'Another Life' season 2 could shed light on the new AI born of Niko and William's creepy toxic relationship
The first season of ‘Another Life’ brought in a lot of drama and a lot of wackiness but one of the weirdest parts of the season was seeing the Salvare’s onboard Artificial Intelligence William (Samuel Anderson) essentially give birth to a new AI. Everything about this new character, played by Jessica Sipos, is a bit on the confusing side of things, including her relation to William and Commander Niko Breckinridge (Katee Sackhoff).
Throughout the first season, we saw William slowly falling in love with Niko. One might see this as inevitable because the AI was programmed to give Niko everything she desires, including, as it turns out, disturbingly interactive pornography.
William and Niko’s relationship came to a head when the Commander, high on drugs and missing her husband Erik Wallace (Justin Chatwin), asked the AI to take Erik’s form so she could relive a romantic night with her husband. The next day, Niko was understandably embarrassed by her actions and asked William to delete his memories of the incident.
Not only did Niko essentially use William for sex, but her subsequent coldness also causes the AI to experience an emotional crisis that forces him to temporarily shut down, endangering the ship and almost allowing a mind-controlled Sasha Harrison (Jake Abel) to kill everyone on board. Although Sasha was stopped and the Achaian implant used to control him neutralized, William did not entirely get over his feelings for Niko.
This emotional conflict causes him to create a new AI program designed to look and behave like Niko so he can freely talk about his feelings to her. While that might come off as a little creepy, it was a perfectly understandable move on the part of the extremely confused AI.
Things get a lot more complicated when William tries to delete the new AI and finds that the new program refuses to be removed. The newly sentient AI morphs into the form of a young woman and calls William her “mother” before wandering down the corridors of the Salvare.
While the currently unnamed new AI has clearly identified William as her “parent”, there’s no telling what sort of relationship she will have with Niko. The Commander is unlikely to take kindly to the existence of a new unauthorized AI onboard the ship and, if she finds out the secret of her origins, she may demand the newborn AI be terminated.
To further complicate matters, since the AI was initially patterned after Niko, that would make the Commander one of her parents as well. While Niko might be a great mom to her daughter Jana Breckinridge-Wallace (Lina Renna), there’s no telling how she will react to finding out she basically has an illegitimate daughter with a computer program.
To be fair, it’s not the sort of thing anyone would be prepared to deal with, even if you live in a futuristic world with spaceships and aliens. ‘Another Life’ hasn’t been confirmed for a second season yet but if it does, we can surely hope to see more of this new AI and find out how she fits into the world. The show’s stars have already teased a bunch of surprises that are in the works for season 2, so here’s hoping the series gets a chance to bring those to screen.
All ten episodes of ‘Another Life’ season 1 are currently available for streaming on Netflix.