Apple TV’s Constellation season 1 left us with more quantum entanglements than answers

polygon.com:

Constellation mixes the horrors of space with quantum entanglements on Earth, which is all to say: It gets complicated. After surviving an International Space Station disaster, astronaut Jo Ericsson’s (Noomi Rapace) struggles to comprehend the “hallucinations” bleeding into the faux-normalcy of her domestic world. Which is also to say: It’s a wormhole of complications.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Constellation.]

As we see in Constellation’s first season, both Jo and her daughter Alice undergo the existential realization that our Jo (the surviving one we spend the majority of time with) swapped realities with Other Jo, Alice’s real mother who was killed aboard the ISS. Like a ghost of this world, Jo is in a state of emotional liminality, feeling disassociated from her new reality and this Alice. Meanwhile, Alice begins to understand that her mother is “there and not there,” both literally and mentally, in child terms. The irony is, the closer that Jo and Alice(s) perceive the liminal boundary between their worlds, the more they are able to move on and survive in their respective worlds.

Having no clear pathway back home (thanks, Bud), Jo bittersweetly resigns to building a life with an unfamiliar Alice and Magnus (James D’Arcy). The bitter part is that she and this Alice understand they must play along with the pretense for some peace, or else incur additional wrath of the meddling space program. The sweet part, at least, is that Jo and this unfamiliar Alice realize they can adopt their own mummy-and-daughter bond, despite being from different places, while Jo’s own Alice takes comfort in her mama being alive somewhere else. Presumably, this new dynamic opens the opportunity for the main Jo and Alice to engage with and love — rather than be confused by — the personality deviations of their loved ones’ alter egos. For Jo to accept a life of “there and not there” is better than “not there” at all.

Still, Jo’s acceptance doesn’t erase the loose threads of her