Summary
The Rig Season 2 has a reasonably happy and conclusive ending in Episode 6, but there’s still plenty more story to be told here if Prime Video see some value in it.
It’s only fitting, I suppose, that the ending of The Rig Season 2 highlights the most explicit battle yet between Mother Nature and greedy energy companies; the natural order, represented through the Ancestor, versus the apotheosis of self-serving and destructive corporate greed, represented by Pictor Energy. Episode 6 is essentially a race against time where the good guys try to stop the bad guys from doing bad stuff. It’s pretty pure storytelling.
While the immediate objective is achieved and the Earth lives to fight another day, there’s probably enough meat on the bones of this conflict to support a push for The Rig Season 3, especially if they can think of something cool to do with it. I’m one of the few critics who actually preferred Season 2 over the first one, so I’d be happy to check in with these characters again if the opportunity presented itself.
Anyway, where were we?
The Ancestor Is A Good Guy
The finale begins round about where it left off in the penultimate episode with Rose having been shot, seemingly fatally, after a fracas between Fulmer and Bremner. Luckily, though, she’s “infected” – I’m not sure that’s the right word; perhaps “connected” is better – with the Ancestor, which allows her to heal and have an explanatory vision.
Personally, I think it has been pretty obvious for a good while – remember in Season 1 when the Ancestor recognized Cat was pregnant? Remember that the primary ability it bestows on people is healing – that the Ancestor is generally speaking a force for good. But the vision makes it clear. All those mass extinction events represented by the circles? Not the Ancestor’s fault. In fact, it’s through the Ancestor that life was able to regenerate afterward. The Ancestor is a life force, not a destructive force.
This is of no concern to Pictor, though. With Bremner sending York the details about how to kill the Ancestor, and Pictor looking to poison the lifeform so it can secure the licensing rights to carve up the Arctic Ocean, the world is genuinely hanging in the balance here.
He Said She Said
Thanks to the USB drive given to Cat by Lennox, Lennox’s confession is broadcast all over the place. York counters with public accusations that she oversaw unsanctioned testing of experimental technologies which probably caused the tsunami. It’s her word against his.
In this tit-for-tat, the heart of the Ancestor becomes integral to both sides of the aisle. Bremner and Pictor believe that delivering poison straight to the lifeform’s heart using a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) will kill it and secure Pictor’s lucrative future; Rose thinks that showing the public the heart of the Ancestor and proving its good intentions will turn public sentiment toward it and against Pictor.
So, it’s a race, basically, between the fixed-up rover containing Rose and Fulmer, and the ROV.
Emily Hampshire in The Rig | Image via Prime Video
Lighting the Way
Despite Magnus’s efforts to hunt Bremner through the Stac with a rifle, the poison is launched. It doesn’t get anywhere near the Ancestor’s heart, though, since Bremner was taking a shot in the dark rather than being able to follow Rose and Fulmer’s rover.
However, this doesn’t help Rose and Fulmer, who’re nonetheless stranded in the deep ocean, rapidly running out of battery power. But they plunge on regardless, making their way to the heart of the Ancestor and marveling at its beauty, scale… and brightness, oddly enough.
Rose tells the Ancestor that it needs to show itself. The world needs to see it so they can understand it’s not a threat and also to protect it from Pictor. For a company so concerned about saving public face, nuking a lifeform that everyone’s feeling sorry for would be impossible. The crisis would be averted (for now, anyway).
So, this is precisely what the Ancestor does. It lights up all over the place, glowing brightly in oceans all over the globe, fully revealing its existence instead of hiding. It looks like it’s curtains for Rose and Fulmer, though, who’re left completely stranded on the ocean floor, sharing one last smooch before they expire. Luckily, though, they’re rescued by the Stac.
They Think It’s All Over…
The ending of The Rig Season 2 seems fairly conclusive. But there’s a pretty clear suggestion that there’s more to come from the series. Lennox mentions that the people they’re fighting don’t give up, and this is after she mentioned earlier that there was a giant engine of power behind Pictor driving all of its efforts. Whether she’s talking about the board of investors or some other more singular force is a little unclear.
And then there’s the whole matter of the world having to respond to the sudden existence of the Ancestor. How will that go? How will it change Pictor’s plans for mining the ocean floor? There’s a great deal that could happen next, and if The Rig was popular enough for Season 2, then there’s no reason it won’t be popular enough for Season 3.
We can hope, anyway, as I quite like this show.
