DISCLAIMER: This recap of Constellation Season 1 Episode 1, “The Wounded Angel,” contains spoilers. Proceed at your peril.
Constellation is finally on Apple TV+ with its first three episodes. Noomi Rapace dazzles and captivates in “The Wounded Angel,” proving why she’s one of the most underrated talents in the entertainment industry.
The episode is a mind-bending, genre-bending thriller — an amalgam of science fiction and mystery that perfectly balances high-octane action and drama. It effectively lays the groundwork for what’s to come while planting seeds of narrative intrigue along the way. Color me curious.
It’s reminiscent of the early seasons of For All Mankind, particularly in Seasons 1 and 2, when any space mission would go awry. There’s a conspiracy afoot, too. It’s not a perfect pilot, but it’s certainly one of the better ones of late.
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Vindelälven, Northern Sweden
We open with Jo Ericsson (Rapace) driving her daughter, Alice (Davina and Rosie Coleman), through a wintry, desolate landscape. A tape player sits in the passenger seat, playing a recording of a frantic woman speaking in Russian. Said woman claims the conditions are worsening and that her capsule is on fire. Alice asks if Jo can turn up the heat. Jo informs her that it’s broken and to “snuggle down.”
CONSTELLATION Season 1 Episode 1, “The Wounded Angel.” Photo courtesy of Apple TV+.
Additionally, we see a NASA container housing an inexplicable blue glowing substance. Alice wonders what the Russian woman is saying on the tape. Jo offers a lie before spotting a “Polis” vehicle behind them. It turns on its sirens. Jo silently panics, seemingly assuming it will pull her over. However, the vehicle passes them. Jo lets out a sigh of relief. Then, Alice asks about her father. What happened to him?
Jo parks in front of a remote cabin in the snowy woods. Once inside, Jo notices the heat doesn’t work. Alice notices a painting that features two men carrying an angel on a stretcher. Then, she claims she wants to hear a story, but not one from a book. Instead, Alice asks her mom for the iPad. Alice opens it, seeing her mom up in space with the European Space Agency (ESA) as she recites a fantastical tale. Meanwhile, Jo ventures outside, lantern in hand, to store a backpack with the glowing NASA container in a shed.
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Jo hears what sounds like Alice calling out to her. However, Alice is still in the cabin. Still, Jo walks out onto the expanse of land before her, hoping to find the source of that voice.
Cologne, Germany, Five Weeks Earlier
We rewind time five weeks ago, wherein Magnus Taylor (James D’Arcy) is at home with Alice. Alice chats with Jo, who’s on the International Space Station (ISS), on an iPad. Jo is supposed to go on a spacewalk that day. She floats about the station, allowing Alice to greet her fellow astronauts. We meet Yaz (Sandra Teles), Audrey (Carole Weyers), Ilya (Henry David) and Commander Paul Lancaster (Will Catlett).
Lancaster’s conducting an experiment with a CAL device for the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (RPL) in Pasadena, California. Commander Henry Caldera (Jonathan Banks) communicates with Lancaster from there. Henry orders his team to tune the lasers. Alice asks her mom what this experiment and the device Lancaster is tinkering with will do. Jo reveals it’ll look for a new state of matter. Looking closely, it appears Lancaster has the same container as Jo with the luminous blue substance.
CONSTELLATION Season 1 Episode 1, “The Wounded Angel.” Photo courtesy of Apple TV+.
A Terrible Collision
We see the container glow after Henry gives the okay to start the experiment. Suddenly, the alarm blares. An unseen force rips through the station, blasting Lancaster. The aftermath of the explosion knocks him against the wall. At RPL, they lose the live stream connection to ISS. Alice notices she loses a connection to her mother, too. Magnus asks Alice if everything’s alright. Alice reveals that Jo “is gone.”
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Meanwhile, various equipment flies through the station as it loses pressure. One implement stabs Lancaster in the arm, pinning him to the wall. He tries to pull it out. Everyone attempts to avoid getting struck by the debris. Jo loses her grip on the iPad as Alice screams for her. Once the station somewhat stabilizes, Jo contacts Houston. At NASA Mission Control in Houston, Texas, Commander Michaela Moyone (Chipo Chung) responds to Jo, informing her that the ISS has depressurized. She orders the crew to gather in the Soyuz 1 capsule for an evacuation.
Then, we see a fire erupt, impeding the crew’s access to Soyuz 1. It entraps Ilya, but he’s able to extinguish it. Jo asks for a crew roll call to ensure everyone’s okay. That’s when Lancaster reveals he’s stuck. While flying toward Lancaster, Jo tells Houston that they’re losing oxygen.
Time for a Spacewalk
She and Audrey tend to Lancaster, who’s pinned by the arm. He’s covering the depress. Jo feels they should tourniquet him there, as he’s moving in and out of consciousness. They get him on oxygen and prepare to amputate his arm. Houston contacts Jo again, revealing she and Ilya must complete their spacewalk to repair the life support systems and assess any damage to Soyuz 1. There is the Soyuz 2 capsule, but it can only house three people.
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Meanwhile, Magnus and Alice ride their bikes to the ESA in Cologne. Alice attends school and reunites with her friend, Wendy (Sadie Sweet), who’s Commander Lancaster’s daughter. Wendy claims she had a nightmare again. Mangus heads to class, where he’s a teacher. Elsewhere, Henry inquires about CAL, revealing that the CAL would’ve collected data within two-millionths of a second upon deployment of the lasers. He wants the team to create a retrieval plan for that data.
We see Major Irena Lysenko (Barbara Sukowa) of Roscosmos, Michaela and Commander Frederic Duverger (Julian Looman), Head of the ESA, join a video call to discuss the accident. Henry discovers a double-quantum signal from CAL, which looks promising. The other three note the severe collision on the ISS and the need for an evacuation.
Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 2
In space, Jo and Ilya prepare for their spacewalk while Audrey stays with Lancaster. Houston hands Jo and Ilya over to Roscosmos, who will oversee said spacewalk. Then, we meet Sergei (Lenn Kudrjawizki) at Roscosmos Mission Control in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Irena watches from above while Sergei directs Jo and Ilya on what to do. Upon inspection, Ilya notes that Soyuz 2 suffered superficial damage, but its systems are intact.
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After amputating Lancaster’s arm, Yaz and Audrey tend to him in the station. Meanwhile, Henry tries to ensure the CAL data accompanies the astronauts as they evacuate. They won’t have this chance again to collect it. They’ve discovered another state of matter that can only exist in zero gravity. The others disagree, though, asserting they should leave it alone. An experiment doesn’t take precedence over human lives.
CONSTELLATION Season 1 Episode 1, “The Wounded Angel.” Photo courtesy of Apple TV+.
Seeing Corpses
Then, Sergei instructs Jo to head to the truss to fix secondary life support. Otherwise, there won’t be oxygen or power for Soyuz 1‘s repair. Inside the station, Lancaster goes into cardiac arrest. Audrey performs chest compressions to stabilize him. While at the truss, Jo gets the shock of her life: a female corpse wearing an orange USSR cosmonaut uniform flies toward her after she frees it. That’s what collided with the station and started all this — a corpse.
Jo leaps toward the body, hoping to catch it. Ilya pulls her back in. Upon Jo delivering this development, we see Irena’s face fall. She knows something.
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Unfortunately, Lancaster dies. RIP. While RPL, ESA, NASA and Roscosmos learn of the news, Henry holds a yellow and red pill in his hand, seemingly contemplating whether to take it. Afterward, the crew secures Lancaster’s body in Soyuz 1. The new game plan is to send Yaz, Audrey and Ilya home on Soyuz 2 while Jo stays behind to repair Soyuz 1. Jo puts Ilya in charge of their mission back to Earth. She urges him to watch over Magnus and Alice should anything happen to her.
Jo Is Alone
On Earth, Magnus and Alice are alerted of Jo’s status. They prepare to hop on a plane to Roscosmos Mission Control. While Magnus and Alice are on the plane, they run into Wendy and her mother, Frida (Rebecca Scroggs). Magnus encourages Wendy to sit with Alice while he embraces Frida, offering his condolences. Alice gives her friend her stuffed rabbit for comfort. Aw, and Wendy mentioned she was having nightmares…
Later, we learn Jo will have 19 hours worth of oxygen and life support to repair Soyuz 1. However, she’ll have the above every 45 minutes in the station because of nightfall. When it’s nighttime, oxygen will only be available in Soyuz 1. Before she does anything, though, Jo retrieves Alice’s necklace. Night strikes, so Jo hunkers down for 45 minutes before launching into repair mode. She sits beside Lancaster’s body.
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Then, Jo watches a video of young Alice playing in the snow. She also draws what the dead female cosmonaut looked like on her iPad. She emails it to the heads of NASA, ESA and Roscosmos. After the 45-minute wait/night period, Jo begins fixing Soyuz 1. At RPL, Henry chats with Irena, reminding her she’s in charge of Jo’s evacuation. He wants Jo to take the CAL with her. Henry insists that something in the six seconds it was running could change everything. “To you, to me, [and] my brother,” he adds.
CONSTELLATION Season 1 Episode 1, “The Wounded Angel.” Photo courtesy of Apple TV+.
A Successful Landing
Before Irena hangs up on him, Henry begs her to send the retrieval plan. Irena opens the email from Jo with her rendering of the cosmonaut. Meanwhile, we see Ilya, Yaz and Audrey entering Earth’s atmosphere. The trio lands successfully. Irena returns to her office, where she, too, takes a yellow and red pill. Hmm. Methinks Henry, his brother and Irena were astronauts back in their day. They were potentially exposed to something space-related that made them sick, and the CAL data could point to a cure.
While en route to Roscosmos Mission Control, Alice tells Magnus that she knows he and Jo are experiencing friction in their relationship. She hopes they can work through it. When they arrive, Sergei reveals Jo is ready to talk to them. Unfortunately, they lose connection with ISS again.
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It becomes “night” again, so Jo resorts to working by the light of her iPad and flashlight. She hears an incessant knocking. She flies toward it, keen on finding the source of the thumping. We see her float past that container with the glowing blue matter, which was part of the CAL experiment. She puts on an oxygen mask.
The Hallway
Suddenly, the station’s winding passageways transform into a building hallway. A flashlight appears. Realizing the air is breathable, Jo removes her oxygen mask. She walks toward a cupboard at the end of said hallway. The handle has Alice’s necklace on it. Then, she finds herself back in the space station.
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Next, we return to Northern Sweden, wherein Jo searches the vast, snowy expanse for Alice, who’s calling out for “Mama.” However, the scene has a dreamy, blurry quality, indicating it could be a dream sequence of sorts. Jo reenters the cabin to find it looks pretty different. There’s less furniture. There’s a dead cat on the ground. It almost looks like it boasts furnishings not from this period. The picture on the wall now has a demon-like creature being carried on the stretcher by two men instead of a wounded angel.
CONSTELLATION Season 1 Episode 1, “The Wounded Angel.” Photo courtesy of Apple TV+.
A Reunion
Then, Jo ventures upstairs, where she finds another cupboard with Alice’s necklace on the handle. She hears the same banging noise. This time, Jo finds Alice inside. Alice shivers uncontrollably. Jo embraces her daughter.
“Where have you been?” Alice asks.
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Do you think the final scenes were all in Jo’s mind, or did we return to the “five weeks later” segment from the beginning of the episode? Do the banging noises and Alice’s necklace signify Jo’s fear of losing her daughter? What affliction do Henry and Irena have? Why did Jo hide that NASA container in the shed? Only time (and more episodes) will tell.
Constellation drops new episodes every Wednesday on Apple TV+.
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Melody.McCune@geekgirlauthority.com
What I do: I'm GGA's Managing Editor, a Senior Contributor, and Press Coordinator. I manage, contribute, and coordinate. Sometimes all at once. Joking aside, I oversee day-to-day operations for GGA, write, edit, and assess interview opportunities/press events.
Who I am: Before moving to Los Angeles after studying theater in college, I was born and raised in Amish country, Ohio. No, I am not Amish, even if I sometimes sport a modest bonnet.
Bylines in: Tell-Tale TV, Culturess, Sideshow Collectibles, and inkMend on Medium.
Critic: Rotten Tomatoes, CherryPicks, and the Hollywood Creative Alliance.
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