Science fiction fans around the globe may already be intimately acquainted with the exciting new Netflix original series Tomorrow and I. The Thai show, which premiered all four of its initial episodes earlier this month, has been hailed as a fresh new take on the Black Mirror format, exploring human nature and a variety of different sci-fi technology in each episode. Though it’s still too fresh to have garnered the same audience turnout as Black Mirror, the series’ performances, VFX and setting have already inspired many Netflix subscribers to tune in. Of course, Tomorrow and I offers some truly heady concepts, leaving many fans at a loss for words, especially as each episode unpacks a different harrowing element of the human experience.
Normally, this would be the point where we’d urge you to avert your eyes unless you’ve completed a binge-watch of the entire series. In this case, however, the show operates as a series of disconnected vignettes, almost like a set of four thematically similar feature films. This means you can feel free to read ahead one section at a time as you finish watching each episode since we’ll be keeping spoilers contained to the individual narrative. So, whether you’ve seen the whole show, or just wrapped up a viewing of “Black Sheep,” let’s dive right in, and see what we can learn from the uncanny and eye-opening storylines of Tomorrow And I.
Episode 1: ‘Black Sheep’
The first episode of Tomorrow and I centers on an astronaut named Noon, who works to develop cloning technology aboard the International Space Station. After experiencing a shuttle malfunction upon reentry to Earth one day, Noon tragically dies, effectively stopping her ground-breaking work in its tracks, and leaving her husband, Nont, completely heartbroken. After spending some time fruitlessly trying to heal his heart, Nont eventually begins investigating the possibility of cloning his departed wife, as the couple previously managed to utilize this technology on their beloved dog, Harvey. Nont confers with Noon’s family members and colleagues, each of whom urges him to grieve the natural processes of death without invoking the technology Noon gave her life for. Unable to contain his despair, Nont goes through with the process against their wishes and comes to learn more about his wife than he ever intended in the process.
Nont eventually convinces Noon’s coworker and best friend Vee to assist in the cloning process, though she quickly encounters a series of roadblocks. For starters, the proprietary technology requires a great deal of hands-on editing to move forward. This process sees Vee manually sifting through Noon’s memories, and having to delete or restructure ideas that the computer deems to be conflicting. This includes her work, which is listed as an astronaut and a cardiologist. Vee and Nont make a series of executive decisions about which sets of conflicting information to keep and which to delete when they discover that Noon had been silently suffering from gender dysphoria throughout her entire adult life. She would frequently question her gender identity, and often considered herself to be a man trapped in a woman’s body, but felt unable to express this to her husband or friends.
The discovery of Noon’s gender identity leaves Nont feeling betrayed and overlooked and raises serious ethical questions for the cloning process. Vee and Nont spend some time arguing about whether it would be proper to clone Noon into a man’s body since it would allow them to explore their gender in a more definitive capacity. Though Nont feels that doing so will effectively end his relationship with his spouse, he ultimately gives Vee the green light, and Noon is born anew. Just before the couple can be reunited, however, Nont is arrested and jailed for engaging in human cloning without receiving the express permission of the deceased’s family – and for desecrating Noon’s grave to get a DNA sample. In the end, Noon takes on a new identity under the name Nont, to honor his former husband, and continues his work to advance cloning and medicine.
‘Black Sheep’ Ending Explained
The first episode of Tomorrow and I clearly has a lot to say regarding ethics, cloning and gender identity. While Nont originally seems dismayed at the discovery of his spouse’s hidden gender dysphoria, he ultimately comes to realize that Noon/Nont II’s identity and personhood is worth more on a personal level than their relationship. Nont truly believed that the life he shared with his spouse was as good as it could have been, so it hurts him deeply to confront the reality that the person he married was suffering in silence all that time. After Noon is reborn as Nont II, he manages to find more peace and harmony within himself, which helps to break barriers within his work and make scientific breakthroughs that may have otherwise never been possible.
In a way, Nont’s flagrant disregard for ethics and the law ultimately served to benefit humanity at his own detriment, which could be seen as a penance for having spent most of his adult life basking in the blissful ignorance of his spouse’s needs. “Black Sheep” is a heavy thinker, and more prescient than ever as people all around the globe continue to question their gender identity in 2024 and beyond. At the end of the day, the moral of the episode suggests that living life as your authentic self is always worth it, no matter how it impacts your relationships with the people around you.
Episode 2: ‘Paradistopia’
While the first episode of Tomorrow and I explores sex as it relates to gender, episode two takes aim at sex in relation to intimacy. The episode, aptly titled “Paradistopia,” centers on an up-and-coming entrepreneur named Jessica Harthihill, who intends to change the world with her latest business venture – robot sex workers. Jessica is launching the line of erotic automatons under a business titled Paradise X, which is being funded by several venture capital firms in a futuristic version of Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, she faces major pushback when a puritanical conservative woman named Gemina Lakeville rallies the government to outlaw sex robots. Though the company seemed to be rising exponentially, Lakeville’s influence sees all of Jessica’s capital investors to pull their funding, leaving her business dead in the water.
That is, at least, until Jessica concocts a scheme to get high-ranking government officials and other powerful people in the tech industry under her thumb. Since Jessica is sitting on thousands of unsellable robots, she decides to gift prototypes to every important person in the city, with a message telling them to do as they please with the banned devices. Shortly thereafter, Jessica’s partner in crime, the aptly named Witt Hustler, poses as a whistleblower and publicly claims that Jessica manufactured all of the prototype bots with hidden cameras that record everything on an encrypted feed. Needless to say, this caused a meltdown among the local politicians and businessmen who have been making use of the devices as intended. They each begin frantically calling Jessica to meet her demands. Before long, the ban is lifted, and Jessica is free to manufacture the booty call bots to her heart’s content.
Jessica ultimately goes on to open a club/brothel called The Pleasure Oasis, where clients can rent robots of all varieties to satisfy their salacious needs. Unfortunately, this also means giving in to the most unsavory clientele, including adult men who wish to use robots modeled after small children. The sexual freedom at The Pleasure Oasis goes too far for polite society, and the entire operation is shut down after just a few months. Jessica even winds up going to prison for her role in the moral failing of her surroundings, though the pendulum swings too far in the other direction as the conservative government places a full ban on sexual stimulants and toys of any kind.
‘Paradistopia’ Ending Explained
True to its title, episode two of Tomorrow and I offers a look into a paradise that doubles as a dystopia. Jessica’s attempts to modernize her city and liberate her peers from their sexual repression ultimately see things devolving into a Caligula-esque nightmare where all morals and ethics are eschewed for base pleasures, resulting in harsher restrictions going forward. The episode has a heavy focus on the theme of the vicious cycle, which impacts victims of sexual abuse in the real world all the time. As we learn throughout “Paradistopia,” Jessica’s mother was a sex worker, who callously allowed her clients to sexually assault her daughter from a young age. This traumatic experience holds a deep and lasting impact on Jessica, though she goes about healing herself in all the wrong ways.
Though she is at first presented as a paragon of virtue, designing robots to help people, we ultimately see that Jessica is exclusively in it for the money, no matter who gets hurt. She uses this endless pursuit of wealth to try to heal herself, under a capitalist assumption that she can buy her way into freedom, where nobody can ever take advantage of her again. Instead, she ultimately creates a safe haven for the very creeps and criminals who victimized her in her youth and becomes a prophet to sexual deviants of all stripes.
Episode 3: ‘Buddha Data’
Just when you think Tomorrow and I can’t get any crazier, the show whips out the concept of a religion led by artificial intelligence and keeps you up all night with nightmares of the future. The penultimate episode of the series, “Buddha Data,” follows a Buddhist monk named Anek, who is downtrodden about the state of modern spiritualism. As we learn through the episode, people have left religion behind in recent years due to the existence of a newfound AI, which analyzes religious texts and offers a merit and reward system to users who complete certain tasks. Shortly after this program rolled out, the world’s population became infatuated with earning points and stopped donating to local monasteries. Anek spends months pondering the downfall of the spiritual community and even writes a myriad of complaints to the company that developed the AI.
Eventually, the company responds to one of Anek’s complaints and invites him to meet with the founder. To do so, Anek enlists the assistance of an old classmate named Atom, who now works as an engineer for a high-tech toy company, which also employs the use of AI in some of its products. Atom and Anek eventually sit down with Neo, the founder of the ULTRA AI corporation, and express their grievances. Neo explains that he developed the AI because he had negative personal experiences with monks and monasteries. Apparently, his parents were religious fanatics who donated their life savings to their local monks during Neo’s childhood and eventually committed suicide after losing their last red cent. As Anek explains, no ethical monk would accept such a donation knowing the circumstances, but Neo remains unmoved.
As a gesture of good faith, Neo offers to hire Anek to serve as a spiritual consultant at ULTRA, though the monk ultimately declines. Instead, Anek and Atom work together to develop their own AI software, titled iBuddha, which is intended to restore the faith of the working public. iBuddha users are treated to a suite of options, including an AI monk which can offer spiritual guidance with the tap of a button. The app quickly becomes a smash hit with the public, and even shakes the business model of ULTRA for a time. Unfortunately, iBuddha all comes crashing down when the AI monk makes a lewd gesture to a child, revealing that the monk Anek trained the AI model on had a dark and twisted past before he came to the monastery. When an angry mob shows up to punish the monks, Anek realizes that he has become the very creature he sought to destroy.
‘Buddha Data’ Ending Explained
The third episode of Tomorrow and I is arguably the most overtly anti-capitalist episode of the show, as it showcases the contrasting designs of successful business and spiritual leadership. Anek begins the episode lamenting AI technology and wishing that he could inspire people to put their faith back into religion, though he eventually becomes something of a capitalist himself when his app takes off. As the iBuddha creation got more popular, Anek became a kind of local celebrity and lost sight of his original goal. Worst of all, Anek forgot that all human beings, including monks, are flawed and carry a variety of baggage.
After his meeting with Neo, Anek lashes out, offended by Neo’s perspective about corruption within his local monastery. Instead of understanding that a wide variety of men become monks, Anek puts all of his faith into his superior, only to learn the harsh lesson that his fellow monk was responsible for victimizing children in his past. In the end, Anek leaves the monastery and embarks upon a journey of personal discovery. We don’t know exactly where he’s headed or what he plans to do in the future, though we can assume that app development and AI tech are firmly a part of his past.
Episode 4: ‘Octopus Girl’
The fourth and final episode of Tomorrow And I sees Bangkok inundated with a biblical quantity of rainfall. While this may not sound like a science fiction issue at a glance, the rising waters quickly give way to an apocalyptic event which divides all of Thailand’s society. When the episode first kicks off, rain has already been steadily pouring for two calendar years, causing many Bangkok residents to develop waterborne illnesses. This is especially true of the Neo Khlong Toei area, which sits at a lower altitude than all surrounding towns and is on the verge of complete collapse. The episode centers on a pair of inseparable friends named Pang and Mook, who work together to serve their community as the rain worsens. Pang is a gifted singer, though she is incredibly shy, while Mook tends to be extremely outgoing.
One day, while helping to nurse Mook’s waterborne infection, Pang stumbles across an advertisement for a reality TV program called Singing in the Heavy Rain, which offers national fame and a large payout to winning contestants. At first, Pang is too shy to compete on the show, though she ultimately gives it a shot when Mook points out how much she could help her family if she wins. Once she makes it onto the stage, Pang wows the judges with her incredible voice, making her an instant sensation with the viewers at home. When asked what she would do with her winnings, Pang describes the poverty and illness of her surroundings, which tugs on the heartstrings of the judges and the audience. Apparently, Neo Khlong Toei was meant to be evacuated by the government years earlier, and the upper echelon of society had no idea people were still living there.
Pang’s words strike such a chord with the folks at home that even the nation’s Prime Minister takes note, and immediately decrees that he will build a dome around the Neo Khlong Toei area to shield it from any further rainfall. Unfortunately, before the PM can break ground on the project, the storms worsen, causing Pang’s home to collapse. The Prime Minister visits Pang and Mook at a local homeless shelter to make his commitment clear to his constituency, though in doing so, he accidentally drops his mask, revealing a horrifying mass of tentacles around his mouth. As the public soon comes to learn, the tentacles are a side effect of an experimental new drug that combats waterborne diseases. The wealthy elite and high-ranking government officials have insulated themselves from the general public by hoarding new and untested medicine, which has the unfortunate side effect of growing fish-like features.
The reveal of these tentacles is a massive spectacle to the public, ultimately leading to the PM resigning from his role in disgrace. Pang and Mook are celebrated by their community for raising awareness of Neo Khlong Toei’s plight and are hailed as local heroes. Eventually, the new government does help out with an influx of resources and disaster relief, just in time for the Sun to come out for the first time in nearly three years. Afterward, the residents of Neo Khlong Toei emerge from their homes, hopeful for the future for the first time in a long time.
‘Octopus Girl’ Ending Explained
It’s impossible to discuss the final episode of Tomorrow and I without highlighting the obvious parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown period of 2020. Much like the real-life pandemic, members of the global elite snubbed their nose at the plight of the working man and left those with the most economic uncertainty to fend for themselves. In the years since the COVID lockdowns occurred, populations all over the globe have seen shifting political climates and unrest due to the growing economic divide between the billionaire class and the poor. This is best demonstrated in the episode by the fact that the general public of Thailand had no idea that people were still living in Neo Khlong Toei, despite the fact that residents of the area had been struggling and destitute for years.
It’s also worth noting that “Octopus Girl” is the only episode of Tomorrow and I in which the main characters are morally unambiguous, and remain true to their initial goals since day one. Maybe the series is arguing that poverty instills a better sense of ethics than wealth – or maybe the writers simply intended to highlight the fact that those who struggle every day lack the basic mobility necessary to take a dramatic pivot towards self-fulfillment. Either way, the episode caps off the first season of Tomorrow and I with a rare hopeful note, suggesting that humanity will persevere through struggles such as global warming and class warfare, so long as we never lose hope. The Netflix original offers a good sense of what’s most important, as the show frequently highlights togetherness, community and personal freedom over things like wealth and fame.
