Rose's Vision About The Ancestor & Its True Nature In The Rig Season 2 Explained

Warning! SPOILERS about The Rig season 2, episode 6 ahead.

The Ancestor has been The Rig’s central mystery ever since the Kinloch Bravo crew discovered it, but season 2 finally provided answers about the entity. The Rig season 2 proved Rose, Magnus and the rest of the crew had bigger issues than the Ancestor, as Coake and Bremner were cagey about their real objectives, and they also didn’t know whether they could trust Morgan Lennox. Even with The Rig’s characters dealing with the challenges from Pictor as they arose, the Ancestor nonetheless proved something that needed to be understood, given that its attacks put the crew in danger multiple times.

The Ancestor’s behavior was as difficult to figure out in The Rig season 2 as it was in season 1. Thanks to the Ancestor, characters who would have died survived, and in the case of Fulmer, it wasn’t temporary, as he was alive by The Rig season 2’s ending. Similarly, Rose survived a fatal gunshot wound because she came in contact with the Ancestor, essentially making the Ancestor the reason for her survival. Still, the Ancestor attacked the probe with Ross and Easter in and even attacked Magnus, Askel, Heather and Murchison from under the ice, making its behavior puzzling.

Rose Has A Vision That Confirms The Ancestor Isn't Responsible For Causing Mass Extinctions

The Ancestor Represented The Mass Extinctions In Its Ring-like Structure

The Rig season 2, episode 6 opened with Fulmer and Magnus believing Rose to be dead after Bremner shot her, but her wound regenerating by itself not only revealed she had infected herself with the Ancestor but also how the entity saved her. However, its power coursing through Rose also let her have a vision about the Ancestor’s Heart. Unlike Fulmer’s, Rose’s vision showed the potential death of the Ancestor, as its heart was surrounded by poison, foreshadowing its death if Darian’s plan went ahead. Rose’s vision also finally revealed the truth about the Ancestor’s connection to mass extinction events.

The Rig season 1 already established the Ancestor’s structure as mirroring the five mass extinction events it survived, but a massive question that the inaugural season didn’t answer was whether that meant the Ancestor caused the mass extinction events or just survived them. Rose’s vision gave the Kinloch Bravo crew an answer about the entity they were trying to protect, confirming that the Ancestor didn’t cause the mass extinction events. This new knowledge made the Ancestor’s actions in season 1 make sense, as it was trying to bring life to the rig via the plants and stop the oil extraction.

What The Ancestor Actually Is & Its Real Purpose Explained

The Ancestor Always Protected Life At All Cost

Rose worked out that the Ancestor had lived for millions of years in The Rig season 1. However, the vision she got as the Ancestor regenerated her tissues after the gunshot wound finally gave her an answer about its role. Indeed, every ring marked by the Ancestor highlighted a mass extinction event, but it did so as the Ancestor was responsible for life growing back after it, preserving it and letting it go on. Learning the truth made Rose even surer of her need to protect the Ancestor, something she believed in both seasons of the Amazon Original TV show.

The Ancestor’s drive to preserve life motivated all its actions in The Rig seasons 1 and 2, not distinguishing between its own and the life of those on the rig. While it imperiled the Kinloch Bravo crew in both seasons, the Ancestor did so to defend itself, in season 1 from oil extraction and poison pumping, and in season 2 from the rovers sent on the seafloor to find its heart. Communicating with the Ancestor via the recording of its cry for help finally ensured a way the Kinloch Bravo crew could defend itself from the Ancestor without hurting it.

What The Ancestor Revealing Itself To The World Means For The Rig Season 3

Pictor Is Defeated But Others Might Not Welcome The Ancestor’s Discovery

The Kinloch Bravo crew finally succeeding in revealing the Ancestor’s secret to the world without having to bear witness effectively defeated Pictor in an undeniable way, after the company did its worst to protect itself, including contributing to The Rig’s multiple deaths. Although Pictor cannot try to cover up everything related to the Ancestor anymore, it’s unclear whether the general public will react to the Ancestor’s existence by protecting it like the Kinloch Bravo crew tried to do or attacking it in a bid to destroy it, following Pictor’s MO.

Even if the general public were to react positively to the Ancestor, The Rig season 2’s last scene made it evident how multiple governments treated the Ancestor as a threat. Between the satellite pointing to the Stac and the voices identifying it as a “facility at the anomaly origin point,” it’s clear some will react defensively to the Ancestor and the Kinloch Bravo crew who made the discovery possible, hinting at their future in a potential The Rig season 3 involving attempts to protect the Ancestor together with explanations about its true nature.

The Rig

TV-MA

Drama

Science Fiction

Supernatural

Thriller

16

7.7/10

Release Date

January 6, 2023

The Rig is a supernatural thriller series exclusively for Amazon Prime Video that centers on a Scottish Oil rig. When the crewmates of the Kinloch Bravo are set to return to mainland Scottland, a mysterious fog rolls in that cuts all communication with the outside world. Now finding themselves on the edge of sanity from an assault of supernatural forces, the crew must overcome their paranoia and fear to survive the unknown.

Cast

Emily Hampshire, Iain Glen, Martin Compston, Mark Bonnar, Rochenda Sandall, Owen Teale

Writers

David Macpherson, Matthew Jacobs Morgan, Meg Salter

Main Genre

Thriller

Number of Episodes

6

Seasons

2

Website

https://www.amazon.com/The-Rig-Season-1/dp/B0B8S5JDDC

Production Company

Wild Mercury Productions, Amazon Studios

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