Calvin and Wade return to Snooks Arm as the Crockers prepare to clear the town, and Fonda discovers why the enormous creature has been protecting its iceberg.
A fishing boat travels toward a massive iceberg in Netflix's Below.
Photo credit: Jan Thijs/Netflix
Spoiler warning: This recap reveals the ending of all six episodes of Below.
After everything that happened at Little Pot Rock, Calvin and Wade are back on a boat together, surrounded by blue water beneath a blue sky. Even Calvin's jacket and hat seem to fit the colour scheme.
Calvin thanks his son for helping him escape and acknowledges how much Maggie meant to Wade. He admits that their relationship has been difficult since the family lost Wade's mother and the other children left home. He also finally accepts that keeping Wade away from fishing was a mistake and recognizes that his son could have made a good hand aboard a boat. After five episodes of arguments, they're actually talking to each other.
The calm doesn't last. Snooks Arm is under military evacuation orders. Jim Crocker has supplied helicopters and equipment, and a lieutenant explains that the creature injured Coast Guard personnel and soldiers when they tried to drive it from the harbour. The military intends to secure the community, and Calvin's family is being ordered to leave.
Ruth is the first to spot Calvin and Wade coming ashore. I've liked her throughout the series, and Willow Kean has been particularly good at showing a woman who is frightened for her family while still trying to keep the harbour running. Now she has a few seconds to be happy they're alive before she has to tell them the entire town is being cleared.
The mother and the Crockers
Fonda meets Jim Crocker and explains what her iceberg samples have revealed. The animal is an extraordinarily intelligent female cephalopod, apparently from much colder water than the Newfoundland coast can provide. Her egg sac is trapped in the iceberg, and Fonda believes the creature's violent behaviour is an attempt to protect it. The surrounding water is too warm for the eggs to survive.
Crocker's response is chilling. He immediately recognizes that the iceberg gives the authorities a way to locate the creature. The lieutenant says the animal has killed 19 people and sunk three vessels; once the residents are out, an air strike is an option. Fonda argues for studying a creature that might be the last of her kind. Crocker offers her exclusive access to the remains after the operation, as though that makes destroying it a reasonable compromise.
Meanwhile, the Penneys and their neighbours finally understand why Jan has been so involved in the resettlement vote. She's Jim Crocker's daughter, Janet, and the family stands to benefit from mineral rights beneath Snooks Arm. Their manipulation of the vote is part of the series' fictional mining scheme, although it makes Calvin reconsider the bad luck he has blamed on himself for years. He has spent his life thinking he failed his family and his community. Now he has someone to blame besides himself.
The ring mystery gets a brief return, too. Noah recognizes his grandmother's missing engagement ring on Wade's finger during the evacuation, but the argument is interrupted as soldiers hurry everyone out. At least we know the ring didn't simply disappear into the harbour.
Staying behind to move an iceberg
Calvin refuses to evacuate. Jay and Wade decide to stay with him, and eventually Ruth, Mary, Noah and others refuse to abandon the plan. It was good to see Ruth refuse to let Calvin go off on another dangerous mission without her. This time the people closest to him are determined to help.
When Fonda explains that the mother won't abandon her eggs, Calvin proposes moving the iceberg out of the harbour. Fonda points out that it weighs well over 100,000 tonnes. Calvin's response is practical: it floats. The more serious problem is that part of it is lodged roughly 20 metres below the surface. They'll have to free it and use their boats to tow it away before the planned strike.
Mary and Wade break up part of the iceberg with gunfire, while the family prepares ropes and a net to tow the section containing the eggs. Calvin starts giving Wade instructions as someone who belongs on a fishing boat. The father and son have spent the series disagreeing over who Wade should become. Now Calvin is teaching him the work he previously wouldn't let him do. I enjoyed the choice of “The Passenger” on the soundtrack during the preparations; it gives the frantic operation an energy the characters badly need.
The discovery about Mudder has also changed my understanding of the earlier episodes. I'd wondered whether the strange experiences around Snooks Arm were supernatural or caused by something the creature produced. The series has since linked the town's extreme thirst and altered behaviour to secretions contaminating the water supply, while Fonda's discovery of the eggs explains why the mother remained in the harbour.
Fonda refuses to back down
While the family works, Jim and Jan reveal how useful the emergency is to them. The creature has given them a way to empty Snooks Arm without another drawn-out fight over resettlement. Even Calvin, whom Jim regards as a problem, might be dealt with under cover of the operation.
The military notices the boats approaching the iceberg and orders them to stop. On shore, Fonda refuses to call Calvin back. Jan reminds her that the Crocker family funded her institute and created the endowment that pays her salary. Fonda rejects the money and challenges the family's belief that financing research excuses what they're doing to the community and the animal.
Fonda punches Jan, and I loved that moment. I've liked Fonda more with every episode, and seeing her make such an unequivocal choice after Crocker tried to buy her cooperation was satisfying.
Out on the water, Calvin manages to tow the iceberg into an area he says is about 2,000 metres deep. I was watching the enormous mass moving behind his boat and wondering how he planned to stop it. Icebergs don't exactly come with brakes. He finally cuts the towline, recalling the day he severed the rope as a child to keep his family's boat from being dragged down with their house. That decision saved his mother and siblings, although his father's death left him blaming himself for years.
A military aircraft moves in, but the lieutenant refuses to authorize a strike on a civilian fishing boat. With the creature and iceberg away from the harbour, he orders the aircraft to stand down. Calvin has brought the mother somewhere she can remain with her eggs, and Snooks Arm is allowed to go home.
What the ocean leaves behind
Calvin looks down into the water, and once again he meets the creature's enormous eye. Earlier in the series, that eye had seemed threatening. Here the encounter plays differently. Calvin acknowledges how long he's been frightened of her and how much they have in common. He is a parent trying to keep his family together; she's been trying to protect hers.
The relief is complicated by what Fonda tells the others afterward. She explains that many cephalopods reproduce only once, eventually stop feeding and die after giving what they have to their young. Asked whether the hatchlings survived, she says the water was too warm. That made me sad, particularly when she adds that the ocean is getting warmer.
In the epilogue, the Penneys have opened Big Squid Distillery and Crocker signage is coming down. The resettlement vote has been overturned, but the Crockers want another. Mary and the others discuss coming home for visits, and Fonda and Calvin share a moment that suggests they might have more to say to each other. Fishing boats are back on the water, this time with Wade among the crew.
Snooks Arm's Come Home celebration in the epilogue draws on a real Newfoundland tradition. The province marked Come Home Year in 1966 and held another in 2022, inviting former residents to reconnect with home. Arthur Scammell of Change Islands wrote “Squid Jiggin' Ground,” heard in the closing scenes, in 1928 about the work and characters of the local squid fishery. He also wrote “The Newfoundland Come Home Song” for the province's 1966 celebration.
And then the camera shows icebergs on the horizon. Many of them. I'd just heard Fonda say the young couldn't survive, so naturally I wanted to know what those icebergs meant. Were they ordinary arrivals, or was the series asking us to question how much we really know about the creature and her offspring? The episode doesn't settle that for me. I finished Below looking out at that crowded horizon with Calvin and Wade, still wondering what might be coming in from the ocean.
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