Why can't people sleep anymore? Here are some answers to the sci-fi thriller's biggest questions.
What happens when everyone in the world loses the ability to fall asleep? We all go crazy, according to Netflix's Awake, a sci-fi thriller starring Gina Rodriguez as a mother protecting her children during an "extinction event." In case you missed the flick's explanation of how the world got to this situation, here are some answers, including what lies ahead after that hopeful end.
Why do cars stop working when the power is cut?
We first see the power cut that sets off events while Jill (Rodriguez) is driving. He, Noah and Matilda listen in motion on the radio, then it crackles and shuts down. Several cars swerve into the road and Jill slams the brakes, only to have another car smash them into a nearby lake. "Anything with a microchip is fried," says a cop later. Cars use semiconductor, small but important chips for fuel injection, infotainment systems and cruise control. The first microprocessor chips were installed in cars in the early 80s. Men in the garage find a Dodge Polara, first introduced in the early '60s, fitting it with an old battery and getting it working again. "We need an older car, no electric," says one of them.
Why can't Matilda sleep?
After leaving the lake, Jill and Noah see Matilda already on the shore, where police officers perform CPR and revive her. The sheriff says she was "out for a minute" and she will be fine. Of course, Matilda later learns that at that minute, she was actually dead. But the new rules of the world saw him come back to life with the ability to fall asleep. "Maybe I've started." Basically, the solution to the sleep problem is a factory reset: turn itself off and on again.
How does Murphy die?
Initially, Matilda demonstrates that you should "always blow the air out" with a syringe before her grandmother Doris uses one. Later, at the Military Hub, Dr. Katz saves Matilda from being used by using a syringe to inject Jennifer Jason Leigh's Major Murphy without clearing the air first. According to Healthline, "These air bubbles can travel to your brain, heart or lungs and cause heart attack, stroke or respiratory failure." It's not clear which of these Murphys hurts when they fall - we know for sure that she isn't getting up.
Where is Jill's husband?
Photos on the roof of Doris' house show Jill's wedding with her husband in military uniform. Later, when Dodge asks Noah what happened to his father, Noah says, "He died in battle."
Why doesn't Jill have custody of her children?
When Doris asks Jill for sleep medication, Jill replies, "I don't do that anymore. You know the judge said I wasn't allowed." Doris implies that Jill must have used the drugs herself, "Well, I guess if you're awake you're not really using it." Jill's troubled past (and present) explains why the children live with their grandmother.
Was Jill in the Army?
Yes. When Jill is caught spying around Murphy's office for sleeping pills and a soldier holds her, she exclaims, "I'm 68 Whiskey. Corporal Adams. Off Fort Huachuca."
How do Jill and Murphy know each other?
Jill Murphy, a psychotherapist whose specialization is sleep, for getting a job as a security guard at an unnamed university. Jill later tells her son Noah that she and Murphy have served together in the military overseas. "In the desert, Murphy would help set the parameters for the interrogation. Lack of sleep, it was torture," Jill explains, "they killed people." No wonder Jill can't trust Murphy with Matilda.
Why does Jill want to go to the Hub?
Despite knowing what Murphy is capable of, Jill learns that she must rescue a woman being held at the Hub who may also be asleep. Jill needs her because otherwise Matilda will have no one to look after her when she dies.
Why the firing on Military Hub?
Murphy explains that soldiers inject a cocktail that helps with mental acuity, but also causes some neurological damage. After six days, the soldiers begin to hallucinate. A soldier sees what he believes to be a grenade, but is actually a pinecone. Soldiers begin to shoot into thin air - and then at each other.
What is the cause of sleeplessness?
While Jill is in custody at the hub, Murphy begins to talk about the sleeplessness. "It was some sort of solar flare," she says, continuing, "that it changed our electromagnetic wiring. It affected our glymphatic system. It messed with our clocks."
Let's break all that. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, "Solar flares are large bursts of energy emanating from the Sun that contain many different forms of energy: heat, magnetic energy, and ionizing radiation." So that ionizing radiation, which can damage satellites, made it through the Earth's atmosphere, which normally protects us. Magnetic energy disrupted everything from radios to our electromagnetic wiring.
What are our electromagnetic wires? By a simple definition, "You are an electric field—a huge electric field that holds your atoms together, and that uses other electric fields to talk to other bits of itself." As for your glymphatic system, according to NeuronLine, "the glymphatic system is a network of vessels that clear waste from the central nervous system (CNS), mostly during sleep." This explains the acceleration of everyone descending into madness.
What happens to Noah?
When Noah cut a wire believing it to be a fish, which his father had taught him about how to break bones, he was severely electrocuted. Jill attempts to revive him with a defibrillator, but because he and Matilda are touching him and each other, electric current passes through them all, reducing the shock needed to restart Noah's heart. or it can be jerked back to its correct rhythm.
Does Jill survive?
After the children guess that they must kill their mother in order to start all over again, they drown her. They try to revive him using CPR chest compressions. When the screen goes black, we hear Jill gasping, confirming that she comes back to life. Now that the Addams family has figured out how to restart everyone's "clocks," they can undoubtedly use Jill's military contacts to spread the word and save the world.