3 Body Problem Ending Explained: What The Cast And Creatives Say About The Characters' Next Steps

Warning: The following contains spoilers for 3 Body Problem Season 1.

The universe is still in danger at the end of 3 Body Problem Season 1, but there is hope humanity will prevail. Jin's (Jess Hong) first attempt to send a human--Will (Alex Sharp)--into space to do reconnaissance on the San-Ti failed when a tether attaching the vessel with Will's semi-conscious frozen brain to a nanofiber balloon snapped after the third atom bomb detonation to propel the vessel along its path. Will's frozen brain went skedaddling off into deep space to an unknown fate.

Jin will have to come up with another plan to try and save humanity from the incoming aliens that wish to wipe out our existence. She'll have help from Saul (Jovan Adepo), who was named Wallfacer--one of three critical thinkers tasked with coming up with a plan to beat the San-Ti who can never reveal their plans out loud without risking the San-Ti discovering their ideas.

GameSpot spoke to the cast and creative team about what the characters' various endings mean and where the show plans to go in future seasons as the San-Ti continue on their path to conquer Earth.

Wade and the San-Ti threat

If the San-Ti represented an existential threat to humanity for the entire season, then Wade (Liam Cunningham) was the closest thing the Oxford Five had to an antagonist. He used them and their technology in any way he deemed fit to try and come up with a solution to the impending invasion. None of his plans fully panned out, which is perhaps why the San-Ti allowed him to live. However, he did not escape the season unscathed. He was visited by the Sophon in the season's final moments, who issued an ominous message from its creators about hoping to see Wade in 400 years when the San-Ti arrive on Earth.

"It's the first time that he’s had direct contact. He met the San-Ti in the game, but it was virtual. On the plane, he meets the Sophon of the first time. She came to pay him a visit," Cunningham told GameSpot of the encounter. The actor insists that Wade's allegiances haven't changed after the encounter though. "He's got a job to do. He's not concerned about himself and that's why he’s effective. All he wants to do is come up with methods and means to take control and eliminate the threat."

So Wade knows the San-Ti are still coming and they have every intention of facing off with him when they arrive. We'll have to see how diabolical he's willing to get to make sure that face-off actually happens.

Jin and Saul still fighting the good fight

Jack (John Bradley) was murdered early on in the season. Will is a body-less brain floating through space. Auggie (Eiza Gonzalez) decided to use her smarts and technology to help solve current global crises, which left Saul and Jin as the remaining Oxford Five trying to address the San-Ti invasion. Despite their opposite approaches to problem-solving, Adepo thinks they are both up to the challenge.

"They are both incredibly intelligent. They both have vastly different approaches to handling problems, but they are both very capable. They just do things differently," the actor explained. "She may perhaps go in a straight line, [Saul] likes to stop, take a detour, get snacks, and get back to it."

Saul's first step in actually helping to defeat or reroute the San-Ti will be accepting his appointed position of Wallfacer. He spent most of the finale trying to ditch the title, only to be shot by a San-Ti-worshipping sniper. By the end of Season 1 he realizes he can't just ditch the title, but Adepo thinks there is still a ways to go before Saul is ready to actually come up with an answer to the problem, despite the fact Wenjie (Rosalind Chao) may have already given him the key to everything.

"I think he’s starting to accept that he can’t abandon the responsibility I don’t think he’s accepting it like, ‘Okay, this is my new role. This is what it is.’ It’s more ‘Damn it, if I try my best to walk away, they are always going to find me, so I might as well just try to handle this responsibility,'" Adepo said. "I hope he gets to rise to the occasion and that he gets to really use his gifts, the natural gifts that he’s been blessed with, his intelligent mind. It’s a shame to meet anybody who just goes through life wasting what they’ve been blessed with. I hope he gets the opportunity to show his mettle to his friends, his loved ones, and that he’s capable."

At least one other person thinks that Saul is the man for the job, and it may be the most surprising of all. Da-Shi (Benedict Wong) ditched investigating scientist deaths to be Saul's new head of security. Of course, it's kind of like babysitting a frat boy but Da-Shi is committed to helping save the world.

"He’s there to [hype Saul and Jin] up. He’s given a mission and he's laser-focused. Wade has told Da-Shi that you are now [Saul]'s bodyguard. He has to look out for him. He understands that he's dealing with someone who he has to treat like a kid on an emotional level. Da-Shi is having to protect him but he’s also fatherly to him," Wong revealed. "In his personal life, those [fatherly] duties have been relinquished for the greater good. He's there to shepherd [Jin and Saul] along because he knows there’s a mission they have to get ready for. It's another chance at being a parent, at getting to be a father."

Have We Seen the Last of Will?

Oh, Will. He was never able to get up the courage to tell Jin how he felt about her when he wasn't dying, but he volunteered to give her every part of him as his final living act. He volunteered to have his brain preserved and sent into space so he could be the first human to meet the San-Ti face-to-face. The vessel may have gone off-course, but have we really seen the last of Will? There's still a possibility the San-Ti could send a recovery ship to pick him up so they could further study a real human before landing on Earth.

"I thought a ridiculous amount about that," Sharp said when asked what he thinks Will would say to the San-Ti if they did find him in space. The actor apparently thought a lot about all of Will's potential fates. "I also thought a great deal about what it means if they don't find him, if they don't intercept him and he has to be a conscious or semi-conscious brain floating through infinite time and space. It's a fate worse than death and that level of torture is inconceivable, which really makes me think how beautiful it was that he’s willing to risk that and make this sacrifice for Jin."

Will Jin be able to live with herself if they don't figure out a way to make Will's sacrifice worth it? That's also a Season 2 problem, which brings us to our last point.

Where Does the Show Go from Here?

3 Body Problem is not a direct adaptation of the Liu Cixin novels it is based on. The creators consolidated characters to make the Oxford Five and introduced storylines, like the Wallfacer and Wade, into the first season. So does that mean they have a different plan for the series ending?

No. Executive producer and co-creator David Benioff explained that the goal is to be able to adapt the ending that Liu wrote in his trilogy.

"The ending is incredibly beautiful. The last page is probably my favorite last page of any science fiction book that I’ve read. It’s the startling kind of final image because [Liu Cixin] takes you to the end of time, the end of the universe, in this incredible mind-blowing cosmic way, and wraps it all up in a very emotional, human manner," Benioff described during a roundtable interview. "It's unexpected and I still remember exactly where I was when I read that final page. That was when the two of us decided, and Alex[ander Woo] came on a little later, this is the show we want to make."

The creative team know how they want the story to end, but it hasn't been decided how many seasons it will take to get there because of the ambitious nature of the later books.

"The hope of that happy ending for us would be to get to tell the whole story. Whether that's three seasons or four seasons, we don’t know exactly yet," Benioff continued. "There are three books so it would have to be at least three seasons. The [last] book is so big, we don’t know yet how long it would take to make that."

And it may not be up to Benioff or his creative partners D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo. Netflix will have the final say in whether viewers get to see the 3 Body Problem solved.

3 Body Problem is streaming now on Netflix. For more, be sure to read our full break-down of the memorable boat scene, along with what we think really happened to Wenjie.