‘3 Body Problem’ Star Alex Sharp Reveals if Will Would Still Have Done the Staircase Project if Jin Had Declared Her Love

Maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for romance or perhaps it’s because I hadn’t yet started Liu Cixin’s Death’s End before watching the Netflix adaptation, but the 3 Body Problem Season 1 storyline that hooked me the most was whatever was going on with Will Downing (Alex Sharp) and Jin Cheng (Jess Hong). From the jump, it’s obvious that Will has all the hallmarks of the classic “sad, nerdy guy who carries a (sometimes creepy) torch for his beautiful, coupled up, female college bestie” trope. However, as 3 Body Problem unravels, it’s clear that Will is not only the best of the Oxford Five, but that Jin might actually reciprocate his feelings?? Which means that the end of 3 Body Problem Episode 7 “Only Advance” gave me the good, old-fashioned soap opera chills. You know, the ones where you’re dying for characters to beat the clock so they can be together forever.

I also had to know, though: would Will have gone through with what he does if…you know…Jin had showed up in the knick of time and declared her love?? We asked 3 Body Problem star Alex Sharp to find out…

**Spoilers for 3 Body Problem Episode 7 “Only Advance,” now streaming on Netflix**

3 Body Problem is David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo’s ambitious adaptation of all three of the Liu Cixin books in The Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. The first season of 3 Body Problem primarily adapts the first novel, The Three-Body Problem, for the small screen, while weaving the earliest plot points of The Dark Forest and Death’s End into the latter part of the season. The relationship between Death’s End‘s Yun Tianming and Cheng Xin is ironically only deepened via their reimagined Netflix counterparts, Will Downing and Jin Cheng.

In 3 Body Problem, we meet the Oxford Five, a quintet of brilliant college chums who are reuniting under sad circumstances: the untimely death of their mentor, Vera Ye (Vedette Lim). As it happens, her death is just the start of an age of chaos. Soon, one of their number is brutally murdered while Jin finds herself on the frontlines of an interstellar war with a mysterious alien race called the San-Ti.

While all this is going on, Will learns he is dying of cancer. He sequesters himself at a charming coastal cottage that his surviving friends visit. After inheriting a vast fortune from his far more successful murdered pal, Will decides to purchase a star to gift Jin, whom he has secretly loved since college. He even briefly gets the courage to declare his love, before seeing her with her hot boyfriend Raj (Saamer Usmani). But he doesn’t.

Jin has been busy coming up with an idea to accelerate humanity’s ability to visit the stars and intercept the San-Ti before they arrive on Earth in a few centuries’ time. She comes up with the Staircase Project, which would propel a small vessel holding a human in cryogenic sleep hurtling through the universe at faster than light speeds with the help of a pathway of nuclear blasts. When it becomes obvious the math will only work with most feather light of loads, Jin’s boss, Wade (Liam Cunningham), coldly suggests that they only send a brain. After all, the San-Ti should have the ability to either interface with a brain or reconstruct a whole body. He goes on to point out that Will would be a perfect candidate.

When Jin tearfully tells Will of the plan, begging him not to do this, he naturally volunteers. It’s only on the eve of his euthanasia that Wade reveals that Will obviously bought Jin the star. She realizes that he loves her and she loves him. She rushes to the hospital, but is too late. He’s already dead. His brain has been harvested and it’s being prepped for the dangerous voyage to the stars.

Sure, Will’s fatal cancer diagnosis only gave him a short time to live, but would he have still agreed to volunteer his brain for the Staircase Project if Jin had simply said “I LOVE YOU”???

“Well, I think he might have delayed it. You know, have a nice romantic weekend, perhaps,” 3 Body Problem star Alex Sharp told Decider, boosting our hopes for a fairy tale ending before crushing it. “But I think ultimately, you know, he’s gonna die, anyway.”

Sharp explained that Will’s sacrifice is “such a beautiful thing” to give Jin. (Dude, you already gave her a star! Stop showing off!)

“You know, he loves her so much. He wants to give her what she needs for her pursuit of greatness. She’s very ambitious and he wants to help her with that,” Sharp said.

“So, I think I think, yes. Maybe the timeframe would have changed, but, think I think so. Yeah.”

Grab the tissues, 3 Body Problem fans, because there was no way this story was going to end happily ever after for Jin and Will. At least, not for Will, not in this season of 3 Body Problem.