Things you might have missed while bingeing on Maniac
Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for Netflix’s “Maniac.”
If you spent your weekend binge-watching all 10 episodes of “Maniac,” Netflix’s trippy new miniseries starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, you wouldn’t be alone in wondering what the heck you actually just watched.
The series is fantastic but sometimes obtuse. You can watch it for more emotional and surface-level enjoyment, and you’d be thoroughly satisfied by Annie (Stone) and Owen’s (Hill) journeys. But if you like picking apart puzzles, you can analyze the 10 episodes the way we used to put “Lost” under a microscope.
If you’re interested in some of the Easter eggs, pop-culture references and deeper meanings behind “Maniac,” we’ve rounded up the big details you might have missed. (No pills or computer simulations required.)
There’s something fishy about the ending
Fans are debating (especially on this in-depth Reddit thread) whether the ending takes place in the “real world,” or whether Annie and Owen were still inside GRTA.
Even though it might seem obvious that Annie and Owen escape the mental hospital and eventually run away from New York together, a number of clues suggest their world may not be real, that they are brain-dead “McMurphies” stuck inside the computer (the label is a reference to the lobotomized protagonist of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”).
There’s evidence suggesting it’s a simulation: The cars that Dr. Fujita (Sonoya Mizuno) and Dr. Mantleray (Justin Theroux) approach in the parking garage are the same ones that Owen drove in his fantasies as Bruce (in the lemur heist fantasy) and as gangster Owen (in the Mob fantasy). The override code Fujita uses in the lab is “5-6-7-8,” the same as the second code in the fur store during the lemur fantasy. When the pair drive off together, they are followed by a hawk, which might be from the fantasy, along with Annie’s dog and a poop robot.
Fans have pointed out that when Annie signs in at the mental hospital to break out Owen, a patient name on the sign-in sheet reads “Wendy Lumeria,” referring to Wendy the Lemur from the fantasy lemur heist. It’s unclear whether Annie wrote that entry herself (suggesting real life) or if it was already there (indicating a simulation), because we only see her writing the entry below it, when she’s faking that her husband is already inside. The sheet also includes their fake names from that fantasy, and Annie puts on the accent from it, which again suggests that she is just using the fantasy as inspiration.
The numbers are more meaningful than they appear
In the study, Owen is assigned the number “1” and Annie the number “9,” and those numbers pop up over and over again. Some fans have pointed out that both numbers can be written using letters from the character names. The numbers also pop up in the licence plate of the fantasy cars, which incorporate letters from their names: O19 91A. And in the lemur fantasy, Owen is wearing a jersey with the number “1.”
There’s something ‘Alien’ here
Several references to the beloved “Alien” franchise pop up in “Maniac,” including its overall retro-futuristic vibe and more specific visual cues. The table in the patients’ common room is the spitting image of the dinner table from “Alien.” The patches for the ULP uniforms are also strikingly similar to the Nostromo patches the “Alien” characters wear.