Summary
The emotionally engaging story of a grieving couple is drastically unsettled by assassins and silly mythology in a disappointing conclusion. The tone is all over the place in this frustrating finale.
This recap of the Amazon Prime Video series Night Sky season 1, episode 8, “Compensation,” — the ending explained — contains spoilers.
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Two contrasting, entirely separate narratives have ran alongside one another throughout season one of Night Sky. The main plotting focuses on an old couple dealing with grief and the existential madness of an alien world hiding under their garden shed, with the secondary subplot involving Argentinian assassins and their hunt for a runaway. These tonally differing and seemingly random storylines merge in the show’s concluding chapter “Compensation”, where the creators finally deliver on the action and high-stakes suspense they’ve hinted at before. Although the series itself struggles to handle all these spinning plates in a frustrating finale.
Night Sky season 1, episode 8 recap – the ending explained
Early on it became evident that Stella and daughter Toni were hunting for the deserter Jude, who they refer to as the apostate. The mysterious drifter, with many dark secrets in his past, appeared in the York’s alien viewing platform and was subsequently taken in by the motherly Irene. Later he became their caretaker and gave Irene a new lease of life. In episode eight, the Argentinians arrive on the York’s doorstep, ready to upend this happy family.
As I have stated before, Stella’s subplot is riddled with cliché and soap opera melodrama. There’s a cringe-worthy villain at the heart of this mafia style underworld, who is addressed as Cornelius in a later scene. Cornelius is the epitome of the stereotypical bad guy, poorly written and dripping in pastiche. He brings the violence to sunny suburbia, snapping Chandra’s neck and threatening the York household. It’s quite shocking to juxtapose the warmth and gentile world of Farnsworth with this gritty criminal thuggery. Tonally it doesn’t gel at all though, yet within all the ridiculousness is some surprising, blood-racing action to admire. Unfortunately, this genre flip just doesn’t sit right as the two stories synch up for a disappointing end.
The ending
Stella hunts down Jude through a forest, whilst Cornelius interrogates Franklin, Irene and granddaughter Denise back at the house. More silly mythology is thrown into the fray, with talk of Guardians and ritualistic sacrifices. Then the cast are all assembled in the York’s living room for a poorly staged, fraught showdown. Cornelius wants Toni to kill traitor Jude, but she refuses and a tussle ensues. It’s quite telling how detached I’ve become from it all, with little care for the characters I’d once rooted for. Placing an old couple at the center of the story makes for great representation, but watching Franklin wrestle with a clichéd crime boss just seems downright bizarre.
The tone is more than a little bit off in this finale, which wastes such great potential on unrealistic motives, vague plot twists, unsatisfying mythology and clashing genres. In the end, Franklin searches for the missing Byron on the alien world and discovers a hidden community. Irene realizes the planet’s air is breathable and the couple lock eyes upon this very human town resting in the shadows of an alien construct. Whilst a flashback provides the origins of how the Yorks came to discover this alien bunker in a poignant scene. Here the series places its full attention on the emotional side of the narrative, which always works best, ignoring the absurdity that surrounds it. If Night Sky had positioned the human aspects at the forefront, with the sci-fi elements around the periphery, this may have been a better show.
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