Below Isn't That Deep in the End

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Netflix's Below.]

In the fifth episode of Below, we get a great line reading from Charlie Heaton, whose performance in this series can only be described as "Gollum by way of Barry Keoghan": "It turns out the hag is no hag at all! Her name's Maggie!" The very concept of "the hag" actually being a regular woman named Maggie is one of the first signs that Below, Jesse McKeown's Netflix thriller about a remote Newfoundland fishing village that becomes the target of a violent sea creature, may not stick the landing. After the Maggie reveal, these signs start coming in rapid succession, as just about every weird thing that has happened over the course of the last four episodes is given a relatively logical explanation, in a hard eleventh hour pivot away from the show's presumably supernatural elements. The biggest twist is that the spooky island show has no desire to lean into the weirdness it built into its story.

From the beginning, something's not quite right in the world of Below. The ice that Josh Hartnett's hard-bitten fisherman, Calvin Penney, tries to sell to the local bars is bad. Boats are going missing. People in the community are falling sick with a mysterious virus that leaves them with an insatiable need to guzzle water. There's a massive iceberg in the harbor. It's only after Heaton's Wade, Calvin's directionless eldest son, is attacked by a mysterious creature that leaves him with a gnarly bite mark on his back and vivid hallucinations that people begin to seriously consider that there could be something deadly in the water.

Below wants you to believe that Wade's visions of a woman his brother Jay (Rohan Campbell) calls "the hag" are just dreams; the woman appears only to Wade, dripping in dirty water as she stares him down in sinister silence, and only when he's alone in bed at night. In Episode 4, Wade encounters her once more and goes missing shortly after. At the same time, Calvin joins a research ship on their mission to destroy the creature that almost killed his son, an expedition that leaves all but Calvin dead. He washes ashore on a small island that was believed to be abandoned and is taken in by its three residents: his old friend Walton Budgell (Shawn Doyle), Walton's father (Andy Jones), and Walton's daughter Maggie (Marthe Bernard), the non-hag herself.

No, there was never a hag, and though the Budgells sacrifice people to the creature (which they refer to as "Mudder," and may or may not worship), it's only because, for some unexplained reason, tons of fish float to the surface after the creature devours a human, providing the family with food. While it's suggested that the trio have formed a very small cult and are determined to keep the Penney men with them, that story is left open ended when Calvin and Wade escape the Budgells' grasp in the final moments of the fifth episode. Their brief stay isn't important to the finale, nor is it even really mentioned beyond the fact that Wade is wearing an engagement ring given to him by Maggie, which she — again, for a reason that is never explained — stole from his sister Mary's (Ruby Stokes) visiting boyfriend.

Around this time, Mackenzie Davis' locally based zoologist Fonda (you really have to just go with it on this show) deduces that the fearsome creature is simply a giant squid trying to protect her eggs, which she's keeping in the ice since the water is too warm for them to survive. The squid is not otherworldly in any way. It's just a big squid that got a little lost. This instantly creates empathy among the characters for big squid: At one point, Calvin speaks to her, saying with deep earnestness, "I dare say that we're more alike than I ever expected, you and me." The effects of coming into contact with the ice the squid has inadvertently poisoned aren't even permanent; in about 48 hours, everyone's cured, save for Fonda's poor assistant, who succumbs to his water madness and willingly drowns himself in effort to quench his thirst. (Respectfully, that character is not important enough to shed any tears over.) And it's around this point that Below attempts to switch its tone by becoming a show about climate change. The water has gotten too warm, and an evil corporation wants to use the appearance of the squid as an excuse to forcibly push out the island's residents, blow up the harbor, and strip the entire island, which — surprise — happens to be sitting on some kind of unspecified major fortune, for parts.

ALSO READ: The complete guide to fall TV

So much happens in this finale that the show's preceding five episodes did not adequately prepare the audience for. It turns out spending a season of television setting up what appears to be a supernatural monster, only to discover in the finale that the monster isn't even really a monster at all, creates a fair amount of tonal whiplash. In all fairness, the show fully leans into that whiplash as Calvin and his family devise a plan to move the ice block that contains the squid eggs, thus removing the need for the corporation to bomb the harbor. (Below is set in a universe where corporations need reasons to do bad things.) In its final 20 minutes, Below devolves into an upbeat teamwork montage as the characters band together to relocate the ice. The mission is successful, the corporation is thwarted, and the day is saved. Sure, the final moments of the episode appear to set up future episodes as Calvin stumbles upon more massive blocks of ice, but we can worry about that when Season 2 is announced. (Below has been marketed as a limited series.)

Where to begin with all of this? In its defense, Below never explicitly promoted itself as a supernatural series; I imagine this spooky island show wants to separate itself from the year's other incredibly popular spooky island show as much as possible. But why spend the season leaning into so many supernatural elements if it was all misdirection? Why the pulsating teeth marks, and the terrifying virus, and the supposed hag? These red herrings don't do the show any favors in its final episodes. There is no way to make the muted explanations feel satisfying. Worse, the show even takes on a saccharine tone as the characters react to the squid revelations. (Says Fonda to the CEO of the corporation that intends to bomb: "She deserves to be studied, not bombed from the sky!") It's not that Below couldn't have succeeded as a show about a vicious-but-ultimately-normal sea creature gone rogue, but it wasn't interested in going in that direction either, as evidenced by the way Calvin and the squid make meaningful eye contact before going their separate ways. He has to connect with the creature before sending her off. Below won't commit to being Widow's Bay, but it also won't commit to being Jaws.

Below is now streaming on Netflix.