade says Raj can join this burgeoning new space fleet. 

We don’t hear from the San-Ti themselves in this episode. Despite the mind warping insanity of the sophon revealing itself, the reality of an intelligent alien species with malicious intent seems to have transformed back into existential threat. Humanity’s usual issues with destroying itself remain in the forefront, which Will says is part of the appeal of Stars Our Destination. “It’s much more exciting to imagine a future War of the Worlds than it is to muck around with our current problems.” But one person who’s still chopping it up with the San-Ti is Ye Wenjie. Freed from custody by Da Shi, though under surveillance – he probably wants to see who she’ll talk to, maybe uncover a sleeper cell of alien sympathizers somewhere – Ye Wenjie returns home. There she lights joss sticks to Vera’s memory, takes up a position of prayer, and further teases her resolve. Destroy the old world, forge a new world. “I know you can hear me if you want to,” she says. “You have learned that we are liars. You no longer trust us, so now you are coming to stamp us out. All because of me, the first liar you met. I’m an old woman whose beliefs have led us down this terrible path. But I still have an idea or two left in me. And centuries from now, there may well be a fair fight. Or, no fight at all.”  

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.