It’s go time. The plan to intercept the alien invaders is well underway in Episode 8 of 3 Body Problem, the sci-fi thriller series from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and True Blood writer Alexander Woo. But will the ambitious plan work?

The Season 1 finale sees Project Staircase put into action, as a series of 300 atomic bombs scattered through space are deployed to propel a probe toward the thousand San-Ti ships en route to Earth. There’s one passenger on board, or, shall we say, a piece of one passenger: the frozen brain of a physics teacher, Will (Alex Sharp). 

While Jin (Jess Hong) agonizes over the fate of the project — and, more importantly, of her good friend Will — Saul (Jovan Adepo) faces a new challenge when he’s recruited to join a mysterious project of his own. 

Let’s recap 3 Body Problem’s season finale, “Wallfacer.” 

Learn more about Saul Durand and his motivations.

Who is trying to kill Saul?

Saul has yet another one-night stand. As he walks the woman (Lily Newmark) to her Uber, a car suddenly veers toward them, narrowly missing him. It hits and kills the woman. Later, Clarence “Da” Shi (Benedict Wong) brings Saul to the Black Palace and tells him that autonomous cars were hacked and that the accident was really an attempted murder. Was it the San-Ti? And why do they want Saul dead?

Da Shi gives Saul a bulletproof suit and whisks him away on a private jet without telling him their destination. Their plane is being escorted by fighter jets, which seems strange to Saul. When they land, a man named Sebastian Kent (Josh Brener) accompanies him to a heavily fortified motorcade that takes them to the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

“We pretty deliberately kept Saul in the shadows for the first seven episodes. He’s an important character, a major character, but he plays a supporting part in a lot of other storylines, but [this] makes it hopefully all the more unlikely that he’s the one who’s thrust into the limelight for almost all of Episode 8,” says Woo. 

What is the Wallfacer Project?

On Saul’s arrival at the UN headquarters, Secretary General Lilian Joseph (CCH Pounder) of the Planetary Defense Council announces the Wallfacer Project. 

“We are at war. The battle might be centuries away, but the enemy has declared war upon us and we must defend ourselves,” says the secretary general.

The Sophons can see whatever they want, “every meeting, every conversation, the memory of every computer.” So how can humanity keep things secret from them? “The Sophons have vast power, but they are not all-powerful. They cannot read our minds.”

The inscrutability of the human mind is the basis for the Wallfacer Project. Three selected people will formulate and direct strategic plans to fight the San-Ti, but will not share anything with anyone until the time is right to carry them out. Because the plans exist solely in their minds, they are called Wallfacers, after the ancient Eastern name for meditators. They will be granted great authority, allowing them to exploit all the world’s resources. “The Wallfacers never need to explain their actions and commands, regardless of how incomprehensible their behavior may be,” says the secretary general. 

Adds Benioff, “We know that the genesis of the Wallfacer Project comes from Wade [Liam Cunningham], because we saw him make the phone call in Episode 7. The reason the term was chosen references staring at the wall, trying to achieve a state of enlightenment and not interacting with the outside world. And it’s a pretty damn lonely existence.”

Who are chosen to be Wallfacers?

Secretary General Joseph then announces the first two Wallfacers: General Hou Bolin (Clem Cheung), a military historian, and Professor Leyla Ariç (Salem Murphy), a Kurdish war hero who fought ISIS in Raqqa. 

“Two who are chosen are more expected choices: a Chinese general and war historian who’s written extensively about military affairs, who spent his life thinking about military conflict, and a Kurdish war hero who’s had success in asymmetrical conflicts,” says Benioff. 

Then they announce the third: Saul Durand. Saul is dumbfounded and wanders to the stage. “Saul Durand… doesn’t make any sense to anybody except for Wade,” says Benioff. 

Adepo is intrigued to see how “he handles that pressure or if he handles the pressure, and what happens if he does have more responsibility moving forward.” 

Macall Polay

Who shoots Saul?

Later in a conversation with the secretary general, Saul asks why he was chosen. “Let’s just say, the enemy knows why,” she says, ominously. Saul refuses his position as a Wallfacer: “I reject all of the powers of the Wallfacer. I won’t do it, OK?”

The secretary general allows his request, saying he’s free to do anything. Saul leaves and walks out of the building alone, dismissing the security detail. Suddenly there’s the crack of a bullet and he drops to the ground. His bulletproof suit saves him, as Da Shi runs to his side. 

When Saul wakes in the hospital with a broken rib, he agrees to have Da Shi protect him and demands to meet the man who shot him. “Know your enemy,” says Saul.  

Later, the man who shot Saul arrives in the hospital room. “I’m sorry I didn’t aim for your head,” the shooter (Adam Silver) says. “Then my mission would be complete, and you’d be free of yours.” Saul points out that if the San-Ti are so superior to humans, why does it matter if he lives or dies? The shooter doesn’t know, but is resolute in his beliefs. “I’ve gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord,” he says. It seems the San-Ti still have devout followers on their side. 

Why does Saul refuse to be a Wallfacer?

Saul asks to go home, and Kent arrives to arrange it. Saul reiterates that he refused to be a Wallfacer. Kent says he knows… but he’s still Saul’s day-to-day liaison. 

“Becoming a Wallfacer is not just an honor. It’s really more of a curse,” says Benioff. “Because once you’ve been chosen for this thing, it’s a bit of a Kafkaesque nightmare in that everyone thinks everything you’re doing from this point on is a plan to defeat the aliens.”

Saul goes back to see the secretary general to confirm his resignation. “I’m not sure it matters whether you truly are a Wallfacer. What matters is what people believe — and non-people,” she says. “A Wallfacer’s work is carried out in secret, in the solitude of the mind.” 

“It’s kind of what I love about the situation in Cixin Liu’s books, and it’s at the heart of all of the books,” says Weiss. “The impossibility of knowing what an opponent is going to do.” 

Saul still can’t comprehend why he’s been burdened with this. He says the San-Ti aren’t coming for 400 years. “Why don’t we all relax and just smoke a J because we’re all gonna be dead by then?” The secretary general replies, “We owe it to our descendants to fight for them.” Then she admits no one knows the real reason Saul was chosen. There’s only an “indirect reason” that he’ll find out when the time is right. Understandably, Saul thinks it’s all “bullshit.” 

What happened to the San-Ti’s assassin, Tatiana?

Back in the woods — after a quick trip to China to kill Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao) — San-Ti worshipper Tatiana (Marlo Kelly) finds a VR headset in her RV, with a note card with the alien’s mantra: “If one of us survives, we all survive.” Her mission is not over; she’s been chosen. “Tatiana’s character is so interesting. She’s a true believer, and she really honestly believes she’s doing good,” Benioff says. She happily puts on the headset, but we don’t see the world she enters. 

What’s going on with Jin and Raj?

Tensions rise between Raj (Saamer Usmani) and Jin on Wade’s jet. “Did you dump me and forget to tell me?” asks Raj. “Is this about Will?” Jin says she stole the last weeks of Will’s life for the project, and they’re “blasting him into space on a totally untested mission.” If he makes it into space intact, she says, they still need the radiation sail to open at the right time and pass 300 atomic bombs: “It’s like threading a needle 300 times in a row, all while traveling hundreds of kilometers per second.” 

Raj confronts her: It’s not Will anymore; Will is dead. Jin disagrees. “He’s a living brain, being kept at negative 150 degrees,” she says, and if the San-Ti pick him up, they can rebuild him. “You loved him,” says Raj. She responds, “I love him. He’s still alive.”

Benioff calls Hong’s acting in that scene “a beautiful performance,” adding, “This woman [is] realizing something incredibly important about herself, which is this friend that she’s known for years and years, who’s been by her side for so long, is actually maybe the love of her life.” 

Ed Miller

What happens at the launch of the Staircase Project?

At the Cape Canaveral launch center in Florida, Will’s capsule is loaded into the ship. The bombs are already in place in space. 

“The launch of the staircase mission project, it’s a really important sequence in the finale of the show,” says the episode’s director, Jeremy Podeswa. “It was a really intricate, interesting thing to shoot. We built a mission control here. That’s a really spectacular set.” 

Saul arrives just as the rocket blasts off. At first, everything goes according to plan: The capsule leaves the Earth’s orbit, the radiation sail opens, and it flies past the first nuclear bomb. It detonates and sends the ship to the next bomb, which detonates exactly on time, launching the ship even faster. 

“That whole sequence is just so [good] in terms of the visual effects and Ramin [Djawadi]’s score and then the acting –– just a lot of close-ups of Jess looking anguished,” says Benioff. 

What happens to Will?

Then an anomaly happens. A tether becomes disconnected from the sail, and the capsule flies off course into the vastness of space. The mission is over. Will is gone. 

“Part of the reason I really feel Jin’s despair when Will’s brain capsule goes off course, I think, is that she’s finally recognized… now it’s too late,” says Benioff. “If you still believe he’s alive as a frozen brain, maybe the aliens can bring him back. Well, that’s not going to happen now because he’s just veered off millions of miles in the wrong direction.”

The project was humanity’s moon-shot effort to defeat the aliens, says Woo, “so obviously, you’re assuming that it’s going to work. I hope for some viewers, at least, it works as a little bit of a fake-out because… it’s the finale of the season and you’ve been told over and over again, ‘This is never going to work.’ ”

Adds Benioff, “That’s one thing I know from movies: [If] they say it’s never going to work, it’s gonna work.” But Project Staircase fails spectacularly. 

What happens to Wade after Project Staircase fails?

On Wade’s private jet, while he’s coordinating the Wallfacer Project, the TV screens crackle and suddenly show the avatar from the VR game (Sea Shimooka). “We’re sorry the Staircase Project failed,” she says. “We would have liked to meet Mr. Downing. We hope to meet you, if your hibernation technology works. Human beings are so fragile.”

Wade says if they’re watching him, he must be doing something right. The avatar responds: “Yes, you’re a strong leader. We want you to know there will be a place for you when we arrive. You are part of our plan.”

The plane hits turbulence and the avatar appears in person in the plane’s cabin. “We’ll always lmabe with you. Every room you enter, we’ll already be there waiting for you. Whatever we want you to see, you will see. Until the day you die.” A countdown pops up in Wade’s vision and an apparition of his eyeless body appears next to him. 

Where’s Auggie while all of this is going down?

In San Luis Potosi, Mexico, Auggie (Eiza González) is using her nanofiber technology to filter drinking water in a local village. She’s finally doing something she believes in with her life’s work. 

3 Body Problem Cast Breaks Down 8 Major Moments

How does 3 Body Problem Season 1 end? 

While drinking their woes away by a motel pool, Jin tells Saul it will be millions of years before Will leaves the Milky Way. Not exactly comforting. Then Da Shi shows up and calls them “the two saddest-looking bastards” he’s ever seen. Saul retorts: “Sometimes being depressed is an appropriate reaction to whatever’s going on in the world.” 

Da Shi admonishes them for giving up the war just because they lost a few battles. He points out that their capsule moved faster than any man-made object ever, but Jin says it was still a failure. “We’re slow, we’re dumb, and we die easy,” Saul says. “We’re bugs.”

Da Shi insists they go on a drive and takes them to the marsh where swarms of cicadas cloud the sky. “People hate bugs, been trying to get rid of them forever,” Da Shi says. “Look around, they’re not going anywhere.” 

He pours out some rum “for the bugs” and turns to Saul and Jin. “Let’s get back. We’ve got work to do.”   

Looking at Season 1’s final scene, Benioff says, “It’s really a tragic moment for Jin and tragic moment for Saul, who is one of Will’s best friends, and they’re despondent at the very end. And the one person who doesn’t really have patience for their despondency is Da Shi, whose attitude is: We’re at war, have your moment to grieve, but now it’s time to get back to work.”   

Stream 3 Body Problem now.