The Season 1 Finale of Reverie aired August 8th, on NBC.
Kudos to the cast and crew for a fantastic first season and an incredible season finale! Episode 10 of Reverie was all about letting go and moving on.
So You Can Remember What They Look Like
Using Reverie to get into Ray’s head, Mara confronts her brother in law about the shooting. She takes him to the house where it all happened, and she wants to know one thing—why??? Ray tells her how he had gotten fired, and Jamie found out, and she was leaving him. He felt like he had no control, but the gun gave him control, the gun made her stop and pay attention. When he heard the sirens he had one thought, that they’d all be better off dead. Mara tells Ray he had no right to decide that for them.
Mara asks if he remembers what happened after he killed them, and then she tells Ray that she made him pull the trigger on himself. But Ray says no, she didn’t make him do anything, she just gave him permission. He wanted to die, and he still does, and he keeps dreaming about Jamie and Brynn, only he can’t remember what they look like.
Later, Mara goes back and gives Ray a photograph, the one with him and Jamie and Brynn (and the bunny) in happier times, so he can “remember what they look like.” At that moment Ray’s body back in the hospital passes on.
I don’t honestly know how I feel about all this. With the violence that happens in the real world, it’s hard to feel any kind of sympathy for Ray. Paul sort of addresses this later, he asks Mara why she helped Ray, and says of all the people he deserved it the least. Mara’s answer is that she likes what she does, and she wants to keep helping people, and she felt that if she could do it for Ray, she could do it for anybody. Maybe that’s what the program was trying to do for her all along. Oh, and there was a tender moment there between Mara and Paul when I thought they were gonna kiss, but Charlie interrupted. How rude.
An Ending and a Beginning
Our girl Alexis has been struggling with the death or her twin brother, Dylan, but up until now we didn’t know exactly what happened. Well, now we do.
It’s Alexis’ birthday, and she goes to visit her parents who have made her a special birthday cake. She looks at all the photos her parents have proudly displayed of her, and can’t help but notice that there’s only one of Dylan. She asks her parents why they never put his name on the birthday cake, and why they only have that one photo. Her parents are very upset and her mother admits that they didn’t want Alexis to feel any more guilt than she already did. They needed to move on, the only problem is that none of them ever did.
Alexis later takes the garbage out, and we have a brief flashback of Dylan, hollering for Alexis to let him in the garage, and then climbing up a trellis. Alexis pushes the memory out of her mind, and then, out of the shadows comes Oliver. He grabs Alexis and the next time we see her she is with Oliver, in a Reverie he has designed just for her, Einstein’s secret lab, the place of their first date. Alexis of course tries Exitus but it doesn’t work, Oliver has coded the program to his voice alone. Oliver tells her he’s going to keep her there until he helps her solve the problem (meaning Reverie) and then he exits the program, leaving Alexis alone.
Once the team realizes Alexis is missing, and that Oliver has taken her, they all get busy. Charlie (along with Monica’s help) tracks down the cabin where Alexis’ physical body is; Paul, who has now discovered that Oliver is trying to shut down the program, gets his staff busy; and our gal Mara goes into the Reverie to save Alexis.
In the program, Mara finds herself in these creepy empty hallways, with screaming, smoking Avatars, that turn out to be Oliver’s derealizations. Mara finds a piece of chalk and starts marking the doors off as she checks the rooms out. She eventually finds the room Alexis is in but can’t get in. After a lesson from Alexis on how to make the program do what they want, Mara uses a knob from a lamp as a key, and opens the door.
Alexis and Mara are looking for the mandala so they can get out, when they find more surprises from Oliver. Avatars of Alexis’ parents, angry with her for Dylan’s death. And then she sees all these people with cold, dead eyes, people in the Reverie, making her second guess whether or not the program is doing good like she wanted. After reassurance from Mara that Reverie is indeed a gift, they find the mandala. Time to go home.
Meanwhile, Oliver has made it into the building at Onira-Tech. Pretending to be an AC repair man, he gets into the data center with thermite he has mixed up, ready to burn the whole place down. Everyone is evacuated, but Mara wants to go in and talk him out of it. Charlie agrees, and goes in with her.
Mara does her job as a negotiator and tries to talk to Oliver. She tells him she doesn’t think he’s crazy, she thinks he’s brilliant, and most of all, she believes him. But it doesn’t work, Oliver lights the lighter, and Charlie shoots him. On the floor, Oliver lights the thermite and the place goes up in flames. Mara and Charlie make it out, and they bring a badly burned Oliver out with them, as well.
Once everything is over, Alexis talks to AI Dylan, and tells him all about what happened the night Dylan died. Dylan had been wanting to play with Alexis, but she was working on a project. So she went into the garage, locked him out, put in her headphones and turned the music up loud to drown him out. But Dylan climbed up the trellis of the greenhouse, trying to see what she was doing, and that’s when he fell. She found him later, and it was too late to save him, he was already dead. She built the AI so that she didn’t have to say goodbye, so she could still talk to him, and that was the beginning of Reverie. She tells Dylan it’s time now to let him grow up.
Reverie is Back
Alexis gives a speech and addresses everyone at Onira-Tech. She says how proud she is of them and of the program. She then introduces the brand new Dylan, whose voice has been upgraded to that of an adult, and with a countdown Reverie is relaunched. And I’m telling you, if you weren’t cheering in that moment, you need to go back and watch the episode again. It was a crazy, happy moment. But wait a minute … you didn’t think we were gonna get through the finale without a shocking twist at the end, did you?
So … while everybody is happy and celebrating, Paul is very worried. Mara asks him what’s wrong and he shows her a tablet, it says that she is inside Reverie right now. She laughs and says, “But I’m not” and then we cut to the Reverie … to the empty hallway where a rather deranged looking “Mara” is still crossing off doors, trying to find the way out. This is mind boggling, and I can’t even begin to imagine what it means.
So, what about you? Did you enjoy this first season? Where do you think the story could go from here, if we get a season 2? Do you think we’ll see Oliver again? Will there be a romance for Mara and Paul? And what is up with that “other” Mara? Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a season 2 so we can find out what happens next for Reverie! Till then: Exitus.
Before you go:
‘Making It’ Our Own Podcast #3: Discuss Episode 1, Interview with Contestant Nicole Sweeney
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