‘Constellation’ Episode 5 Recap — Apple TV+’s Sci-Fi Mystery Adds a New Layer

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Episode 5 of Constellation.

The Big Picture

• Quantum entanglement adds complexity to the puzzle of Apple TV+’s
  Constellation
  .
• Jo, Henry, and Bud face a larger conspiracy, expanding beyond the main characters.
• A barrier between universes solidifies as Jo discovers she’s in the wrong reality.

“The key focus is how quantum mechanics allows two or more particles to exist in what is called an entangled state,” says Irena Lysenko (Barbara Sukowa) over the phone to a very much unimpressed Henry Caldera (Jonathan Banks). She’s reading an article about the nominees for the Nobel Prize. “What happens to one of the particles in an entangled pair,” she goes on, “determines what happens to the other even if they are far apart.” It’s a long line and one that isn’t necessarily simple. However, in this scene alone, Irena adds a completely new layer of complexity to the puzzle that is Apple TV+’s Constellation. Though she’s not talking about Caldera’s precious CAL, it is pretty clear that the experiments she’s reading about are very much connected to Henry’s research. And, in the show’s fifth episode, “Five Miles Out, the Sound Is Clearest,” we will learn that it is also intimately tied to what’s going on in the lives of our characters.

Henry Caldera and his parallel universe double Bud are, at least as far as we know it, one of a kind. They are the only ones to have come in touch with an alternate version of themselves and remained alive to tell the story. Irena seems to have lost her double, the Soviet cosmonaut that Alice (Rosie and Davina Coleman) calls the Valya, in space, while Jo Ericsson (Noomi Rapace) has apparently died in another reality in which Paul Lancaster (William Catlett) has survived the accident at the ISS.

Having a living double comes with its share of problems. Bud, depressed and with failing health, can wreak havoc in Henry’s life, forcing him to wet his pants in front of co-workers or knocking at his mirror while he’s home alone. The medicine that Henry takes seems to be able to enforce a separation between these two versions of himself, but what happens when he gives up on the pills, as he appears to have done? Most importantly, what will happen to Jo now that she’s dropped the lithium-laced “vitamins” that she was given at Star City? Will she be able to contact her dead other self? Or will the world she has come from simply become more visible to her?

‘Constellation’ Episode 5 Forces Us to Ask More Questions

In last week’s “The Left Hand of God”, Constellation answered a lot of the questions we had about what was going on in the series’ story so far. It aligns the timelines, making it clear that Jo has fled home with Alice right after pushing Magnus (James D’Arcy) against a piece of furniture. It connects the dots between the vitamins Jo and Henry take, their trips to space, and the other versions of them that exist somewhere beyond the veil. With this new information that one reality can influence the events of the other, Constellation keeps things intriguing, forcing us to ask more questions just as we have gotten answers.

It’s a journey that is quite similar to the one that Jo experiences in this episode. After calling an ambulance for Magnus (who is still alive, by the way), she grabs her daughter and the CAL cylinder and jumps headfirst into a peculiar kind of Eurotrip that will see her crossing the border from Germany to Denmark before driving to Sweden, where her family’s cabin awaits. Magnus and Frederic (Julian Looman) are desperate to find her, convinced that she should be committed to a mental facility, and Alice doesn’t necessarily feel safe with her mother. In secrecy, she gets in touch with her dad to let him know where they are going, but some roadside revelations will eventually convince the young girl that there is more to the stories her mom tells her than simple paranoia.

The first of these revelations comes in the form of Jo’s recognition upon seeing a drawing of the creature that appears in her daughter’s nightmares and forces her to hide in cupboards. It is a being that Alice calls the Valya. The Valya, Alice tells Jo, circles the Earth, alive and dead at the same time, mumbling strange words. And she looks exactly like the dead Soviet cosmonaut that Jo saw while inspecting the space station after the accident. This skeletal figure is one her superiors insist was nothing more than a garbage bag. Upon hearing the words of a dead female cosmonaut in a recording from 1967, Alice is also quick to recognize the voice as belonging to the Valya.

This is an odd turn of events, but one that might prove to be interesting. Why is Alice capable of hearing and seeing the Valya? As a matter of fact, why is she able to see into other realities, like when she witnessed her mother’s funeral in Episode 4? Is she, much like Bud and Henry, entangled with the version of herself that exists in another universe? Or is our entire world part of a larger entanglement, with each and every one of us tied up to alternate versions of ourselves? These are questions that might seem innocuous at first glance, but that are essential for Constellation’s worldbuilding, as well as for the story the show is trying to tell. Getting us to ask them right now, following an episode in which our previous questions have been answered, is proof that the show still has a lot going for it and that it most likely won’t lose it by creating mystery upon mystery as long as it delivers a satisfying conclusion.

‘Constellation’ Episode 5 Expands Its Conspiracy Beyond Jo, Henry, and Bud

Likewise, by bringing Alice into its web, the show also expands its core mystery beyond the three main characters that were so far affected by it, creating a larger conspiracy for us to invest ourselves in. It does so without losing its focal point as Jo, Henry, and Bud are still very much at the center of whatever is going on. They are still the main characters. However, “Five Miles Out, the Sound Is Clearest” shows us they are facing something way larger than themselves. It does so not just through Alice, but also by bringing in Ilya (Henry David), one of Jo’s fellow ISS researchers, into the game. After a brief conversation with Jo, Ilya decides to look into the other astronauts who were given lithium instead of vitamins in the past, only to find out that said records are no longer available. What has happened to them?

“Five Miles Out, the Sound Is Clearest” also brings completely new actors into the story: brother and sister duo Laurenz (Kurt Dreyer) and Wallie Bang (Birthe Neumann), the owners of the Skagerrak Marine Observatory that recorded the tapes of Jo asking for help from inside her escape pod. Simply delightful to watch, Laurenz and Wallie have a closet full of similar recordings of other astronauts on dangerous missions. These recordings are ones that they have dubbed “ghost tapes.”

Wallie tries to show Jo some of these recordings, but there’s nothing in them beyond static. One has to train their mind to understand what’s on the tapes, Wallie says, but Jo isn’t necessarily convinced. She finally loses it when Wallie puts on a tape of something that should sound like a living Paul asking for help from inside his escape pod.

Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, the scene in which Wallie tries to convince Jo that there is something of worth in her ghost tapes is nothing short of amazing. We are left to dwell in our own paranoia, looking for voices where there aren’t any, as Jo forces her ears to hear something that isn’t there. The only voice of reason is Alice, who is quick to dismiss the Skagerrak recordings as nothing more than noisy gibberish. However, Constellation is not a story about a woman seeing things that aren’t there, but a story about a conspiracy being swept under the rug, so the show quickly reassures us that there is indeed something to be heard in the ghost tapes. While on the road, in a liminal space as Wallie would call it, Jo and Alice give the recording of the Soviet cosmonaut another listen. What do they hear? The Valya’s voice.

‘Constellation’ Episode 5 Further Solidifies the Barrier Between Universes

Jo has taken many tapes from the Marine Observatory on the road with them, including a mysterious recording of Henry Caldera during his Apollo 18 mission. However, upon arriving at her cabin in Sweden, the first tape she listens to is the one that recorded the moment in which something hit the ISS. In it, she’s talking to Alice, who calls her “Mama” in Swedish, when the collision happens and Paul’s voice shouts out her name. Startled, Alice comes into the room and promptly announces that that voice isn’t hers. As briefly alluded to in Episode 4, she doesn’t speak Swedish, nor does she call her mom “Mama.” For anyone who still had any doubts about what was going on with Jo, this scene spells it all out. She’s indeed not with her actual daughter, nor with her actual husband. She’s not even in the right universe. In another reality, Paul has survived, and who knows if it’s even the right Paul?

But, as the episode wraps up, it cuts to a scene in which another Alice follows her mother through the snowy woods and calls her “Mama.” Which Jo is she talking to? Hadn’t we seen Alice hiding in the cabin with Magnus in the other reality? Isn’t the alternate version of Jo dead? Again, Constellation has us in a pickle. Not to worry, though, as next week’s “Paul Is Dead” promises to bring us some more answers, as well as a whole new set of questions to keep us on our toes.

Episode 5 of Constellation is now available to stream on Apple TV+ in the U.S.

Watch on Apple TV+