Bodies, a limited series that started in 2023, gets off to a good start and keeps going strong for 6 episodes. But, like many time travel films and shows, it stumbles in the third act and ends badly, leaving a lot of questions unanswered. Having said that, the editing and set design are great. The main parts of the story, including dates, characters, and plot holes, will all be talked about in this piece. Here is the story and closing of the 2023 show Bodies, with details and angry comments.
Netflix Bodies: Time Travel Mechanisms Not Clear
Time-traveling bodies
Time travel was at the heart of the show, but the physics of it were the worst and least well explained part. This is why.
The Throat is a machine that was made during a secret study around the year 2050. This gadget moves a person through time, into the past and into the future.
This is fine, but it’s not consistent.
It looks like Elias Mannix chose a time and landed right on 1889. Defoe goes through right after and is cloned five times. He is sent to 1890, 1941, 2023, and two dates in 2053. In the show, there is even a picture that shows what to expect when someone goes into the Throat. But this is not how Elias, Iris, or Sahara are cloned. Like, we know Elias didn’t come in any other years besides 1889, because if he had, he would have used that to his advantage.
What about Elias and Iris? If someone is taken to both the past and the future, will they also end up in 2217? Was Sahara also going to land in 2083? In 2083, 2165, and 2217, would there have been dead people that showed up?
Bodies: The Mannix Timeline and Plot Summary
Body Parts: 1889, Mannix Timeline
Timeline for Nextflix Bodies 1890 Hillinghead Mannix
What does Julian Harker do?
A strange man from the future named Elias Mannix shows up on Longharvest Lane. He is taken to the hospital and says his name is Julian Harker and that he is dead. The real Julian’s mother is sad, but she decides to accept this stranger as her son. Julian grows the Harker business by giving people tips on the stock market. He has a group of loyal and powerful followers because he’s from the future and can never be wrong.
What does Alfred Hillinghead do? What will happen to him?
In the year 1890, Detective Alfred finds a strange naked body in Longharvest Lane. Alfred likes guys in secret and falls in love with Ashe, a reporter. The two look into the killings. A guy in Ashe’s pictures and the mark of a walking stick lead them to Julian Harker.
Julian lies to Alfred, gives him drugs, and then takes pictures of him with the body to make it look like they are dating. Alfred is threatened and told to frame Ashe after he uses a fingerprint from his glasses to lock up Julian. Alfred says he killed someone to protect Ashe.
After making his mark in the nook on Longharvest Lane, Alfred tells his wife that he cheated on her with Ashe. He is then charged with murder. The examiner kills Alfred on his move because Julian tells him to.
The Flaw: Alfred’s carving of Hillinghead in the nook is very important to the show. He has no reason to go carve his name because he doesn’t know how to jump in time; it’s 1890.
What does Polly do?
Polly doesn’t know that Julian killed her father, but he falls in love with her and marries her. She has a son in the end, and they name him Hayden Harker. When she asks him about his past, Julian tells her he is from the future and joins his group.
The mistake is that Polly doesn’t ask Julian why he has the body her father was looking into or if he has anything to do with her father’s death.
Keeping the secret safe
Julian buys a bank and finds a vault that his descendant will use to store a crude atomic bomb when it is made many years from now.
Body Parts: 1941, Mannix Timeline
Netflix’s “Bodies” from 1941 and the life of Charles Whiteman Mannix
Who is Charles Whiteman, whose Hebrew name is Weissman?
A mystery voice calls Charles every once in a while and tells him to do dirty work for them. Polly is calling. She has been doing what Julian told her to do.
Polly gives one of these tasks to move a strange, naked body found in Longharvest Lane in 1941. This is the same body that was found in 1890. Another police officer who doesn’t trust Charles follows him and tries to stop him, but is killed in a blast before he can find the body in the trunk.
That girl is Esther. Who is she?
A poor girl named Esther sees Charles on Longharvest Lane. She then goes to the police station and threatens to hurt Charles if he doesn’t pay her. When Polly finds out, she tells Charles to fire Esther. Because he can’t, Charles hides Esther at his house. When an aeroplane bomb goes off, Charles and Esther hide underground. Polly comes up to Esther as a nice old lady and poisons her while another police officer attacks Charles.
Calloway, Charlie’s boss, finds out everything. By listening in on Charlie’s assistant’s calls, they find Polly and take her hostage as Charlie is about to kill her. He shows up with Hayden, the police chief. Calloway is killed by Hayden, and Charlie is arrested. Charlie stabs Hayden in the neck and gets away, though. After that, Charlie kills Polly and Julian. He will be put to death for this.
What are the tapes Julian was making?
Julian comes from after the fact. He already knows that his recordings were listened to by people who didn’t like him, which is what set off the bomb. He makes a lot of records for his children and grandchildren that tell them what they need to do.
One person sets off the atomic bomb.
Polly and Julian died in 1941, so we have to believe Hayden found a way to sneak an atomic bomb into the country and hide it in the bank vault many years later.
The Flaw: Imagine if the Defence Department had to explain how they “lost” an atomic bomb after dropping it on Japan? That would be a war crime.
Timeline for Bodies: 2023, Mannix
Timeline for Nextflix Bodies 2023 Sahara Mannix
What does Jack Barber do?
Jack Barber is a top officer in the group. He is the grandson of Hayden Harker and is an officer. He dates Sarah Mannix for a short time, and she has a baby boy named Elias. She turns to drugs and puts Elias up for foster care because she can’t handle being left by Jack.
What kind of person is Elias Mannix?
Elias grows up in foster care and has dreams that he kills a child. In the end, Andrew and Elaine Morley, who are chosen by the Harkers, take him in. In 2023, Elias has to set off a bomb that will set off a chain of events that will lead back to the bomb. Why does Elias need to do this? Well, Elias the Elder does.
What is Syed?
Elias and Syed both grew up in foster care. Elias agrees to give Syed a gun and send him down Longharvest Lane after the Morleys talk him into it. When Detective Sahara sees Syed’s gun, she follows him and finds a strange body in Longarvest Lane. In the end, she meets Syed through his sister. In a mall, Syed meets Sahara and then kills himself.
The flaw is that it’s not clear why Syed did what he did since the first show was all about him. What did they tell Syed? What made him agree? And most importantly, why did he blow his brains out if he hadn’t done anything wrong? It looks like Syed’s character and death were only there to make Sahara want to guard Elias more.
What does Sahara Hassan do?
Sahara finds Elias after Syed’s death from a security video that shows him giving Syed a gun. The Morley family is brought in by Sahara to be questioned. Elaine lies to them about where Elias’ caravan is by giving them a false address. The caravan is set up to blow, killing a police officer.
Elias calls Sahara at her house, and she puts him in jail. Saraha listens to Elias, who has been told that Sahara will make him do something bad because she doesn’t want to fail another child. She looks into Hillinghead’s case after finding his name carved in the nook and learns that the bodies found in 1890, 1941, and 2023 are the same and have the same prints. She also finds that Julian’s drawings from 1890 are the same as Elias’.
Sara finds out from Sarah that Elias’ father is Jack Barber. Jack gets Elias out of jail and then leaves. She goes to Jack’s house to get a record player and a vault key. Listen to this recording that Julian made in 1941. It tells you how to find the vault. The bomb is found by Sahara. She gets a call from Jack telling her to go to the boat where he has Elias.
Julian recorded a message for himself in 1941, which Elias plays on the boat. In it, Julian says that he has found a loving family. There is a fight, and Jack gets shot. Sahara gets Elias to hand over the gun, even though he has heard the recording and seen his dad die.
The Flaw: Elias never learns enough about what’s going on to be sure that the voice he hears is that of his future self moving back in time.
Elias gets very angry when Sarah says she doesn’t want to meet her kid. He reads the note Jack gave him. It’s a phone number. Elias knows that calling it will set off the bomb, so he borrows a kid’s phone and does it.
Timeline of Bodies: 2053 Mannix
Iris Mannix’s life story in Nextflix Bodies 2053
The bomb kills the ruling party and throws it out of power. It’s not clear how Elias gets old enough to become Commander Mannix, the new boss. There is no way to know how Elias made this jump. The fight is in the Sahara.
Body: Who is Gabriel Dafoe? Who is the dead person?
Gabriel is a doctor, but he is really a part of the resistance. Because of his work, they have made a time machine called the Throat that they can’t turn off or destroy. Gabriel is the dead person who shows up in different times.
Iris Maplewood is her name.
Because Mannix gave her tools to help her walk, Iris is a detective with a disability who works for them. Her brother hates Mannix and puts his freedom ahead of Mannix’s ability to walk. I think the 2023 blast killed both of them.
In the year 2053, Iris finds a strange body lying naked on Longharvest Lane. She is able to get him medical help and figure out that his name is Gabriel. She agrees to help Mannix with the probe. She is shocked to find another Gabriel still living when she goes to his university and arrests him.
Gabriel sees his future self die and goes home with Iris. Later, Gabriel and Iris’ friend take her hostage and take her to Sahara, who tries to explain the time machine and how Mannix set off the bomb in 2023.
The Flaw: It’s clear that Iris is using Mannix’s technology. There is nothing Sahara and the team can do to hide her.
Not the resistance, but everyone else thinks that Mannix will find Iris and make Gabriel send him back to 1889. He goes back in time as the mystery time traveller and changes the past. Gabe goes after Mannix, but Iris shoots him in the eye before he can get away. He has been thrown to 1890, 1941, 2023, and two dates in 2053, one 4 days before and one 4 days after.
Why does the body not have a shooting hole?
The throat can only move living things through time. Gabriel is sent away before the bullet can leave his head, but the shell stays behind.
Bodies: The Story: The Interim Timeline
Netflix Bodies Changes Timeline
Bodies: Interim Timeline for 1890
Iris gives Sahara to her brother in secret. Iris finds out that Gabriel will be there in a few days and gets some medical supplies ready for the head. They save Gabriel when he gets there days later. To make a new timeline, Iris goes back to 1890. She writes her name on the wall.
She meets Alfred in jail and tells him about how he was killed and how Julian married Polly. Alfred tells Julian he will die alone while he is being moved. He calls Julian by the name Elias. Alfred has been killed, but Julian isn’t sure what to do next.
After getting married to Polly, he changes a lot and thinks about the future all the time. So Polly goes to look around and finds Gabriel dead in the basement. She then confronts Julian and he tells her that he killed her father. Polly hates Julian so much that she and Julian can’t love each other.
Bodies: Interim Timeline for 1941
Julian feels bad about what he did and makes a new tape for Elias, telling him that the first one he sent was a lie. Just before he kills Charlie, he gives him this recording. Charlie is strangely sure that he can move through time and runs with the recording. He hides in the nook and scratches his name and a sign about where he’ll hide the record because he is being chased.
He hides the record behind a picture at the bar and marks it with the sign. Charlie is then killed by Hayden.
Bodies: Interim Timeline for 2023
She goes to the nook in 2053 to look for Charlie’s clue. Then she goes back to 2023 and finds the record at the pub. She goes to Sarah’s house and meets her younger self there with Elias. When she plays Elias this second recording from Julian, he decides not to set off the bomb. Julian tells Elias that the visions of him killing a child were really visions of him killing himself. Sarah walks out to give Elias a hug, and he’s gone.
Where did Elias and Old Sahara go?
For some reason, Elias did not set off the bomb, so he does not change into Commander Mannix or Julian Harker. Elias and the Harker family tree are no longer there. Also, there’s no bomb. Because we have a different future, Old Sahara also goes away.
The Flaw: Sarah looks around; people around her are disappearing, making her feel lost. If Elias never existed, Sarah would not have been a drug user living alone in that house. To be fair, she should have also vanished in a puff of smoke.
Bodies: Plot Outline: When the Story Ends
Bodies: The Ending Timeline for 1890
Eliana and her family are not in this new reality. In none of the times, there are any strange bodies. Alfred doesn’t get involved in any strange cases and isn’t killed. Ashe is not the first person he dates romantically.
Bodies: When the story ends in 1941
Charlie doesn’t work for the Harkers. It doesn’t mean he’s not a bad cop, but he doesn’t drown in a murder case either.
Bodies: When the show ends in 2023
Sahara doesn’t look into a strange body, and nothing happens during the parade. On the way to her dad’s birthday party, though, Iris stops her. In 2023, a pan shot shows that KYAL (Know You Are Loved) is now real.
How Does Bodies End (Not) Explain It? What Does Iris Maplewood Do in 2023?
How the End of Netflix’s Bodies Works
In the end of Bodies, it is shown that the new reality changed something that made Iris move to 2023 instead of 1890. Either that, or she was cloned and sent to more than once, like Gabriel, and she did something that led to KYAL being made. The ending is so vague that people were disappointed.
The ending of this time travel story is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. At first, the show has a perfect causal loop, with a bombing event that causes Elias to get old and go back in time to make sure the bombing happens. Then, this one stable timeline is changed, making some events impossible to happen and people disappearing in certain places, forming a different timeline. Bodies has a forced open ending where we see Iris from 2053 in 2023 with the same look as in the Mannix Timeline. This makes things even worse. Iris could not be in 2023 if everything was erased. As long as Elias and Julian are not there, there is no KYAL. However, we can see a house. There is no way to explain that messy finish in any way. It looked like they didn’t know how to end it, so they threw in something strange to scare people.
What did you think of the 2023 Netflix show Bodies’ story and ending? Leave your thoughts below.
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