Based on an original story by Hirotaka Adachi, with character designs by Yoshitaka Amano, and directed by Yลซzล Satล, Season 1 of Exception (2022) follows a ship as it makes its way to Planet X-10. The crew is composed of Mack (Robbie Daymond), Nina (Ali Hillis), Oscar (Eugene Byrd), Patty (Nadine Nicole), and Lewis (Nolan North). They arenโt really humans though. They are 3D biological prints, created by a device called the โWombโ, based on the original versionsโ biomaterial. And they are tasked with colonizing the aforementioned planet and making it habitable for the incoming spaceship full of human immigrants. But while printing Lewis, the ship is hit with a solar flare; thereby causing the Womb to malfunction and turning Lewis into a deformed monster. Hence, the crew are faced with the dilemma of killing the Misprint, letting it live, or printing a proper Lewis and allowing him to take the decision, all before they reach Planet X-10.
Major spoilers ahead.
Exception (Season 1) Recap:
Taming The Misprint
After realizing that their printing function has gone horribly wrong, Mack, Nina, Oscar and Patty sit down to decide whether they should kill Misprint or not. Mack says that heโs determined to euthanize him and reprint Lewis. Oscar and Nina support the idea as well. But Nina protests because she thinks that itโs murder. Eventually, she succumbs to the peer pressure and gives Nina the โgoโ to put down Misprint. However, when Nina approaches him, he wakes up, kills her, and escapes into the unseen parts of the ship. While Mack decides to kill Lewis, Patty and Oscar reprint Nina in order to make the crew whole again.
That said, Mackโs decision to kill Misprint gets a little tough when he starts to exhibit human emotions because he is part human and part monster. So, instead of going at him directly, the crew tries themselves from him by shifting all the food to the main control bay. This tactic doesnโt quite work because Misprint comes for it anyway; thereby forcing Mack to get into a fight with him that leaves both of them injured. This angers him enough to finish Misprint once and for all by suffocating him in an airtight hangar. This tactic backfires as he attacks Mack, cracks his spacesuit, and makes him vulnerable to oxygen deficiency. Patty comes up with the idea to reveal the memorabilia that every member of the crew is equipped to call to Misprintโs humane side. It apparently works as the memories of Lewis and his partner are triggered in his mind, and he stops his onslaught and retires to the darker corridors of the ship.
Nina begins to cultivate Lewis. In the meantime, Oscar starts doing the rounds of the ship to fix various issues, while keeping in mind that Misprint is roaming around as well along with his carts. Their paths collide when Oscar suffers a mishap and Misprint bandages his wounds. When Oscar comes to, he finds out that Misprintโs human side has become more prominent and he wants to arrive at a middle ground with the rest of the crew so that they donโt kill him. Oscar says that heโs going to try and convince the crew to side with Misprint and keep him updated via a messaging device. But by the time he gets to Nina, Mack, and Patty, he finds out that Lewis has already been printed; thereby complicating the whole situation because now there are two people with Lewisโs biomaterial.
So, hereโs the crewโs deal. They are supposed to begin the terraformation of Planet X-10 and then go into cryosleep for the next 100 years until the immigration ship arrives with their original selves and other human beings. Lewis assumes that Misprint is trying to cocoon himself in a cryopod to protect himself and when the time comes, he is going to wake up before the rest of the crew and jeopardize their mission. Oscar realizes that the team is in no mood to negotiate and he alone has to help Misprint with the cooling cores for his cocoon. Therefore, he stages an abduction so that Misprint can get them. All goes according to plan until they find out that the Misprint has allegedly not gone for the coolers, but for the RA bomb that was supposed to be used for the terraformation of Planet X-10. Nina assumes heโs going to threaten the crew with it and make them do his bidding.
Patty Reveals Another Patty
After poaching a texting device to Lewis, Misprint lets him know that he isnโt the one who has stolen the RA bomb. In fact, he alleges that someone from the crew has stolen it. So, while the crew makes sure that the Atmospheric Transformer (thatโs essential to the terraformation process) is in good shape, Lewis goes to Misprint to find out the truth. The two eventually get into a fight because Misprint only keeps reiterating that he isnโt the thief and he only wants coolers for his cryopod. When Mack joins them, Misprint loses and gets captured. That imprisonment doesnโt last very long as it turns out to be a ploy by both Lewis and Misprint to get Nina, Mack, Oscar, and Patty in a room and lock them up until they find out where the RA bomb is hidden in the ship. The reason behind Lewis and Misprintโs collusion is that both of them are duty-bound to successfully carry out the mission. Because thatโll ensure the bioprinting of Lewisโs deceased (the original oneโs) love, Kate, whose biomaterial is stored in the butterfly pendant that Lewis carries.
After putting the crew members in one place, Lewis keeps an eye on them to look for any traitor-like behavior while Misprint goes looking for the RA bomb. Lewis finds out that the oldest security footage they have is 15 minutes before the solar flare happened. This means that whoever the traitor is, they got the bomb before the solar flare took place and then deleted their footage of doing so. Nina, Mack, Oscar, and Patty hatch an escape plan, with Mack volunteering to go out there to get the drop on Lewis and Misprint. Meanwhile, those two assume that Mack is the one who has stolen the RA bomb, put it in one of the drones and sent it out to Planet X-10, and barred anyone from accessing those drones. So, Misprint goes after Mack, nabs him, and brings him to Lewis. Mack reveals that he did tamper with the drones so that the information that thereโs life on Planet X-10 that can endanger human beings doesnโt fall into the hands of the Planetary Development Agency (PDA); thereby halting their mission of colonizing X-10. But he promises that he isnโt a bomb thief.
In order to prove his innocence, Mack comes up with the idea to destroy his current iteration, reprint him, and monitor what he does to see if his original programming makes him steal the bomb or not. Lewis and Misprint accept this proposal and they rope Nina into this experiment well. After observing the reprinted Mack for quite a while, when Lewis and Misprint feel convinced that he isnโt programmed to do anything with the RA bomb, they inform him about the experiment proposed by the former version of Mack. While mulling over this information, Mack and Lewis infer that since unlocking the RA bomb from its container needs two authorizations, it must be a two-person team who is behind all this. So, that means either Nina and Patty, Patty and Oscar, or Nina and Oscar are the culprits. Nina starts a fight with Oscar and threatens to kill him. Misprint rushes to his rescue. Oscar knocks Misprint out and reveals that he and Nina simply staged the fight (by exchanging instructions via the playing cards). When Oscar observes that they managed to take out Misprint a little too easily, Nina says that his cells are degenerating.
Upon reaching the control room, Patty not only reveals that Mack has erased essential data about X-10, but also says that she wants to detach the Atmospheric Transformer because the RA bomb is on it. While Lewis rushes to the control room, Mack and Misprint find a miniature version of the Womb; thereby proving that someone was secretly printing something. That someone is none other than Patty A and that something is Patty B. They are in a weird sexually charged relationship and they have the prints of the entire crewโs eye-sockets (which is required for authorizing the detachment of the Atmospheric Transformer). They arenโt prints of actual humans. They are made by the Alternative Intelligence and they know that Planet X-10 has a fragile ecosystem underneath its surface. The PDA wants to hide that information so that this crew can commit genocide and make way for the humans to colonize it. Now, since the Pattys are anti-genocide, they are ready to go to any extent to ensure that the mission fails and life on Planet X-10 prevails.
Exception (Season 1) Ending, Explained: Why Does Nina Go Ahead With The Colonization?
While trying to get the code from Lewis for the detachment of the Atmospheric Transformer, one of the Pattys mortally injures him. Nina, Oscar, and a Patty take Lewis to the infirmary. Another Patty stays in the control room and looks over the successful landing of the Transformer. Lewis and Misprint, who are locked out in one of the hangars, manage to get a hold of Nina and instruct her to get to Mackโs room and access the drones. Nina slips past one of the Pattys for a few minutes and causes one of the drones to crash into the ship; which allows Mack and Misprint to escape out into the open and make their way to the hull of the ship where the escape pods are located. Additionally, it causes a lot of chaos and renders the ship useless. Mack gets into an escape pod and heads toward the Transformer. Misprint meets a dying Lewis one last time and promises that heโs going to make sure that Kate comes back by taking the butterfly pendant with him. Nina escapes as well with one of the Pattys.
The Patty who escapes with Nina gets to the Transformer first, leaving an injured Nina behind. Mack gets to Nina and starts to carry her to the Transformer. Oscar, accompanied by the other Patty, fires up the barely functioning ship and gets it to float to the Transformer. Misprint gets to the Transformer on his own and confronts a Patty. This Patty acknowledges her mistake and says that when she extracted all the biomaterial for printing those eye-sockets, she went to Lewisโs first. This exposed Misprintโs printing tank to the radiation of the solar flare; thereby causing the mutations we can see on him. Misprint says that he wants to thank her for her mistake because it allowed him to see through her plan. Without the error, the other Lewis wouldnโt have been printed and the minds of two versions of Lewis wouldnโt have converged to derail the crewโs sole mission. So, Misprint says that, in a way, Planet X-10โs sun made this happen so that he could stop Patty (and the Alternative Intelligence, in general) from hindering mankindโs progression.
Mack arrives to capture Patty before she can kill Misprint. After disarming her, Misprint forces her to reveal the location of the RA bomb. But she doesnโt budge. When Nina figures out where the bomb is, they tie up Patty and leave her near the stairs and proceed to dispose of the explosive device. Nina, Mack and Misprint realize that thereโs a parachute still attached to the Transformer. So, they can tie the bomb to it and hope that it explodes at a distance. Mack and Misprint face off against the two Pattys during that process and it ends with the two Pattys floating away with the parachute and the bomb. Mack takes the full blast of the radiation and dies. Oscar dies while running away from the blast. Nina and Misprint end up being the only two survivors, with the latter succumbing to his degenerating cells. The series concludes with Nina terraforming X-10 by using something called the Beanstalk. Yes, it does kill all the living organisms on the planet. But it becomes habitable for humans. Nina also prints Kate who meets up with the original Lewis as the migrating ships land on X-10.
Exception plays out like a mixture of Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Alien: Covenant (2017), Death on the Nile (1978) or any classic whodunit for that matter, and all of that is intensified by humanity-saving stakes. For the most part, the series deals with the survival of the crew, the survival of the extra-terrestrial life, and the survival of mankind (as they are rooting for this crew to find a habitable planet). But all that can feel unrelatable. So, Adachi boils it down to one thing: the survival of oneโs love. That love being the relationship between Lewis and Kate. Hence, all the big-scale action, the existential prose (about what defines human life and what doesnโt), and the twists kind of become secondary. Is it selfish? Yes. Is it genocidal? Yes. Does it speak to what humans always do when faced with mind-boggling decisions and situations? Also, yes. This is why, despite the colorful nature of that ending and the triumphant music around Lewis and Kateโs reunion, the ending feels bittersweet. Because neither they nor the migrants know anything about the cost of acquiring Planet X-10. Only we, the viewers, do.
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