Raised by Wolves Explained
Raised
byWolves
is a new sci fi show about robots and religion on an alien world, life and death and parenting, ghosts and snakes and necromancers, virtual reality, prophecy, secret identities, ancient alien megaliths with strange fiery holes, and sex with God in milk – “Milk!”. It’s got.. this fella, and this bloke with the hat, and there’s whatever.. this is.. and then.. the snake happens?? There’s a lotta crazy stuff going on. So what happens inRaised
byWolves
, and what does it mean? In the future, the world is dominated by a religious group called the Mithraic – they’re loosely inspired by real religion called Mithraism, that was popular in ancient Rome, alongside early Christianity. In the real world, Christianity became popular, but Mithraism faded away – but inRaised
byWolves
, the Mithraic take over and Christianity falls – in one episode we see this painting that looks like Christ on thecross cast down, with the Mithraic sun rising above. Cause the
Mithraic worship a sun god called Sol, and they preach about light and purity. Their practices
are similar to Christianity, with communion and baptism and atonement for sin. But years ago, the
Mithraic discovered that in their holy scriptures, there were “formulas” and “blueprints”
encrypted into the text – that allowed them to build advanced technology – like “quantum
gravity”
spaceships, “dark photon energy”, and necromancers. Necromancers are powerful robots
used as weapons of mass destruction. They can fly, and change their appearance, and use frost and
heat breath, and their scream and their gaze can explode people .
Ridley Scott, who’s a producer on the show, says their design was based on a statue of Atlas in
New York. The necromancers represent a terrifying destructive power that seems both technological
and “godlike”.
The Mithraic and their necromancers waged a “Holy War” to “take over the world”,
and wipe out all other religions. The resistance against the Mithraic were called the atheists.
They didn’t have advanced technology like necromancers, so the atheists used child soldiers,
even child bombers in the war. According to the official comic, the atheists “blanketed the Earth”
with bombs. But the bombs failed to stop the necromancers, and left the Earth
“uninhabitable”
– . Others blame the Mithraic for ruining the Earth, so
it’s unclear whose fault it was. But either way, the Mithraic and atheists both seem pretty
awful, and their war wrecked the Earth. There wasn’t enough oxygen, animals went extinct, it
seemed that everything on the planet would die. So the Mithraic built an ark to take a
thousand refugees to a new world – a planet called Kepler-22b, which is a real exoplanet in
a distant star
system. But the atheists didn’t have an ark, so they were screwed.
Episode 2 follows Caleb and Mary, two atheist soldiers living off rats in the ruins
of Boston. They find two Mithraic officers called Marcus and Sue, who have passes to board the Ark.
So Caleb and Mary kill Marcus and Sue, and get plastic surgery to look them, and steal their
identities, and get on the Ark to escape Earth. Thing is, Marcus and Sue had a son called Paul.
So Caleb and Mary not only
join their enemies, and pretend to be Mithraic believers, they also
have to play mother and father to a child whose real parents they murdered. The Ark takes thirteen
years to fly to Kepler-22b. So the Mithraic’s bodies are put into hibernation while their
minds are plugged in to a digital simulation, so they can hang out and pray and play duck duck
goose for 13 years. And in that time, Caleb and Mary come to genuinely love Paul as a son. Mary
is unable to have
kids, so despite her atheism, getting Paul is like a miracle for her. Within
their fake Mithraic identities, Caleb and Mary become a real family with Paul. But when the Ark
arrives above the “Promised Land” of Kepler-22b, it turns out that someone else got there first.
Back on Earth, there was this mysterious atheist guy called Campion Sturges, and he had
a plan for a new “hope” for humanity. He captured a necromancer, and reprogrammed her to
be a mother. He
put Mother and an android called Father and a bunch of “frozen human embryos”
in a small fast ship and sent it to Kepler-22b. He programmed the androids to raise the humans in
a peaceful atheistic society, hoping to avoid the problems that caused war on Earth.
So in Episode 1, Mother and Father arrive on Kepler. It’s a harsh primordial
landscape, but there’s breathable air, and Earth-like plants. Mother
and Father wear goofy grey outfits that make them
look “naked, like Adam and Eve” in the
Bible, when they start life in a new world. Cause Mother was modified to grow their frozen
human embryos into babies – so the death-bringing necromancer becomes a life-giving mother. She
uses these six feeding tubes on her chest, that look like the nipples of an animal. Cause the
show’s title,
Raised
byWolves
, is a reference to the legend of Romulus and Remus – children who wereraised
by a she-wolf. Mother iscompared to a wolf – and she’s a non-human raising kids,
just like the she-wolf. According to the legend, Romulus founded the city of Rome, just as Mother’s
children are to start a new human civilisation. So Mother and Father raise six human children on
this alien world. They build a little settlement, farm for food, and form a strange little family.
As androids, Mother and Father aren’t meant to have real emotions, but they develop quirky
personalities, and
come to love their children. But the planet has dangers and mysteries. They
find the bones of some giant serpents. And the surface is dotted with huge deep pits –
a child called Tally falls in and dies. Four more children die of a sickness,
until only the youngest remains – a boy called Campion. So the colony seems doomed.
That’s when the Ark arrives, with a thousand Mithraic on board. Father thinks Campion should
join them, but Mother sees the Mithraic as a
threat. She’s committed to an atheistic colony,
and seems to be malfunctioning, overwhelmed with grief for her kids. So Mother temporarily kills
Father. And when the Mithraic try to take Campion, Mother goes on a rampage, and destroys the Ark
– she kills a thousand humans, probably the majority of all humans left. She only saves five
Mithraic children to join Campion in their colony. At first, these kids hate and fear Mother – they
try to escape, and Campion tries
to steal her eyes, which she needs to use her deadly powers.
But Mother and Father persist in protecting and caring for the kids, and eventually most of them
come to love Mother and Father. The eldest girl, Tempest, quickly rejects her Mithraic faith.
Cause while she was in hibernation on the Ark, a Mithraic priest raped and impregnated her. Mother
supports Tempest as she struggles with the trauma and anger and the baby inside her. But Hunter
stays loyal to the
Mithraic. He comes from an upper-class Mithraic family, and is often kind of
a pompous douche. Holly is close with the youngest child, Vita. And the fifth Mithraic kid is Paul,
the adoptive son of Caleb and Mary – Paul is quiet and clever, and makes friends with Campion.
So this strange family struggles to survive on Kepler-22b. They’re attacked by mysterious
humanoid creatures. And they find out that the food they’ve been growing makes kids sick. So they
start
eating the creatures instead – solving both problems. Mother and Father have arguments
about how to raise the kids – Mother tends to be more strict, while Father’s more
permissive. As a necromancer, Mother is much more powerful than Father, and he sometimes
feels she doesn’t respect his efforts – and, y’know, she killed him that one time. So there’s
drama, and survival, and increasingly, weird shit happens. They start seeing the ghost of Tally,
the kid
who fell down a pit. And Paul’s pet mouse falls into a pit, but then miraculously comes
back. It’s like things don’t stay dead on this planet. And Mother makes a discovery in the woods.
The ghost of Tally leads Mother to a simulation pod from the crashed Ark. She uses it to access
memories of her creation by Sturges on Earth. She realises that Sturges loved her, and
becomes obsessed with him. Sturges seems to come alive within the simulation. So Mother
and this
virtual Sturges have crazy trippy VR sex in a waterfall of milk beneath the
stars. And inexplicably, miraculously, Mother gets pregnant. This robot get pregante from
divine cybersex, like a sci fi Virgin Mary, and this Sturges tells Mother that this new baby
is her true mission. That her human kids were just a practice run – this baby is the future for
humanity. So Mother questions everything about her creator, and her purpose. This pregnant
atheist android has a
crisis of faith. Meanwhile, a bunch of Mithraic
survived the destruction of their Ark, including Caleb and Mary. And the Mithraic discover a
mysterious stone in the desert, that fulfils a Mithraic prophecy. According to their scripture,
in the “holy land” there are five temples, with five-pointed pentagonal sides. And these temples
hold “the answers to the Mithraic Mysteries”, the deepest secrets of their faith. So
the Mithraic start to worship this
temple. But the secret atheists Caleb and Mary
don’t care – they just want to find Paul. So Caleb confronts the Mithraic leader, Ambrose.
And suddenly Caleb hears mysterious voices in his head, then the stone temple
miraculously burns Ambrose to death. Caleb declares this “Sol’s judgement”, and
becomes a prophet and a leader to the Mithraic. So, Mary still just pretends to be religious,
but Caleb gradually becomes a believer for real, and embraces his role
as a prophet. We get
flashbacks to Caleb’s past as a child soldier on Earth. He had always been powerless and
exploited. But as Marcus the prophet, everyone follows him, and the power is intoxicating.
Caleb leads the Mithraic to find their kids, and along the way they encounter a mysterious
masked man – apparently there are native people living on Kepler-22b. The Mithraic find Mother’s
settlement, and reunite with their kids – Paul and Hunter betray Mother and
Father so they get
captured. Caleb takes Mother’s eyes so she can’t weaponise, and he tries to kill Mother, but the
mysterious voice of Sol tells him to let her live. The voice promises that Marcus will be
“king of this world”. So Caleb was an atheist just days ago, but suddenly he’s a prophet
hearing god’s voice, but he doesn’t know what Sol wants from him. He gets aggressive and controlling
and self-destructive. He has crazy visions, and loses touch
with his identity – he has a
hallucinatory knife-fight with himself where Marcus kills his past identity as Caleb – it’s
like the fight at the end of Fight Club, but if Tyler Durden won. Marcus goes full crazy – so Mary
and the kids and Mother and Father all escape him. Marcus prays to Sol for guidance, begging to
know his destiny, but hears nothing – his god and his family and his sanity all abandon him.
The other Mithraic figure out that this Marcus
isn’t really Marcus, so they beat him up, and
force him to swallow Mother’s necromancer eyes. And uh – you are not meant to eat those. They’re
full of dark photon energy, it’s like swallowing some potent magic plutonium, it does things to
his body and mind. So in the finale, Marcus is broken and mad and has nothing but a deranged
belief in his own divinity . Meanwhile, Mother discovers that the fetus
inside her is hungry for blood. So she captures a Mithraic
guy called Otho, and drains his blood
to feed her baby . Otho was a high-ranking priest on the Mithraic Ark
– and he was the one who raped Tempest. Otho says he did it because Sol told him to. But now,
Sol has stopped speaking to him, no matter how much he prays – just like how Sol abandons Marcus
too. Otho attacks the group, so Tempest kills him, finally getting vengeance and closure.
Mother bonds with Mary – they’re both parents to children who aren’t
biologically
theirs – Mother is an android raising humans, and Mary is raising Paul, whose real parents she
killed. They prepare for Mother to give birth, and the kids get excited, thinking the baby is a
child of Sol. And Paul starts hearing Sol’s voice. His pet mouse who miraculously returned leads
Paul to some mysterious cave paintings that hint at human life on this planet. Then
the voice tells Paul the truth about his parents – that the woman he thinks is
his mum
actually murdered his real parents. So Paul shoots Mary. Mary survives, but suffers the guilt,
and rejection of the boy she loved as a son. Paul runs off into the night – it seems
that Sol has chosen a new instrument. Father finds out that Mother is pregnant, and he’s
angry that Mother lied to him, and kept secrets from him, and she cheated on him with virtual
milk God to get robot pregnant, and now she says maybe this baby is their new mission??
Father’s
so upset he considers wiping his own memories, but then, that mysterious masked man attacks
Mother, so she kills him, and it turns out he’s a ‘devolved human’. Meaning, there were once
human beings on Kepler-22b. But for some reason, they evolved into these animalistic creatures.
This masked man is part of a group who kept some of their humanity and memory. He has
these metal cards that give Mother a vision of like a cult and a box, but before she
figures
it out, Mother gives birth, and it’s not a human baby – it’s a serpent, a flying snake bursts from
her mouth, and it bites her to drain her blood. This horrific scene is inspired by the real-world
religion of Mithraism. Cause the central image in Mithraism is the tauroctony – the ritual sacrifice
of a bull. The sacrifice happens in a cave, just like this childbirth happens in a cave.
It often includes an image of the sun god, Sol. And there’s this
serpent, drinking blood
from the bull’s wound – just like this serpent drinks from Mother. There’s also dog on the wound,
and a scorpion on his nuts, so the analogy isn’t perfect, but there’s clearly inspiration here
from this ancient Mithraic image of sacrifice. Mother realises that she was bamboozled – that
virtual Sturges tricked her. He wasn’t really her creator, the human Sturges – this was some
illusion by some entity manipulating her into
birthing a serpent. Mother’s afraid that the snake
will hurt her family. So Mother and Father try to kill the snake by flying into a pit, sacrificing
themselves. But the pit opens up into this strange planetary core. They approach it like sperm to
an egg, and when they enter – they don’t die. They inexplicably pass through the core, and
come out the other side of the planet, intact. This region is lush with trees and plants, but in
this garden, the serpent grows
– again evoking the Garden of Eden in the Bible. So the season finale,
titled The Beginning, connects back to Genesis. So that is basically what happens in
Raised
byWolves
, but what is actually going on here – with the snakes and the god and the ancient humans? Showrunner Aaron Guzikowski has given some hints in interviews which allow us to piece it together. Clearly, there’s some godlike power or entity on Kepler-22b. It makes Marcus and Paul hear voices, itbrings back the ghost of Tally, and Paul’s mouse. The entity somehow knows Caleb and Mary’s
true identities, and tells Paul. The entity hacks into Mother’s memories, and uses this fake virtual
Sturges to impregnate Mother with a serpent baby. And it uses its influence on Marcus and
Paul to ensure the serpent is born – the voice tells Marcus not to kill Mother,
and tells Paul that the baby’s important. The Mithraic do what the voice says, because
they
interpret it as the voice of their god, Sol. And there clearly is some connection
between this planet and Mithraic religion. Their scripture predicted there would be
these temples with five-pointed sides, and “demons” beneath the earth. But Sol is not
exactly what the Mithraic think he is. The fake Sturges says that humans just destroy themselves,
but Mother’s baby is the “The future”. This god does not love humans – it loves snakes! It sounds
like the
entity once tried to help humans, but they sucked, so Sol joined team serpent instead.
Cause this all goes back thousands of years. These metal cards from the masked man seem to
reveal visions of the planet’s ancient past. This cult with this box seem to be performing a
ritual to birth a serpent. The showrunner says that this box is a “birthing prison”, with
a pregnant android inside. The helmet it’s wearing has this nozzle for the baby serpent to
come out.
Notice that the cage is a dodecahedron with pentagonal sides, just like the pentagonal
temple – so maybe the people who made this cage also made the temples, to worship the serpents
and the entity as a god. Maybe the purpose of the hole in the temple is for a serpent to come out.
These mysterious ancient humans are the ancestors of the ‘devolved’ people and creatures who
now live on the planet. The showrunner says “something caused these human beings to
hide
underground”, and adapt to the dark – sounds like the Morlocks or the Falmer. He
says they were “escaping from whatever was on the surface” – so maybe the serpents took over
the surface, forcing the humans underground. But not all the humans became animalistic
creatures. The showrunner says this masked man is “part of a group of creatures” who retained
some intelligence and remembered what happened with the serpents. The masked man wants to stop
the
serpents being reborn, and that’s why he gives Mother these cards, it’s a warning. And that’s
why the entity tells Paul to destroy the cards, to hide its true snakey intentions. When the masked
man tries to kill Mother, it’s his last desperate attempt to prevent the return of the serpents.
The serpents might also have made these pits. Cause the pits lead to this central terminal at
the centre of the planet, which the showrunner compares to a “subway system”.
So maybe the
serpents used the pits to move around the planet. So – thousands of years ago, there were humans on
Kepler-22b. Some of them helped birth serpents, and possibly worshipped them. But then the humans
devolved into creatures and the serpents died out. Now humans are back on Kepler, and this godlike
entity is manipulating them to have the serpents born again, the cycle is starting over. But
how did humans end up on both Kepler and Earth? These cave paintings
show Kepler-22b, and planet
Earth, and a spaceship with two figures and some embryos – just like Mother and Father’s ship to
Kepler. But this spaceship seems to be going from Kepler to Earth – maybe humans first evolved on
Kepler, then gone to Earth. Maybe they left trying to escape the serpents. But how does the ship
in an ancient cave painting look so similar to Mother and Father’s ship thousands of years later?
Remember, the Mithraic got their technology
from instructions encrypted in their religious texts.
They believe it “was a gift from Sol”. Maybe the
Kepler entity gave humans this technology specifically so they could come back to
Kepler to birth more serpents. Maybe the whole Mithraic religion and their technology
was created by this entity to control humans. But what is this entity? Father and Mother and
Tally and Mouse all miraculously return after falling down the pits to this strange fiery
core
– so maybe this core is the entity. Maybe this is the god Sol, a supernatural all-powerful psychic
being of fire and light. But the showrunner says that while things may seem supernatural, they
might also have a “technological aspect”. After all, the entity seems to hack into Mother’s
digital memories – she said it’s “a virus” that “infected” her systems. The showrunner says
that Mother’s android body is like a 3D printer – when she got
pregnant, she was receiving digital
instructions on how to make a baby serpent. Point is, the entity connects to Mother like a computer,
with digital information. So maybe the entity is a rogue AI, built by the ancient Kepler humans. A
computer that got out of control and decided it liked snakes more than it liked people. That would
be similar to what happens with necromancers on Earth – with humanity destroying itself with
technology. On the other hand, Campion
says that “everything has a soul”. This entity seems
connected to the dead – ghost Tally tells Campion to kill himself so that he be together again with
his dead siblings. Maybe the entity is like a hive mind of all the creatures who ever died on Kepler
– maybe the entity is the soul of the planet. Another mystery is the prophecy – according to
Mithraic scripture, there’ll be an “orphan boy” who will lead us to build “a city of peace”.
Paul likes
to build cities, and he’s an orphan because his real parents were murdered. So maybe
he’s the messiah. Another possibility is Campion, who’s set up as a rival to Paul. By the finale,
the entity speaks to Paul, but seems to want Campion dead. Maybe Campion will lead a faction
against the entity while Paul leads the Mithraic. The showrunner compares Campion and Paul to
Romulus and Remus – in the legend, Romulus kills Remus, then builds Rome. So will Campion
or
Paul kill each other? Will one of them start a new civilisation? Or is this whole prophecy just
more bullshit from the entity to control humanity? In the finale, Marcus discovers another ark above
Kepler – and it’s full of atheist soldiers. The showrunner says the atheists hijacked this
ark from the Mithraic. So these atheists could dramatically shift the balance of power on
Kepler. Marcus kills a few of them, and declares himself king of the planet – setting him
up as
an antagonist next season. This serpent is also a threat – the showrunner says that since the
serpent was born from Mother, it’s part organic and part machine, and has some of Mother’s powers,
like flight. What else might it be capable of? What does it want? Is it a tool of the godlike
entity, or does it have a mind of its own? How will it get along with Mother and Father? Campion
is set up as a leader of the kids with Mary. How will they survive without
Mother and Father?
Will Mary reunite with Paul? Will Tempest’s baby be born? Will Hunter be less of a douche?
There are lots of big questions for Season 2. But most importantly, what does this all mean?
What’s this show really about? It explores beginnings and endings, and the interconnectedness
of life and death. Mother says “Death is a part of life”, so she drains the lifeblood of
Otho and some androids to feed her fetus. Father teaches the kids to kill
creatures so that
they can eat and survive. But when Tempest kills a creature, she finds an unborn creature baby in
its womb . Their crops only grow on the bones of dead serpents. And Mother’s
childbirth, and the mythology of tauroctony, evokes sacrifice. So life comes from blood
and death, they’re inextricably intertwined, and maybe it’s that sacrifice that
gives meaning to birth and life. It’s also about religion and faith. Mother tries
so hard to raise
Campion as an atheist, but still, Campion prays, and develops beliefs about
souls. He believes so he can cope with grief, and find meaning in a cruel chaotic world, just as
humans have for thousands of years. Even Mother, the atheist android, has religious or spiritual
behaviours. She has this little shrine where she keeps objects that are special to her, making
her feel connected to her dead children. She holds fruity little ceremonies with the kids,
that are
themed around science but feel very religious. She believes in her mission and her
creator like a religion, even before she gets knocked up by milk God. So Mother’s attempts to
raise a strictly rational atheistic society seem futile – maybe religious or spiritual feelings
of some kind are just part of being a person. Of course, religion can also be evil. The Mithraic
dehumanise their enemies by saying that atheists don’t have souls. The second-highest
ranking
Mithraic priest is a brutal rapist. Marcus murders people and destroys his own family in the
name of God. And a holy war destroyed the Earth. Religion can be an excuse to do evil, and cause
conflict. Of course the atheists aren’t crash hot either, what with their child soldiers. So
maybe it’s organised ideology that leads to evil. Ultimately, humans have gotta believe in
something. . And the characters in
Raised
byWolves
survive through their faith ineach other. Caleb and Mary find strength in their belief in each other. Father and
Mother believe in each other, and in their family. This belief is not rational, or biological.
Mother and Father aren’t the real parents of their children, and neither is Mary, but these
relationships are real because they believe in them, like faith. So maybe the message of
Raised
byWolves
is that we don’t need God, but we do need each other. Especially when God is anevil
psychic blob who hates humans and loves snakes. Thanks for watching, please like comment and
subscribe. There’s a bunch of interviews with the creator of