The second episode of Constellation continues the attempts made by Jo (Noomi Rapace) to safely return to Earth from the rapidly deteriorating International Space Station (ISS), while sci-fi mysteries expand on Earth and in space.
This new Apple TV Plus psychological sci-fi thriller debuted on Wednesday, February 21 with its first three episodes, with the middle installment the one we're looking at right here. Here's our guide on how to watch Constellation if you're out of the loop.
Make sure you've caught up with the show before we recap all that happened in episode 2, or "Live and Let Die", because we're going to be throwing around spoilers left, right and center! So let's dive in.
Dreams of double daughters
Picking up right where we left off in episode 1, Jo rushes her cold and tired-looking daughter Alice (Rosie/Davina Coleman) back to their cabin, where she lights a fire and runs a warm bath. Jo puts her daughter in the bath and leaves the room... only to notice that her daughter is actually still asleep in bed!
Jo keeps looking between these two girls, and the sleeping one wakes up and follows her mother. When Jo returns to the bathroom, the bathing girl is gone! However Jo thought that the bathing Alice smelled a lot like her daughter, but when she sniffs the awoken one, there's no smell — the woman panics and begins to look for the vanished clone child.
And then, we jump back to the ISS (remember, in the last episode Jo passed out and that was when our narrative segued to five weeks prior). Jo awakens, and sees that she's lost a lot of time. She only has 6 hours of oxygen remaining.
A last disaster in space
In Kazakhstan, Henry (Jonathan Banks) disembarks from his jet and greets the Russian space program leader Irene (Barbara Sukowa). The latter tells the former that there's no sign of life on the ISS, so there may never be a search and rescue attempt for it.
In space, Jo realizes that she may not have enough time to transfer all the batteries into the Soyuz-1 shuttle and launch it, and is also freaked out when the bag she put on Paul's (her dead companion) head floats off. Another obstacle is looming too, as on Earth Jo's colleague Frederic (Julian Looman) tells her husband Magnus (James D'Arcy) that she's going to need to calculate her own re-entry math too.
While Jo is recording a message to Magnus and Alice, she hears an odd roaring noise. She replays the message and slows it down, and realizes it sounds like Paul's voice telling her something. She goes to check on the body and sees through a window his hand. This is his amputated arm, but when she touches it, she has a hallucination of the man attached to it.
By now, a communications line between the ISS and Earth has gone, so the people in Kazakhstan are sending pre-recorded messages to Jo with instructions.
Briefly, we visit Henry's brother Bud (also Jonathan Banks) who's being interviewed on TV about the ISS disaster. The interviewer mentions that he also had to bring back bodies from space, which irks him, and he gets angry.
Jo eventually finishes her work on time, calculates the re-entry parameters and even has time to retrieve Henry's space science experiment. She records a final message to Alice and Magnus, just in case everything goes wrong, and then it's ready to set off...
... except that there's a "bolt malfunction" according to the computer! Jo checks the manual, and you need two people to fix this issue, but she's all alone!
On Earth, the countdown for oxygen ticks down, and it looks like Jo is dead. Henry and Irene share a hard drink, while the latter tells the former that Russia is pulling out of the ISS program.
Something fishy returns to Earth
Somehow, Jo isn't dead, and her shuttle launches from the ISS just fine. It even looks like there's some activity onboard the station, even though Jo was the only one on it — did she have a mysterious helping hand?
Jo's re-entry is at a very steep angle, and while everyone's happy to learn that her shuttle is returning to Earth, it's going at a dangerous speed. Lots of people jump into helicopters and trucks in order to try and find her when she touches down, and Magnus, Alice and Henry are among them.
Eventually, Jo's shuttle touches down. The first life form she sees is a coyote, which looks about ready to eat her... until all the trucks and helicopters show up to rescue her.
Jo has a tearful reunion with humans, especially her daughter Alice, though Magnus seems a bit distant. He's surprised when Jo wants to hug him too, as though he expected a colder greeting. Frederic also greets Jo, but she's not so keen to see him.
Henry retrieves his experiment, and is very happy with the results. It's starting to glow weirdly though.
On the helicopter, the family is getting ready to depart... but when Alice closes her eyes, upon opening them again, she finds that she's totally alone! No one else is there, not her mother or father or the pilot. Thankfully, the chopper hadn't taken off yet.
Briefly, Jo experiences the same effect, but it's over quickly. However, when it finishes, Alice doesn't look the same — she resembles the tired and testy child whom Jo rescued at the beginning of the episode!
We briefly jump back to this cabin, five weeks later. Jo is tearing the place apart to look for her 'real daughter', and quickly hurries the child who's actually there into getting her cold-weather gear on. They leave the cabin, with Jo briefly retrieving a bag (containing the experiment) from a small shack). And then they set off into the cold Swedish wilderness, to find, as Jo puts it to Alice, "the other you".
