What happens when science breaks? 3 Body Problem, the cerebral sci-fi thriller from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and True Blood writer Alexander Woo, traces the path of five young scientists who navigate a fraying world as the laws of the universe begin to crack. But who — or what — is behind it all?

The mystery begins during China’s Cultural Revolution in the mid 1960s, when a persecuted young woman makes a decision that alters the fate of humanity’s future. Over eight episodes, 3 Body Problem travels from China’s recent past to a series of mysterious suicides among scientists in the present day. 

In the “Inside the Episode” video feature above, the creators dive deep into the themes and stories behind director Derek Tsang’s series premiere. “There was a huge amount of heavy lifting in Episode 1, because it was important to get all the chess pieces on the board — not only the characters, but the themes of the show,” says Woo in the video. 

Inspired by Cixin Liu’s internationally celebrated novel The Three-Body Problem, the series traverses mind-bending philosophical questions and a shadowy conspiracy that reveals itself one nanofiber at a time. “When Dan and I finished Game of Thrones, we had in mind that we wanted to do a science fiction show, but we weren’t sure which one,” says Benioff. “Cixin Liu, to his credit, created these books that are terrifyingly foolish for anyone trying to adapt them, and it made us hungry for the possibilities.” 

Adds Woo, “I knew that this was a big science fiction trilogy that everyone was reading, and it was from a Chinese author, so that was really interesting to me. [But filming Episode 1] was a huge challenge.”

Tsang was up for that challenge. “What helped me the most was talking to people who actually went through the Cultural Revolution, not only because they would tell you their story but they also told us minute details [about]how people behaved in that era,” he says. 

Still have questions about all the events in “Countdown,” Episode 1 of 3 Body Problem? With some help from the creators, we break down everything that happens in the series premiere. 

Dive into director Derek Zhang's approach to Episode 1.

Where does 3 Body Problem start? 

Our story kicks off in Maoist Beijing, during the Cultural Revolution of 1966. A furious crowd at Tsinghua University gathers before a stage where a “struggle session” is taking place. These political rallies in part aimed to break and humiliate bourgeois academics whose work was deemed counterrevolutionary. “One of the things that sets this show apart is that the main driver is a thing that really happened, and that’s generally not the case with science fiction stories,” says Weiss. 

“Root out the bugs,” the frenzied crowd yells, and “Sweep away all monsters and demons!” — a phrase rooted in Buddhism that in this context refers to all enemies of the revolution. “We didn’t shoot it in China, so [many of the] the background actors had to learn all the chants phonetically,” says Woo.  

Adds Weiss, “I think the China material sings because of the attention that Derek [Tsang] put both into the human side of it with the actors, and into the historical physical side of it, making sure that everything looked and felt exactly the way it needed to.” 

In the scene, two Red Guards drag a man onstage wearing a dunce cap and a sign yoked around his neck. As the guards chant, “Revolution is righteous,” we learn that Ye Zhetai (Perry Yung), a professor of physics, is under investigation for teaching Einstein’s theory of relativity. “Einstein went to the American Imperialists and helped them build the atomic bomb,” shouts one of the guards, and the crowd cheers in response. Ye Zhetai’s daughter watches in horror from the audience as her mother, Shao Lin (Li Fengxu), appears on stage. She accuses her husband of lecturing on the “counterrevolutionary” Big Bang theory. “The theory claims to know when time began… it leaves open a place to be filled by God,” she says. He replies, “Science has given no evidence either way.” 

“Professor Ye makes a decision to speak the truth in a moment when speaking the truth would almost certainly lead to his death,” says Benioff. “But he doesn’t recant when most people in his position would. He stands up for what he believes in, which is brave, but ultimately fatal.” 

Weiss adds: “I think all the credit in the world goes to Derek Tsang for directing a monumental opening sequence and [to] the other teams — costume, visual effects, and so forth — for making it look as good as it did.”

What happens to Ye Zhetai’s daughter, Ye Wenjie?

Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng) cries as she realizes her father’s choice means he’s about to die. The guards rain blows down on him, bludgeoning his body until it goes limp. As the crowd quiets, the guards depart, leaving him there. His daughter runs to the stage, grabs his hand, and tenderly places a worn, tobacco-stained pipe in his lifeless fingers. When the guards return, bearing guns, Ye Wenjie looks back at them with the same defiance as her father. “Crammed into those first five minutes is a huge emotional journey for every speaking character in that sequence,” says Woo.

Weiss points out that the scene needed to feel like watching history, not like watching television, adding that the entire team — including Tsang, and Emmy-winning Game of Thrones production designer Deborah Riley — knew there was a lot riding on getting it right. “Zine [Tseng], more than anybody, felt [there] was a lot of weight to carry because everybody knew what it meant for the show going forward,” he says.

What’s going on in the present day? And why are scientists committing suicide?

We then cut to 2024 London, where ambulances and officers respond to a crime scene at a stately suburban home. The mysterious, maybe slightly hungover investigator Clarence “Da” Shi (a chain-smoking intelligence officer from Manchester who has been fired from Scotland Yard, MI5, and the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism in the UK, played by Benedict Wong) into a room scrawled with bloody numbers. “Strange suicide note,” says an agent. The body is that of a Nobel Prize–winning cosmologist and theoretical physicist. Da Shi’s flashlight then illuminates an alarming message smeared on the wall: I Still See It. Da Shi leans down to inspect a body sprawled on the floor. There’s a knife in the dead man’s hand. And he has no eyes. 

Meanwhile, at a London lab, physicist Vera Ye (Vedette Lim) isn’t surprised to find her research assistant Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo) still sitting at his computer after everyone else has left for the day. On the screen, graphics of colliding atoms create a blossom of chaos. Their particle accelerator is giving erratic results for every experiment, so the project’s been shut down. “I keep thinking if I just stare at the screen long enough, something will come to me,” Saul tells Vera. At 32, the brilliant but listless researcher feels he’s already missed his opportunity to make a difference in physics, but maybe he can still figure out what’s going on with their wayward experiments. 

Wait, what is going on? Why is physics breaking down?

“According to the experiments, all of our theories are wrong. All of the physics of the past 60 years is wrong,” Saul tells Vera. “Science is broken.” As she leaves the room, she turns to Saul and asks, “Do you believe in God?” He responds that even though the anomaly defies all laws of physics, it’s still not an argument for the existence of God. “So what’s left?” Vera says. “Instead of dryly presenting the nuts and bolts of the physics, we show what it’s doing to the people who are being confronted by it,” Woo says. Later, Vera enters a cavernous reactor room, walks down a gangway, and plunges into the cooling water far below.  

What are Auggie Salazar and Jin Cheng’s jobs?

Vera and Saul aren’t the only ones struggling to come to terms with the inexplicable chaos in the science field. Elsewhere in London, sloppy karaoke singers croon Katy Perry, while former Oxford classmates and best friends Jin Cheng (Jess Hong) and Auggie Salazar (Eiza González) take shots and mourn the death of the entire field of physics. Auggie runs a company that designs self-assembling synthetic polymer nanofibers. Jin is a senior researcher in theoretical physics analyzing experiments at particle accelerators around the world. 

Jin’s explaining to Auggie that those particle accelerators — like the one their classmate and Auggie’s former boyfriend Saul is working with — are generating data that doesn’t make sense, when Auggie starts to see a strange apparition. As Jin steps away to answer a phone call from Saul, Auggie’s visions become worse and more pronounced: Golden strands weave into numbers, 04:09:17:39. Then the numbers begin to count down. “Auggie’s countdown is emblematic of the inexplicable problems that are confronting the scientists,” says Woo. “They are not people [who are inclined] to believe in the supernatural, so whatever is happening to her is scary.”

Jin returns with bad news: Their former professor Vera has just committed suicide. 

Meet the 3 Body Problem Cast

Who are the Oxford Five?

Continuing his investigation into the deaths of prominent scientists, Da Shi — who works for Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham), the leader of an elite intelligence operation — stands in front of a classic detective’s case-cracking bulletin board. Da Shi answers a call from Wade, who asks about a group he dubs the Oxford Five: Auggie, Jin, Saul, physics teacher Will Downing (Alex Sharp), and Jack Rooney (John Bradley), an Oxford dropout and founder of Jack’s Snacks, who is worth £90 million (more than $113 million). They’re all former students of Vera’s. 

“They are all very different people, but when they’re all together, it feels like the puzzle is complete,” says Bradley about the group dynamic. Their closeness after college continues into their budding professional lives — simply put, they’re each others’ chosen family. “There’s a theme going throughout the series of people finding family, finding a community that is not their biological family,” Woo says. “The Oxford Five are a group who found community and family with each other.” Woo says they created the Oxford Five for the series because the protagonists of Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth's Past book trilogy didn’t have much interaction. “Since we were all supposed to be great friends in the show, it was cool to collaborate on this and get to try different things on set and improvise,” says Adepo.

What’s going on between Will and Jin?

At Vera’s funeral, we learn that Will has harbored feelings for Jin for quite some time. Sadly for Will, she attends the service with her new boyfriend, Raj Varma (Saamer Usmani), a handsome naval officer from a military family. It’s clear Will still has feelings for her. 

“Raj is a plus-one, which is a cool place to be in: in an old friend group and you're a fly on the wall,” says Usmani. “You get to observe these different dynamics, how their histories play out in real time.”

Ed Miller

Who’s the mysterious man who attends Vera’s funeral?

The Oxford Five aren’t the only ones in attendance. While Buddhist monks chant at Vera’s funeral, an older man (Jonathan Pryce) approaches Vera’s coffin to pay his respects. He glances at Vera’s mother (Rosalind Chao), then leaves. Outside, Da Shi clandestinely photographs him and follows his car to an airfield where the man gets in a helicopter emblazoned with the logo Evans Energy.   

According to Da Shi’s research, Michael Evans is the CEO of Evans Energy, an oil company he inherited from his father. But there’s little other information about him. Da Shi loses track of the helicopter somewhere over the Atlantic when a satellite tracking Evans malfunctions.  

Ed Miller

Who’s the woman who lights Auggie’s cigarette?

A distressed Auggie’s been seeing the countdown since it appeared before her eyes at the bar. She’s even visited a neurosurgeon, to no avail — and the clock is ticking down, with just under two days to go. After Vera’s funeral, the Oxford Five meet at a local pub to let off steam. They talk about their careers and joke around, with Jack wondering whether Auggie and Saul are “fighting right now, or fucking.” Not in the mood for banter, a frazzled Auggie steps out to get some air. As she takes out her cigarettes, a mysterious woman (Marlo Kelly) approaches and offers her a light. “It’s not easy, is it, being a person in this fucked world,” the stranger says, adding that she understands what Auggie’s going through. “It’s not hopeless, though. Really. The Lord has a better way,” says the woman. Auggie’s skeptical, until the stranger explicitly mentions the countdown and the fact Auggie has less than two days left. How does she know? Regardless, she then offers a solution. To make the countdown stop, all Auggie has to do is end her work with nanofibers. 

What’s the countdown all about? And what will happen when it ends? 

Auggie’s clearly uncomfortable at this stranger’s knowledge of her work, and the woman does nothing to reassure her when she tells her to look at the sky at precisely midnight the next day. “Has the universe ever winked at you?” the woman says while setting down a pack of cigarettes. “You don’t want it to get to zero. Nothing good ever happens at zero.” With that warning, she disappears. When Auggie picks up the cigarettes, she discovers a plastic toy tucked inside, labeled Toasty-O-Sters Code Cracker.   

Ed Miller

What happened to Ye Wenjie after the struggle session?

Back in 1967, Ye Wenjie’s banished to a logging work camp in Inner Mongolia. While sitting on the stump of a centuries-old tree, she’s joined by a bespectacled man, Bai Mulin (Yang Hewen) — a writer for the Great Production News. “That tree saw the Ming emperors,” he says. “You must have considered the consequences of all this destruction.” Nervous that he might be  investigating her, Ye refuses to talk. But he assures her that he’s just a fellow comrade.

As Bai and Ye look up at a large parabolic antenna dish on a mountaintop, Bai says no one knows what goes on behind its gates. But bizarre things happen in the area surrounding it: Soldiers working there inexplicably lost their hair; clear weather suddenly turns stormy; and animals make strange noises.  

What is the Silent Spring? And is it a real book?

Bai knows Ye reads English, so he gives her the 1962 book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which he tells her was very influential in the West for its depiction of how humans are poisoning the world. “It’s like reading into the future if we persist with this destruction,” he says. In English, Ye reads aloud a passage from the book: “Here again we are reminded that in nature, nothing exists alone.” He tells her to keep the book a secret. She reads it under the covers by flashlight, and her awareness of environmental devastation grows stronger. 

It doesn’t take long for the book to get Ye into trouble. After she discovers someone has taken it, she’s interrogated by the commanders. When they demand to know who gave it to her, she refuses to tell them. Ye is sent to prison. 

(And for viewers at home, the book just hit the best-sellers list.)

Why does Ye Wenjie refuse to sign the document identifying scientists?

While in prison, Teng Lihua (Jeanne Yuan) of the Intermediate People’s Court visits Ye Wenjie in her dark, cold cell. Teng acknowledges that Ye was her late physicist father’s star student and offers her a way to return to her work in the forest. All Ye has to do is sign a document that identifies other physicists like her father who Teng says are “still spreading dangerous ideas.” When Ye refuses, Teng dumps freezing water over her, calls her a “stubborn little bitch,” and leaves. 

Ed Miller

What is the Red Coast Base and what are they testing?

In the next scene, Ye is in and out of consciousness in the back of a moving vehicle. When she wakes up, she’s high in the Greater Khingan Mountains at the gates of the mountain peak. Military officers in PLA hats ask her if she’s the author of the article “The Possible Existence of Phase Boundaries Within the Solar Radiation Zone and Their Reflective Characteristics.” When Ye affirms that she is, they say that they need her specific talents in the Red Coast Base where she can rehabilitate. The catch: The project is so classified, she can never leave the base. “I want to go in,” Ye says. “I will stay here for the rest of my life.” 

After three months at the base, Ye Wenjie gets to see her first test. She asks if they’re testing missiles. An officer laughs and tells her, “Everybody has missiles.” The test begins: The radar dish makes a high-pitched noise and a storm cloud crackles in the distance. Then a flock of birds flies toward the dish and all the birds drop to the ground, dead. The transmission is complete. 

The officers then reveal the true nature of the Red Coast Project to Ye. It’s not an experimental weapon, it’s a communication device. “Communication with whom?” Ye asks. “With whomever is out there,” responds the officer. 

Who’s Vera Ye’s mother?

In the present day, Jin visits Vera’s mother looking for more answers about her mentor’s death but has little success in gathering information. Vera’s mom does give her a slick silver headset, however, which she says is some kind of video game her daughter had been playing before her suicide.  

As Jin’s about to leave the house, she inquires about a photograph on the wall. “Is that you?” Jin asks. “In another life,” Vera’s mother responds. “Time is a motherfucker.” The photograph shows a young woman at the base of a radar antenna. Vera’s mother is none other than Ye Wenjie.

What’s that fancy-looking VR headset all about?

Later, at home, Jin puts on the silver headset Ye Wenjie gave her and, before her eyes, a virtual world opens into a stark environment. There’s a lone road stretching toward the horizon. The skeletons of leafless trees speckle the landscape. Then two words appear: Level One. It’s a first-person video game, seen through Jin’s eyes. “When you put on the helmet, it’s mirrored, so the last thing you would see are your own eyes looking back at you,” says Benioff. 

Looking down at her body in the game, Jin realizes she’s dressed in clothes from the Shang dynasty from the second millennium BCE. A pyramid towers in the distance, and the sun rises rapidly into the sky, blasting a heat wave across the sand. Jin steps back and hears a crunching sound. There is a mummified corpse under her feet. Its eyes open.

Why does the universe wink? And what does it mean?

While Jin tries to come to terms with whatever that was, Auggie’s becoming increasingly anxious about the persistent countdown. She decides to heed the stranger’s advice and brings Saul along to look up at the sky at midnight. Auggie gives the stranger’s toy to Saul. Turns out it came from a box of breakfast cereal that hasn’t been made since 1963. 

The clocktower bells ring the midnight hour. The entire sky, full of stars, begins to flicker. “I observe the universe winking,” a stunned Saul says. “How can it be happening?” Auggie asks. To which Saul responds: “It can’t.”

“From Auggie’s point of view, there’s something private that is happening to her,” Weiss says. “As a rational person, she’s thinking, ‘There’s something wrong with my brain.’ So at the end, when she and Saul see the blinking stars, and everyone in the world sees the blinking stars, it ups the ante on that horror — because it’s bad enough if you’re losing your mind, it’s bad enough if there’s something wrong with your brain. But it’s arguably a lot worse if there’s something also being witnessed by everybody else [all over] the globe.”

Saul soon realizes the blinking is in code, so he can use the toy to crack it. “It’s just numbers,” he says. When he recites them, Auggie feels a sense of panic: They’re the same numbers from her countdown. It’s now down to 10:34:06.

From a rooftop in London, Thomas Wade and Da Shi watch the phenomenon. “That, Clarence, is our enemy,” Wade says. 

But who is that enemy? Keep watching 3 Body Problem on Netflix for more.