Night Sky Review: A Slow-Burning, Sci-fi Mystery with a Deep Emotional Core

Despite its sci-fi premise, the show’s storylines remain grounded in human experience.

Night Sky
Photo: Amazon

At the midpoint of Night Sky’s first season, a character describes the mysterious underground chamber around which the sci-fi series revolves as “an elevator—except it doesn’t move.” To which someone replies, “That makes no sense.” While that may be an apt summation of the series as a whole, inscrutability is also what makes it so alluring.

For 20 years, Franklin (J.K. Simmons) and Irene (Sissy Spacek) have transported themselves from their rural Illinois home to a seemingly deserted planet via a chamber hidden beneath a trap door in the floor of their garden shed. How the chamber got there, why it’s there, or how it works—beyond allowing them to teleport to a world far away and gawk at the stars above it—remains a mystery to the couple. They just know that they must keep it a secret.

This portal to another world may be Night Sky’s defining element, but much of the personal drama that occurs throughout the season’s eight episodes is only tangentially related to it. Franklin and Irene are still grieving the death of their son years earlier. When an enigmatic young man named Jude (Chai Hansen) appears in their chamber, apparently suffering from amnesia, the cynical Franklin suspects that the charismatic stranger is preying on their grief. But Irene bonds with him, which causes a rift in their marriage. It’s clear that Jude is searching for someone, and Irene wants to help, perhaps in an attempt to heal her own pain.

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Despite its sci-fi premise, Night Sky’s storylines are grounded in human experience. Themes of mortality and time lost, of anxiety and responsibility, are delicately touched upon throughout, adding texture and emotion to the proceedings. This is most evident across the storyline tracing the evolving relationship between Franklin and Irene and their new neighbor, Byron (Adam Bartley), who abandons both his suspicions of Franklin’s regular trips to the shed and a flawed campaign for city council to aid Franklin in the search for answers about the chamber.

Every episode further entwines the characters’ fates, as well as deepens our understanding of them, as layers are added expertly to an ever-deepening mystery. For one, there’s the matter of a rancher in Argentina, named Stella (Julieta Zylberberg), who harbors a potentially dangerous secret that may have grave repercussions for our main characters.

By the end of the season, little is revealed about the chamber’s origin or ultimate purpose, which is sure to frustrate a lot of viewers. But the beautifully sketched contours of Franklin and Irene’s relationship—their shared sense of history, shaped by an unbearable loss—provides an emotional and dramatic core to the series that more than compensates for the lack of context around the chamber. A couple once forced to accept a horrific reality perhaps now have a last chance at peace, the key to which remains concealed like the chamber itself.

Score: 
 Cast: J. K. Simmons, Sissy Spacek, Chai Hansen, Adam Bartley, Kiah, McKirnan, Julieta Zylberberg, Rocio Hernandez, Cass Buggé, Stephen Louis Grush, Beth Lacke  Network: Amazon

John Townsend

John Townsend's writing has appeared in Starburst Magazine, Washington Post Opinions, and other publications.

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