*WARNING: The following contains MANY spoilers. If you haven't watched seasons 1 and 2, we suggest you head to and catch up before reading on.
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In a baller twist on the original H. G. Wells story, War of the Worlds revealed, in season two, that the enemy that wiped out the vast majority of Earth’s population in a heartbeat look suspiciously like us because they are us. Our twisted selves jumped back from the far-flung future.
In case your memory is a little shaky, Gabriel Byrne’s ‘us or them at all costs’ kinda mad scientist Bill deliberately infected Daisy Edgar-Jones’ teenager Emily with a virus engineered to wipe out the ‘aliens’. But Ania Sowinski’s equally amoral enemy leader Adina hoodwinked him, sending Emily and her creepy stalker Sacha (Mathieu Torloting) into space.
Only, Adina was one step behind, too, with her and Bill finally clicking that Emily and Sacha are Adam and Eve 2.0 – the genesis of this new race. And that was just the penultimate episode.
Season two’s doozy of a cliff-hanger saw fellow boffin Catherine (Léa Drucker) finally make it to London to hand Bill the little black book of time travel equations she got from enemy rebel Micah (Robert Emms) way back in season one. Armed with this knowledge, Bill hopped in an alien ship, at the cost of Catherine’s life (shot by one of those pesky robodogs – now known as Mechanicals), jumped back to before the attack, and pushed Emily off a hospital roof, thereby breaking this paradoxical time loop and saving everyone. Or did he?
We have many questions.
The time loop has been broken, right?!?
Hmm. Sure, the attack hour comes and goes, with Bill indulging in mushy catch-ups with his previously very dead son Dan (Michael Marcus) and ex-wife Helen (Elizabeth McGovern). Prompting the internet to explode over why Bill didn’t hop in a cab to St Pancras, catch the Eurostar and slay psycho Sacha instead.
Catherine (Léa Drucker) has plenty to contemplate. Source: © Simon Ridgway / Urban Myth Films Ltd / Canal+
But a bigger question remains. If the loop is truly broken, then Emily in Space is no longer a thing, and neither is the genocidal splinter species.
So why was blind-again Emily having premonitions of the attack just before she died? And why is Bill’s kill-first-ask-questions-later accomplice Zoe (Pearl Chanda) also dreaming of this supposedly aborted alternate reality? She recognises two faces she has never met when a newsflash pops up about Bill’s arrest on suspicion of murdering Emily.
Even weirder, subliminal echoes of the erased future appear to influence the past. Case in point: Catherine’s thawed-out iciness towards her drug-addicted sister Sophia (Emilie de Preissac) seems to have stuck without billions of folks dying.
How will Bill get out of his own mess?
While Bill left the hospital unaccosted, we can infer from said newsflash that he’s now banged up. His “I killed Emily to prevent an alien invasion which has now not happened” alibi is a little suss, so it will be interesting to see how Overman gets him outta this fix. Will Bill bust out of jail like the badass he is? Or is the inevitable invasion merely delayed, like in The Terminator franchise? In which case, it’s likely Earth’s leaders will call on his morally dubious help.
Bill (Gabriel Byrne) in a broody moment. Source: © Simon Ridgway / Urban Myth Films Ltd / Canal+
Will Emily stay dead?
If this reboot doesn’t stick, will Bill have to jump back further in time? Does he even have access to alien tech anymore? Remember, he woke up in a hospital bed. Technically no more future humans means no Oreo-shaped spaceships parked in central London.
Emily (Daisy Edgar-Jones) back in season 2 of ‘War of the Worlds’ Source: SBS
Season three’s trailer teases black hole technology, presumably whipped up A-Team style from toilet roll holders, papier-mâché and a sheet of sticky-back plastic by a cranky Adina. So we can likely expect all sorts of loopy time paradoxes to follow. If so, will Bill refrain from killing Emily again? And if she is back in play, will she remember he killed her? Could be awks.
Is everyone alive again?
Mostly. The winners include Emily’s mum Sarah (Natasha Little), resurrected from being shot in the back by Sacha, plus Helen, Dan and Catherine.
Also, why is Catherine (Léa Drucker) being chased through Charing Cross Station? Source: © Simon Ridgway / Urban Myth Films Ltd / Canal+
Aaron Heffernan’s hospital porter Ash, tortured by Sacha, is out there somewhere with the pregnant fiancée we never met. As is Adel Bencherif’s Colonel Mokrani, now bullet-in-the-heart free to fall head over heels with Catherine again, if they can somehow find their way back into each other’s arms minus attempted genocide.
Less awesome is the fact that Sacha’s equally nasty father/uncle is also alive again.
Who remembers what?
Barring Zoe’s odd recollections and a more emotionally open Catherine, most folks seem oblivious to the apocalypse that never was. Including Bayo Gbadamosi’s refugee Kariem, whom we hope will finally get something interesting to do now he’s reunited with his sister.
We hope that plenty is in store for Kariem (Bayo Gbadamosi) this season. Source: © Simon Ridgway / Urban Myth Films Ltd / Canal+
But those on board the ship when Bill jumped back do remember. That included Aimee-Ffion Edwards’ Isla. Unfortunately, her recruitment to the original human side was short-lived, dying of an Adina-inflicted gunshot wound shortly after arriving in the past. But she did bring back the all-important equation book, locked up in storage like an attention-seeking Chekhov’s Gun.
Sadly for our lot, Adina, her psychotic bestie Jokim (Leo Bill) and a bunch of henchfolk also made it back. They may not have ships or robodogs, but they do have major beef, and surely that’s not gonna play well for us.
So many questions. How will they answer it all?
War of the Worlds Season 3 is an SBS On Demand exclusive. Watch it now. Or catch up on. Season 3 will also screen on SBS, Thursdays at 9.30pm from 8 December. Want to jump into season 3? Here it is:
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