Warning: Contains spoilers for Night Sky season 1 and discussion of suicide.
Amazon’s science fiction drama Night Sky season 1 hides a secret deeper meaning beneath the surface. Night Sky is ostensibly about teleporters that can transport people around the world and beyond, and a mysterious cult that controls them. However, the characters and themes that this story is told around help to develop an allegory about something more grounded and serious.
In Night Sky, after their son, Michael York (Angus O’Brien) takes his own life, Irene (Sissy Spacek) and Franklin York (J.K. Simmons) discover a strange metal structure in their backyard. Buried beneath the surface and with a full tree grown on top of it, the ancient device is a teleporter that takes them to a deserted building on another planet. The couple keep the teleporter and their trips to the stars a secret for years, but when they find Jude (Chai Hansen) on the planet and in need of help, their day-to-day routine is drastically changed.
While spending time on other planets, teleporters, and a strange orb that makes a table disappear are all fantastical, they’re not what define Night Sky. The realistic lives of the Yorks and their granddaughter Denise (Kiah McKirnan) take a front seat, and the science fiction elements of the show truly fuel the drama. Here is the full secret meaning behind Night Sky season 1.
Night Sky's Teleporter Is A Symbol For Irene
While it is not revealed until late in Night Sky season 1, it is not a coincidence that Irene and Franklin find the teleporter in the immediate wake of Michael’s death. After Michael dies, Irene is intractable and stares at the old swing that Michael sat on a lot as a kid and where she had her last meeting with him before he died. Franklin takes down the old swing and cuts down the tree as a part of his own way of processing his grief.
While Franklin remains sad about Michael’s Night Sky demise, he processes his grief over the years. However, for Irene, she becomes obsessed with the teleporter and the stars in place of processing her grief. While, narratively, Irene seeks meaning in them having found the teleporter shortly after Michael’s death, she is using it as a distraction and is, symbolically, searching for a meaning in the life and death of her son.
Night Sky makes it clear how Irene and Franklin differ in how they have handled their grief by showing how they respond to the teleport and the view of the planet where Caerul sits. While Irene is still drawn to stare at the stars, Franklin wants to move on and do other things with his time. Similarly, each of them have powerful conversations with Denise that represent this. Irene has held onto her grief so much that Michael’s daughter thinks that Irene hates her, while Franklin sees the signs of depression and hurt in Denise and is in a place to respond to her almost perfectly by fronting doing what she needs to to make her happy.
Irene's Grief Almost Kills Her
Grief, and Irene’s journey with grief, is demonstrated to be crucial in Night Sky episode 1’s ending moment. Irene’s obsession with the teleporter, the meaning of the stars, and by analogy, the meaning of Michael’s death, leads her to lose focus on life. Throughout the early episodes of Night Sky season 1, Irene’s health is deteriorating because she has effectively lost interest in living anymore. In seeking to find a final answer, she is prepared to step out onto the planet’s surface which, based on the experience of the mice they put out there, she expected to be fatal. Irene’s grief, represented by her obsession, became so all-consuming that it almost killed her.
Jude Proves To Be The Real New Purpose
The primary part of the narrative for Night Sky season 1 does not focus on Michael’s death and Irene’s direct response to it. While episode 1 and flashbacks show how much Irene struggled with Michael’s death, the secret meaning of Night Sky season 1 is held in Irene’s ability to move on from her grief to find new life. While she finds a form of meaning in the planet that holds Caerul, it is not from the place or the science fiction elements of Night Sky that Irene finds peace and meaning.
The teleporter in Night Sky represents Irene’s obsession, but it is Jude’s arrival that helps her to find a new lease on life. This is not because Jude is a replacement for Michael, which is how Franklin fears that Irene sees him, but because Jude and his family mystery become a new focus for Irene and enable her to focus on something outside of her own grief and to channel it into helping someone else. It is likely not a coincidence on the part of the writers that when Jude arrives he disables the teleporter, preventing Irene from revisiting the stars until the final episode (not that she feels the need to anymore).
Jude And The Teleporter Helped To Break A Cycle
Beyond Irene’s own grief over Michael’s death, there is an even darker aspect to the secret meaning of Night Sky season 1. It seems clear that there is a history of intergenerational depression in the family. Michael’s mental health struggles are spectacularly portrayed by Angus O’Brien, but Irene’s own grief and depression almost lead her to take her own life, and Denise’s conversation with Franklin reflects her experiences with depression and dissatisfaction. Each of the characters is struggling with their own part of social expectations providing a commentary on everyday life in the real world. Michael is facing expectations around being a father and holding down a job to support his family when he is not in a place to be able to do so happily. Irene is facing old age and the poor treatment of the elderly in the community. And Denise is facing pressure put on younger people to commit to financially successful and “logical” paths despite what their own happiness dictates.
Jude’s arrival does not simply divert Jude from her intention to take her own life, it also helps to prevent Denise from following the same path her father did. Night Sky might be a fascinating science fiction story, but the emotional tale that underpins it is secretly about grief, trauma, and intergenerational cycles created by society’s expectations. It’s not clear what Denise and Jude will do in Night Sky season 2 in Bangkok, but she is able to find a new purpose, much as Irene did, and the influx of someone who needed help and support was able to help the whole York family to find themselves in a better place.
Night Sky season 1 is now available on Prime Video.