Night Sky: A Slow Moving But Rather Intriguing Series

**MILD SPOILERS**

Welcome back! Took some time off for personal reasons but, happily, I’m finally ready to jump back in!

Night Sky is a slow burning, new Sci-Fi series streaming on Amazon Prime. Full of warm hearted, sometimes boring, sometimes heart-wrenching pulp, it is strangely fascinating and truly makes me curious what Season Two will look like.

Average Joes?

The series begins in a small Illinois town following the simple lives of Irene (Sissy Spacek) and Franklin (JK Simmons) York. Both retired, Franklin and Irene are a seemingly typical Baby Boomer couple who have been married for ages and fill their days with minutia.

Still grieving from the untimely death of their young adult son Michael years ago, the couple take solace in each other, routine and the other-worldly apparatus that they discovered after digging up a tree in their yard. They created an underground bunker around it and disguised it under their shed.

It is an alien “pod” of sorts, that allows Franklin and Irene to teleport to another room that sits on a seemingly desolate planet. The couple refer to it as “going to see the stars”. There is a door leading out to the planet, but apparently the mice they tested the atmosphere of the planet on, died within two minutes of being outside. When Irene’s health takes a turn for the worse, they begin to wonder if it isn’t because of their years of teleportation.

Source: Amazon Studios

Hey Jude

Facing the glaring actuality of her aging and failing health, Irene falls into despair. Ultimately succumbing to grief, she decides to take her own life by walking out onto the mysterious planet. As she enters the door to go outside, she hears the cries of Jude (Chai Hansen), bloodied and lying on the floor behind her. She decides to take him back to the house and nurse him to health.

Not revealing her intent to Franklin, the couple argue back and forth about housing this newcomer and question the legitimacy of his supposed amnesia on how he got to the pod in the first place. Franklin is extremely wary of him, while Irene takes to “mothering” him, as it seems to give her a new purpose in life.

As the story inches along, we start to get pieces of the puzzle bit by bit. Gracious and kindhearted, Jude attempts to conform to life with the couple, posing as their “caretaker”. Believing that his missing father is in their town, Jude searches for information. As the story moves on, we begin to see that Jude does, in fact, know more than he is letting on.

The Guardians And The “Apostates”

The series begins to pick up when it juxtaposes another story taking place in Argentina. We find out that another family has a teleportation pod and can use it to teleport anywhere. The storyline hints to a veritable “war” that is happening all over our world—as these are not the only places pods are—and there is a group of people called “The Guardians” who believe they are meant to protect the pods and their powers.

Source: Amazon Studios

They search out and kill “apostates”, who may out the existence of the pods or use them in ways that the Guardians don’t believe they should be. The season doesn’t make this whole dynamic entirely clear. Instead, it meanders along, back and forth with the characters, sometimes with painstaking length, laying out a vast foundation for what is to come. It is depicted that the Guardians may be the “bad guys”, but we never get a chance to really delve deeply into either side. By the season’s end, we do start to see some connections between the characters, but much is left up in the air.

In All Honesty…

Night Sky may not resonate with a huge audience, but it definitely has enough to hold on to true SciFi fans who want to figure out all of its mysteries. You’re definitely not going to find out a whole lot about the larger story in Season One, as it seems only to be a setup for Season Two, but there are a lot of other layers to sink your teeth into.

It was enjoyable enough for me though, especially to spend some time with Spacek and Simmons, two legendary actors. Spacek’s Irene is kind and endearing while Simmons’s Franklin is the epitome of a cantankerous Baby Boomer man, with more bark than bite. Simmons does an exquisite job, as usual, handling the ups and downs of the character, while effortlessly pulling out the tears at all the right times.

Hansen does an excellent job with Jude, endearing us all to the character, with his puppy dog eyes and soft, warm demeanor. He brings to Jude an ethereal, wise, “old soul” essence that makes us trust him very early on, but is that what we are meant to do?

Source: Amazon Studios

As the story weaves rather leisurely, in and out, those of us who have seen a few films and written a few scripts over our time start to look more “eagle eyed” at it. We’ve seen those stories that want us to trust characters, only to be led to disappointment when a twist or two ends up showing us their “real” sides. But will that happen? Is Jude really who he seems to be?

There weren’t a lot of mind-blowing action scenes that a lot of SciFi shows have, but Night Sky uses its time to give us the chance to invest in and get to know all of the characters better. Some of the characters can be downright annoying and others portrayed very flatly, but any acting or character flaws are not enough to negate the intriguing possibilities here.

The space effects look beautiful. As a SciFi/space fan I wanted to spend more time on the planet they visited, but again, will have to wait until Season Two to get to the nitty gritty of what is happening there. Season One looks more into life on Earth and the possibilities that are out there, if we just hold on long enough to experience them.

It is a new angle to the stories of the never-ending cycles of life, the search for its meaning and something greater. It is an illustration of things that we all think about with the creativity to captivate our imaginations. It is everything beautifully and darkly human, mixed with the mysteries of all the potential of the Multiverse.

There are no limits to what is possible in and beyond the night sky that we see and the same is true here for life on Earth if we are willing to explore the inner depths of our being. Magic does exist here; it just takes immeasurable endurance of growing pains in order to find it. That, takes great courage indeed.

Night Sky is streaming on Prime Video starting May 20, 2022