1899 explores the electrifying voyage of migrants on a steamship, Kerberos, that takes a detour mysteriously to rescue Prometheus, a ship that went missing months ago, without knowing that a mind-boggling puzzle awaits them.
The ominous German thriller is created by Jantje Friese and Baran Bo Odar, also known for Netflix’s Dark. 1899 stars Emily Beecham, Aneurin Barnard, Andreas Pietschmann, Miguel Bernardeau, and Jose Pimentao, among others.
1899 Story Summary
On October 19, 1899, Maura Franklin (Emily Beecham), a doctor, and one of the passengers on the immigrant ship, Kerberos, embarks on a voyage to New York from London. She reopens a letter from her brother, Ciaran, in which there’s a newspaper article about the steamship, Prometheus, that went missing four months ago.
Flashbacks of being in a mental hospital haunt Maura and she struggles to remember her real identity. To ground herself, she repeats to herself the most ordinary details like her name and date.
The captain of the ship, Eyk Larsen (Andreas Pietschmann), gets a signal from the lost ship, Prometheus, and decides to take a detour from the original destination – New York – to find the ship. Maura confronts Eyk about the detour after which he explains his decision in the dining hall to the other travelers.
Though the passengers on Kerberos retaliate, Eyk, sure of his decision, orders the continuation of the detour and their ship slowly approaches Prometheus. Amid disagreements among crew members, the captain finally decides to send a boat for the survivors on the ship.
Ramiro, the priest, and Maura accompany the ship’s crew to Prometheus in the small boat. They find no one but a little boy (Fflyn Edwards) locked in a cabinet who appears nonchalant by the tragedy and gives Maura a pyramid-shaped object.
After Maura and others come back to their ship, they lose the signal from Prometheus, and unanswered questions haunt them. What happened to more than 1000 passengers on board? What is the mysterious triangle pyramid-shaped object the boy gave Maura? Why is the little boy the only survivor of Prometheus?
Maura attempts to find the answers from the little boy, but he doesn’t utter a single word. Eyk shares that he has been experiencing vivid hallucinations ever since they came back from the ship, with Maura. He sees his dead wife and his children, whom he lost in a tragic fire accident.
The ship is stationed, but when the staff seeks help from the shipping company, they receive instructions asking them to sink Prometheus. A mysterious upside-down triangle sign crops up repeatedly signifying its importance. Maura discovers the same sign on the little boy’s neck, on the ship’s deck, and in a letter that she received from her brother who had been missing for four months.
Eyk announces to the passengers his decision to tow Prometheus with their ship back to London and the passengers express their anger, but he doesn’t budge from his decision. He reveals to Maura that he received a letter with a picture of his family, just like the one Maura had received earlier, with the missing Prometheus newspaper. On the Prometheus, he found a ribbon that belonged to his daughter. Hence, he wants to find out the mystery behind Prometheus and understand its connection with his family.
Ada, Krester’s sister, is found dead on the ship’s deck after she follows a shiny green bug left by a mysterious passenger on the trip, Daniel (Aneurin Barnard). Out of nowhere, fog engulfs the ship, giving the ship’s crew no choice but to wait for it to clear up.
When Eyk finds a hidden trap door in his cabin, he believes that the shipping company is trying to hide something. He returns to Prometheus with Maura to get hold of the log book, maintained by the captain of Prometheus, for clues.
Eyk finds out that the upside-down triangle symbol belongs to a British shipping company whose owner is Henry Singleton and suspects that he had added secret shafts to Prometheus for a hidden agenda. The mystery of what happened to 1000 passengers continues to remain.
Meanwhile, disturbed passengers of Kerberos start questioning the crew because of the news of the missing child, the voyage detour, and also the decision to go back to London. They finally find out from the Kerberos’ crew that Ada died and a mutiny is developing among the passengers.
Ling Yi (Isabella Wei), a Japanese koto artist, another passenger, who battles her traumatic past, experiences hallucinations. She meets Olek, a crew member, who helps her hide, but she accepts suffering because she killed her sister by accident. Eyk, Ling Yi, Jerome, and Maura go through similar experiences of the hauntings from a terrible past.
Daniel operates a mysterious device, he has in his possession, that makes Prometheus vanish. The Kerberos’ crew notices the ship’s disappearance and also finds out that the compass is working again, but cryptically shows the same position that it did 3 days back when they started their journey. They take control of Kerberos’ course and try to set sail to America.
Meanwhile, the mutiny takes a dangerous turn when passengers get weapons and try to find the little boy because they believe he has brought the curse of Prometheus to Kerberos. Eyk grows suspicious of Maura as he finds her name in the passengers’ list of Prometheus and demands to know the truth.
Maura tries to reason with the passengers to rescue the little boy, but they refuse. A passenger grabs hold of the little boy and throw him off the ship into the sea, breaking Maura’s heart.
When Eyk confronts Maura in the dining room about her name on the passengers’ list of Prometheus, the little boy miraculously comes out of the cabinet in the dining room and hugs Maura to her relief but to shock everyone.
Baffled by the little boy not dying even after falling into the sea, Eyk immediately locks him away in the same cabinet and confronts Maura again. The boy suddenly appears and takes her away from the dining hall magically through a time warp. Suddenly, a strange clock-like sound makes half the passengers get into a possessed state and jump off the ship leaving just eight survivors on Kerberos.
When Maura demands an answer from the boy about the mind-numbing experiences, he whispers in her ear that he can’t answer; she’ll have to ask the “creator”. The boy then goes down the hidden shaft, taking the pyramid along and Maura follows him which takes them into a different reality.
Daniel keeps track of Maura and the little boy and hence, follows them into the alternate dimension. He finds the boy and tells him to stay there while he figures a way out. They both believe that this time they’ll figure out a way out of the mess caused by the creator. The conversation between Daniel and the boy clearly indicates that they share a deep bond and know something that the other passengers don’t.
1899 Ending Explained
Maura assumes that her father, Henry Singleton, might have a connection with the mysterious happenings at the two ships because he owns the ship companies. She explains to Eyk that Henry Singleton was into the study of human behavior, and she suspects he did something on the ships which helps him study the passengers on board with his experiments.
Trying to connect the dots, Maura suspects Ciaran might have found out about their father’s actions and therefore he went missing exactly four months ago just about the same time Prometheus did. She further explains to Eyk that she thinks she was part of Prometheus and found out the truth, but her father somehow made her forget. Eyk also reveals another mind-boggling information that he also found on the passengers’ list – his name was signed as the captain of Prometheus.
Who Is Daniel? Why Doesn’t Maura Remember Her Past?
When Kerberos’ crew sends out a call for help, they get a “sink ship” message from the company again. Daniel urges Maura to remember what happened before and tells her that they were married 12 years ago and asks her to “wake up”. Eyk tries to kill Daniel as he believes he might be working for Henry Singleton. So Daniel has no choice but to use the device to get rid of him and to Eyk’s disbelief, he finds himself trapped on Prometheus alone. Maura locks Daniel inside a room as she finds it hard to trust him and through a hidden shaft gets back on Kerberos.
Kerberos’ fate turns out to be the same as Prometheus and the survivors of Kerberos find themselves stuck in the midst of a storm, searching for Eyk. Henry Singleton watches everyone through what appear to be multiple television screens. From what happens, it all looks like a nightmare the passengers keep trying to wake up from.
Passing through a time warp, Maura finds her way into what appears to be her past home in which she finds photographs of her, Daniel, and the little boy proving that she was married to him and the little boy was their son. Daniel finds his way to where Maura is and tells her that their son’s name is Elliot. He reveals to her that false memories were implanted in her and a code seems to be the answer to the puzzle and he promises that he’ll find it. He also explains that they had tried to get out of the simulation 12 times before and this time seems to be a chance to have a breakthrough.
Who Was The ‘Creator‘?
On the other hand, finding Elliot alone, Henry gets hold of Elliot with the help of Sebastian (Tino Mewes). Sebastian travels through the portal to reach the dimension Elliot is in and takes him to Henry’s office. Henry gets hold of the pyramid from Elliot, opening it to reveal a compartment that needs a key to unlock it. Maura has the key with her that was given to her by her brother in the letter. This would make the simulation end and get them out of the horrible experiences they have been through.
Henry reveals an eye-opening truth to Elliot – Maura injected him with a serum that would make him forever live in the simulation as a way to keep him close to her. Heartbroken Elliot chooses to accept the truth and help Henry.
When Maura confronts Henry, he reveals shocking information that he wasn’t the creator, Maura was. She was the one who created the simulation which keeps them all stuck including him. She did this to escape the grief of her losing her sick son and the only way to keep Elliot alive was by avoiding the reality of his impending death. But it only made it worse because the brain has a way of remembering through other senses.
Everything Maura and the others were experiencing was a simulation based on Plato’s cave allegory, a concept that fascinated her. The simulation was a program she created that replicated the functioning of the human brain, everything was divided into compartments and connected to everything through neural pathways. The hidden shafts represented neural pathways that could be accessed when the passengers shifted their perspective.
In the process of creating the simulations, Maura forgot what was real and for that, she has to wake up. She had created the seaside simulation which was the 50th one and hence, none of it was real, neither the ship nor the voyage, and not even their experiences. All they had to do was find the code that gets them out of the simulation and end the mind-numbing experience.
Meanwhile, Daniel corrupts the simulation system and reprograms the objects, replacing the key with their wedding ring and the pyramid in Henry’s possession with a pyramid in the bunker. When the system finally shuts down, the ship and voyage simulation disappear and Daniel and Maura find themselves in the very first simulation that they had created in Elliot’s bunker. Daniel explains to Maura that this is just the beginning, there’s a lot they have to solve.
After Maura uses their wedding ring as the key, she wakes up to her shocking new reality. She wakes up in a spaceship and when she looks around, the survivors of the ship are connected with wires causing simulation. A message from Ciaran on the computer monitor makes it clear that he had taken control of the program. Another startling piece of information reveals itself when she reads on the monitor that the simulation project’s name is Prometheus and the date is October 19, 2099, and not October 19, 1899.
1899 is now streaming on Netflix.
Read More: The Wonder Ending Explained: How Did Anna Survive Without Food?