Warning: Spoilers ahead for the season one finale of "Altered Carbon."
Netflix's new sci-fi series "Altered Carbon" takes audiences through several twists and turns in a dystopian future. The first season begins with a murder mystery as Laurens Bancroft hires Takeshi Kovacs to investigate his own (Bancroft's) death.
Bancroft is a Meth, the most powerful class in this futuristic world, which means he has back-ups and clones of himself and is effectively immortal. But he wanted to know who tried to have him killed regardless of how unsuccessful the crime wound up being.
On the eighth episode, Tak makes a big show of accusing Ms. Prescott (Bancroft's lawyer) of the murder. But we knew all along Tak was simply setting someone up. So what really happened?
Rei is eventually revealed as the true villain of "Altered Carbon," and we learn that she manipulated Bancroft into killing a young woman. Rei then blackmailed Bancroft into derailing proposed legislation, and he decided to kill himself before his scheduled backup kicked in, allowing him to literally forget the incident.
But in order to fully understand how Bancroft's "suicide" was connected to the mysterious Mary-Lou Henchy (and therefore tied to Ryker and Ortega), we'll have to start at the beginning.
Tak and Rei's time with the Envoys and the fallout
Takeshi, or Tak, and Rei grew up in an abusive household. Their father murdered their mother and covered up the crime, and Tak killed their father in retaliation. Then the two children were then found by CTAC — the Colonial Tactical Assault Corp (Protectorate military soldiers).
A CTAC officer named Jaeger convinced Tak that he should join their force, and that Rei would be safer if he let her be adopted into another home. Tak agreed, and spent his formative years training as a CTAC soldier. During one raid assignment, Tak realizes that he's been sent to arrest (and/or kill) a man who is working with Rei.
Upon seeing each other, Tak and Rei immediately turned on their partners — killing both the man with Rei and all the CTAC officers who were with Tak. That meant they both had to go on the run or risk being imprisoned.
The siblings went into the forest, and found Quell Falconer's Envoy rebellion at a base camp called Stronghold.
Rei was hesitant to join the group (who were fighting against the ruling class). But she was committed to never leaving Tak's side again, and so the two trained with Quell and learned how to be super-soldier Envoys together.
Tak and Quell eventually fell in love, but right as their relationship was solidifying — and Rei had found out about it — the Envoy camp was attacked by CTAC.
Tak believed both Rei and Quell were dead
Tak, Rei, and Quell were all outside of the range of the deadly digital virus deployed among the rebellion. Tak told Rei and Quell to escape together while he tried to hold off the attackers.
What Tak didn't know at the time was that Rei was wildly envious of his relationship with Quell. She hated that it diverted his attention and loyalty away from her, so she killed Quell by blowing up their escape jet. Rei was also convinced that Quell's rebellion was doomed, and so Rei thought she was saving Tak's life by ending the rebellion.
In exchange for her betrayal, Rei was given backup storage, clones, and plenty of money by CTAC.
On the finale of "Altered Carbon," Rei told Tak that she also created a digital backup of Quell, but hid the device somewhere he'd never find on his own. That means Quell is theoretically "alive" out in the universe somewhere.
Tak was devastated by what he thought was the death of both his sister and the love of his life. He went into hiding, and presumably became a black market criminal. By the time we saw him in a new sleeve during the opening scenes of "Altered Carbon," the CTAC team had been searching for him for years.
But Rei survived and went on to become a powerful Meth
Rei's betrayal of the Envoy rebellion was the first big step in her turn to becoming a Meth. She dedicated her life to becoming a wealthy influencer who could deploy minions and find her brother again.
The way Rei made her money was through sex-trade: Prostitution and strip clubs. The worst version of this was the Head in the Clouds satellite facility that was based in the skies above Bay City.
One of the "offerings" Rei provided at Head in the Clouds was essentially murder. Her wealthy clients who enjoyed beating, torturing, and/or killing prostitutes would be given a sex worker who didn't realize they would actually be dying.
How Rei used coding technology to help murder prostitutes — and why that connects to Tak, Ortega, and Laurens' suicide
On "Altered Carbon," anyone's consciousness is coded and stored on "stacks." A person's stack is placed in their spine, right at the base of the neck. If your stack is damaged beyond repair, it means you actually die — which is called "real death" or RD on the show.
But if your body is simply damaged (for example if you're shot in the chest or sustain other fatal injuries, also called "sleeve death"), then your stack can be inserted into a new sleeve/body.
There are people in Bay City who don't believe in having their consciousness moved from sleeve to sleeve though. Lieutenant Ortega told Tak that the Neo-Cs (Neo-Catholics) think your soul won't go to heaven if you choose to have your stack spun up in a new sleeve.
So Neo-Cs will have a digital code place into their stack that tells doctors or police officers to leave them dead — similar to how a "Do Not Resuscitate" order works in a hospital.
Rei was putting the Neo-C coding onto the prostitutes' stacks without their knowledge. Which means that when they entered a room with a client who wanted to get off on killing another person, they believed they would die but wake up in a new body.
Instead, the sex workers were actually being murdered because their stacks would show coding saying they wished to remain dead.
Religious people and some lawmakers began pushing a new initiative known as 653 — a new law that would pass and allow murder victims to be spun back up, regardless of religious coding.
Because Rei has been illegally adding the religious coding to the prostitutes she hires, she needed 653 to fail. That's where Bancroft came in.
Rei conspired to have Bancroft drugged and seduced into murdering a prostitute
Bancroft had a fetish for rape and murder simulation. He didn't want to degrade his own wife, Miriam, so instead he would often visit brothels or strip joints and pay for services. Bancroft believed he had a "line" he would never cross — RD'ing a woman.
But Bancroft accidentally got one of the women pregnant: Lizzie.
When Lizzie came to Bancroft's house to tell him, Miriam met her and assaulted her. Lizzie lost the baby as a result of the attack, and Miriam called the family lawyer, Ms. Prescott, and told her to arrange a "fixer."
Prescott contacted Rei, who had Lizzie put through one of her own torture facilities until she went mentally insane. Then they dumped her body.
This gave Rei leverage over Miriam, so she asked Miriam to drug her own husband with an aggressor enhancement called Stallion. Hopped up on Stallion and furious after a business deal gone wrong, Bancroft went to Head in the Clouds and Rei gave him two prostitutes.
He murdered one by destroying her stack while having violent sex with her. The other women was Mary-Lou Henchy.
Mary-Lou was one of Rei's sex workers who was killed after Bancroft scared her
Throughout "Altered Carbon," the mysterious death of Mary-Lou Henchy was connected to Laurens Bancroft's death. Mary-Lou worked in Head in the Clouds, and Rei had placed the Neo-C coding into her stack without telling her.
But Mary-Lou got spooked Bancroft and jumped from the satellite building. She fell to her death and landed in the water near Bay City.
When the Bay City Police Department retrieved her body, they saw that she was marked as Neo-C and left her dead. Mary-Lou was a childhood friend of Ryker — Ortega's boyfriend and fellow police officer.
Ryker was apparently an unstable kind of guy, but Mary-Lou's death sent him over the edge.
He drove himself crazy trying to figure out why she would have converted to Neo-C without telling him. Rei eventually had Ryker framed for a murder, and he was put away into storage to serve out his jail time.
Rei blackmailed Bancroft and he killed himself out of shame
After Bancroft RD'ed a sex worker, Rei went to him and convinced him to help persuade the UN to derail the 653 law proposal that would allow people like her to be spun back up in the event of a murder (regardless of any Neo-C religious coding).
Bancroft did as Rei told, but was so ashamed of his actions that he killed his sleeve before his 48 hour backup kicked in. He wanted to lose all the shameful memories of killing a woman and subsequently using his Meth influence to keep the law from changing.
He truly had no memory of the incident, and believed he was murdered. But the Bay City Police Department — and Ortega specifically — refused to investigate the "crime" any further. This irritated Bancroft to no end, and so he sought the expertise of a private investigator.
Rei convinced Bancroft to hire Tak, and Ryker's sleeve was picked
Rei saw Bancroft's complicated situation (which she manufactured) as the perfect way of getting to Tak.
Tak had been sealed tightly by CTAC, but Rei new Bancroft was a powerful enough Meth to get him released from storage. Rei used other sleeves to disguise herself and act as an advisor to Bancroft, and tell him to hire Tak.
Bancroft chose to put Tak into Ryker's sleeve just as a way of messing with Ortega. Rei had no way of knowing that the Ryker sleeve would cause additional complications for Tak.
She sent out Dimi and other minions to get Tak and bring him to her, but didn't realize Dimi or his twin would torture Tak or confuse him for Ryker.
Rei believed Tak would live by her side in the empire she had created — but she underestimated how heartbroken he would be by her initial betrayal of the Envoys. Tak killed Rei during the final minutes of season one, but not before she told him that Quell had been backed up before she died.
This means her stack is somewhere in the galaxy, if only Tak can find her.
The "Altered Carbon" finale ends with Miriam and Laurens Bancroft in jail
By the end of the first season, Bancroft is arrested for the murder of the young prostitute he killed while on Stallion. Miriam is also arrested for her attack on Lizzie Elliot and she's outed as Rei's accomplice in Bancroft's drugging.
Tak had double-sleeved himself in order to trick Rei, but he has to kill one of the sleeves. We don't see exactly which one survives, but he tells Ortega it's the one who she said goodbye to.
The finale sets up several intriguing storylines that can be followed in a potential second season. Tak is planning on turning in Ryker's sleeve, which means his relationship with Ortega is likely over. Will Ortega and Ryker be able to pick up where they left off?
Will Tak get his original sleeve back, or will we see yet another actor playing Takeshi Kovacs in the future?
Is Quell really "alive" out there, just waiting for her stack to be found and placed into a new body? Can Tak find her? We'll have to wait and see. For more on "Altered Carbon,"follow INSIDER's coverage here.
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