Created by David Macpherson, ‘The Rig’ (Season 1) is a supernatural thriller series streaming on Prime Video. It follows the crew workers of a Scottish oil rig who witness a mysterious phenomenon that takes them through a horrifying struggle for survival. While it can be termed as an aquatic horror narrative, the writing also delves into the aspects of environmentalism and workers’ rights while building intrigue about the unknown. With a confounding blend of varying moral, political and ethical belief systems, it develops a drama that is stimulating and riveting.
The Rig (Season 1) Recap:
Why is Kinloch Bravo surrounded by a mysterious fog?
On an oil rig stationed off the Scottish coast named Kinloch Bravo, the crew is waiting to return to their homes. Magnus (Iain Glen from Game of Thrones), who leads the crew, has been told to keep the news of the future layoffs away from them. Upon knowing about it, the workers get pissed since their mode of survival is snatched away from them. One of the seniors, Hutton (Owen Teale), finds it as a way to blow off his steam against the leader, who he considers has been unfairly elected instead of him.
Besides that, the decision by the geology expert on board, Rose (Emily Hampshire from Schitt’s Creek), to choose her partner, Fulmer (Martin Compston), over Baz (Calvin Demba) sparks a debate about partiality and creates unrest among them. These arguments momentarily take the back seat when Magnus sees a fire suddenly break out. They also sense some tremors, among other anomalies. Even the helicopters that were supposed to take them away were diverted, which created additional terror. Soon after, they are surrounded by a deep fog, which makes it impossible to look at what lies outside.
To investigate this strange development, Baz and Fulmer are put into an operation. While climbing up the ladder to see what is happening, Baz goes through a strangely hypnotic experience that makes him fall down, and he gets severely injured. Upon taking him to the infirmary, his wounds get healed incredibly fast, which seems unnatural and causes suspicion about the nature of fog. Meanwhile, an object starts falling down from the sky, which they initially consider to be fog but turns out to be ash particles. Alwyn (Mark Bonnar), one of the seniors, goes out to investigate what caused it and ends up getting choked to death by Baz.
The young lad mentions that he could not help himself from doing so because a mysterious voice took control over his body for him to act that way. From that point forward, he becomes a villain for them and an outcast due to sensing a danger to their lives. Meanwhile, Rose notices a bacterium in the body that acts as a parasite and kills the red blood cells. Soon after, Fulmer realizes that he has also been infected with it, which causes him to recover incredibly fast from his burning accident. While she considers him as a source to understand how the unknown creature operates, he decides to enter the basement with Baz to understand it on a deeper level.
What do the images of concentric circles represent?
Meanwhile, upon deduction through other parameters, Rose learns that the concentric circles drawn by every other infected individual (as per their hallucinations after the contact with the organism) are similar to the age representations that we see on a cut-down tree trunk. So, in this context, it is a representation of 5 mass extinction events in the past, i.e., Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous, and the spaces in between are the time passage between these events. She deduces that this ancient life form has a long memory of all the tragedies faced by life and might possibly be the oldest existing organism.
Meanwhile, Coake (Mark Addy), who arrives on their rig, firmly believes that this ancient creature must be destroyed to save the oil rig from getting turned into its formation and becoming of no use. He prefers being heedlessly realist while heralding his vision of action as the reasonable way of survival. Due to their desire to escape and keep their jobs safe, he also manages to persuade Hutton and Dunlin (Richard Pepple) to insert a deadly gas for it to be ruthlessly killed. In the process, Dunlin gets murdered, making Hutton feel guilty for his apathetic way of conduct.
The Rig (Season 1) Review:
The concept behind ‘The Rig’ isn’t the most original one. Upon finding a mysterious being, one part of the crew is determined to investigate its nature and purpose with inquisitiveness, and the other one tries to destroy it to save themselves. The fear of the unknown, as opposed to a scientific approach to discovering logical reasoning for its existence, it’s a theme that we will all find familiar. The story structure utilizes archetypes of people stuck in a crisis, and we see them being led out for each of them to reach a particular conclusion.
They all represent a certain side of the argument, and the issue with that is that it limits their characters from being developed into well-rounded personalities. The emotional arcs are so rudimentary that they drag the narrative instead of holding your attention. The occasional boredom while following the narrative is because of the same reason. However, while using those character tropes, the writing manages to speak about several pertinent issues, be it workers’ rights or the looming danger of climate change, which makes it a stimulating watch.
While showcasing a survival thriller, the aspect of survival gains significance in more than just people saving themselves from the unknown entity. It is the authorities that are ruthlessly bringing ways to take away their means of survival. David Coake represents that side of political figures who showcase themselves as noble while connivingly trying to maintain their status quo. Through Rose, we see an environmentalist who does not fully comprehend the gravity of class disparities while trying to ascertain a safer world to live in. The back-and-forth debate between these two topics is much needed, and The Rig attempts it with sincerity.
The Rig (Season 1) Ending, Explained:
Does the crew of Kinloch Bravo manage to escape the fog?
Baz keeps up with his efforts to make the organism stop endangering them. He firmly believes that since it has seen us acting on every impulse to damage instead of empathetically understanding its intentions. By then, Rose also debates that the organism is unsure whether to communicate or combat its species since it is unsure of how we think about and perceive it. Unlike Coake, who is determined to destroy it, she wants to save the creature from knowing the purpose of its sudden appearance and presenting humankind as reliable instead of harmful. With this, she wants to stop the possibility of mass extinction.
Does Coake succeed in destroying the Ancestor?
On the rig, Coake lures a junior worker called Harish into helping him with the hope of escape. By then, he had communicated with the outside world to send helicopters to rescue him, and he conveyed the intention to take Harish with him. Earlier, he had tried to destroy this creature (which he referred to as the Ancestor) from his own rig named Charlie, even if it was at the cost of his entire crew. Since he ended up failing miserably, it led him to Kinloch Bravo and to believe that eradicating it was his only option for survival. He did not care about the long-term effects and heedlessly kept up with what he considered to be pragmatism.
The crew members overhear their conversation and get into his cabin to resist him from doing so. While Coake is proud of the fact that his vision is going to save himself and the crew, he does not care about this ancient creature trying to reverse the damage by non-renewable sources like fossil fuel. He was showcasing himself as their hero for helping them keep their jobs while not thinking how it would affect the earth they live on in the long run. While the Kinloch Bravo crew makes all the possible efforts with their noble intent, it is too late since, by that time, waves start coming their way (as predicted by Baz in the beginning). As a result of these sudden developments, the crew members decide to escape at the earliest.
Why does Baz decide to stay back with the ancient creature?
However, Baz decides to stay back as a way to showcase the good side of humankind and to sacrifice himself for the greater good of saving the world from extinction. While flying away through their helicopters, they soon learn from Coake that his plan was not to take them back to the mainland but something else. While it is unclear what his intent is, it is certain that he is behaving this way due to his subordinates not acting as per his command to kill the Ancestor. The cliffhanger ending also shows crew member Cat’s partner from outside being hit by massive Tsunami waves. So, the fate of the entire planet in the face of mass extinction will be known only in the next season if it is green-lit by the streaming service.
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