3 Body Problem creators want episode 2’s reveal to sell you on the Netflix show
The creators of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem know there’s a lot riding on their adaptation. There’s the fact that the books it’s adapted from are a beloved sci-fi series popular around the world. It’s science fiction that gets not only heady but wondrous, often thought to be unadaptable. There’s also the fact that two-thirds of the showrunning team is coming to this from Game of Thrones, another big-budget TV epic, and one that left something of a bad taste in people’s mouths.
Which is all to say: Many people will be primed for skepticism when it comes to watching 3 Body Problem on Netflix. But when watching, the showrunners (Alexander Woo, David Benioff, and D.B. Weiss) would like you to keep one thing in mind: Watch through episode 2 before you make up your mind. That’s the moment the whole season — and, indeed, the whole crux of the show — hinges around.
They thought it was a beat they could get to a little faster. The group talked about making it a two-hour pilot, before ultimately deciding that wasn’t the way to go. “As we broke down what had to actually happen, there’s too much event; there’s no way to do it in an hour,” Benioff told Polygon.
Without giving anything away, the end of the second episode is one of the key moments for the whole series, and one the book does slow play a bit.But it’s a moment that’s crucial to understanding how the Three-Body Problem series (and the 3 Body Problem series) thinks about the conflict at the center of it.
[Ed. note: The rest of this post contains spoilers for the first two episodes of 3 Body Problem, and does so by going into details of the book.]
If you’re familiar with the book (or just curious what the show is building toward in its first two episodes), the final scene of Ye during the Cultural Revolution won’t surprise you. It’s when she receives the alien correspondence and, alone, decides to invite them to Earth. She drafts a message and (as the book puts it) “without hesitation” presses the button to send.
“It’s
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