9 Burning Questions We Have After Below's Cliffhanger Ending

Published Oct 16, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT Faith Roswell is a Senior Writer on Screen Rant's Classic TV team. Since earning her degree in Creative Writing over a decade ago, Faith has written articles on film and TV from a variety of different angles. Faith now combines her knowledge of psychology with her love of monster movies to give more insight into what makes the best ones. You may have read her Screen Rant lists and features covering horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, or read her Amazon Top 10 book, "Movie Monsters of the Deep." Faith has had an extensive career as a writer, appearing on BBC live radio, researching true crime for Rotten Mango podcast, and writing for publications including Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and The Daily Jaws before beginning here at Screen Rant. This article contains major spoilers for the ending of Below. Netflix's sea monster thriller Below has polarized critics and audiences for its genre mix and cliffhanger ending, adding another layer of intrigue to a show that has broken streaming records while being compared to Stephen King. Below stars Josh Hartnett as a fisherman who is trying to hold onto his way of life in the small island community of Snook's Arm, when strange events begin to happen in the waters around the island, reminding him of a traumatic event in his own childhood that may be coming back to haunt him. Below's trailer might have hidden the nature of the monster from its audience, but the first episode reveals what the characters are up against, with the monster being a giant squid known as "Mudder" to some. Even so, Below drowns in twists, with the Lovecraftian premise of the first two episodes giving way to a family drama with elements of both Jaws and The Bone Temple as the show goes on. Below's character accents quickly become the least of the mysteries in the six-part miniseries, with the ending leaving more burning questions than the beginning, making a sequel a possibility. How Did Jay Get In Debt? Some of the mysteries in Below are less supernatural than others, and when Jay arrives back in Snook's Arm, seemingly rolling in cash and confidence from a job on an Alberta oil rig, it soon becomes clear that all is not as it seems. Jay's swagger and charm are a front for the fact that he now owes $80,000 to some very dangerous people, and he has a plan to get rich quick. The two men pursuing Jay regularly pop up, menace him, and leave, before the final showdown in the car involving a shaky gun, a squid attack, and an unlikely friendship. While they may all know why Jay is in debt, the viewer is never let in on the secret. This might be a small detail compared to a potentially supernatural water monster, but it is a frustrating unanswered question that could have either developed Jay more as a character, or been left out of the already packed plot. Was That Really Calvin's House Washed Up On Little Pot Rock? Credit: Netflix When Calvin escapes the water with a case of decompression sickness, known as "the bends," he washes up on Little Pot Rock to meet some familiar figures from his past. While his childhood friend Walton is pleased to see him and Wade, who apparently arrived early enough to fall in love with Walton's daughter, Calvin is more impressed with his surroundings, which appear to be his own childhood home, complete with a height chart on the door frame. However, this should not be possible. Calvin's house sank with his father inside, and yet the entire house appears intact on a rocky island far above the water. There are many great thriller TV shows with twists better than any movie, but Below never explains the house, nor its implications on the island community, which could be a hallucination, purgatory, or real people, depending on the show's explanation for the house. Was Maggie The Old Hag? The Old Hag is a recurring character brought up by many of the local fishermen, implying that she is a legendary figure, or an interpretation of sleep paralysis. She first appears similar to Samara in The Ring, from her long white dress to her dripping hair that covers her face, but Below's penultimate episode offers a surprising explanation: she is a real person. Wade quickly reassures Calvin that Walton's daughter, Maggie, is harmless, but the possibility that The Old Hag is really Maggie makes very little sense in context. IMDb credits actor Marthe Bernard as both The Old Hag and Maggie Budgell. Since his close encounter with Mudder, Wade has hallucinated the figure he described as The Old Hag on top of the giant iceberg as well as in his bed, yet he has almost certainly never seen Maggie before, unless she has a way to visit Snook's Arm in secret. Given her striking appearance and personal style, it is likely that she would be seen, and while this is the only explanation for the possessions she has on Little Pot Rock, it does not explain how she climbed a mountain-sized iceberg. This leaves The Old Hag's identity a mystery. How Did Maggie Steal The Ring? Roger Ebert might have given Below a solid 3.5-star rating, but less impressed reviewers have described Below as "more Scooby-Doo than Widow's Bay." The show has its gory moments, including an accident involving a wire and a person, but a mystery involving a disappearing ring supports the latter assessment. When the engagement ring Noah is carrying for Mary disappears, Jay is the obvious suspect. However, the real thief appears to be the least likely candidate of all. Living on the isolated Little Pot Rock, Maggie should not have been able to reach Snook's Arm at all, if she even knew where it was, and yet episode 5 reveals that she has given Wade the ring. As Noah discovered it missing in episode 2, this would mean that in just four short episodes, Maggie has arrived in Snook's Arm, met or heard about Noah, found the ring that he was keeping a secret, stolen it, and returned home to then encounter Wade and get engaged. Were The Little Pot Rock Residents Sacrificing People To Mudder? The inhabitants of Little Pot Rock have all made some ominous remarks regarding Mudder and her nature, with Walton describing his wife's illness and decision to "do what needed to be done" and give herself to the sea, as well as the fact that he has plans for the Portuguese fisherman he calls Phil. As Maggie is later seen hacking part of the fisherman's leg off, it is not a stretch to imagine that this could be intended as a sacrifice, despite the fact that the remaining part of his leg was found uneaten earlier in the series. In Newfoundland dialect, "Mudder" is "mother." The people of Little Pot Rock have an almost cult-like worship for Mudder, and it is heavily implied that they believe if they give the squid food then she will bring them fish in return. Part of this is seen in action when she brings the community a shoal of fish which they then process for Winter. Still, this plot point carries its own burning questions, including whether they lured people toward the island or were sacrificing residents one at a time. What Is The Blue Drug Maggie Gives Wade? Maggie shows Wade a test tube full of a blue liquid that she describes as being made from local plants and berries, and with the active ingredient coming from Mudder. This is almost certainly squid ink or part of the ice that affected the residents of Snook's Arm, but their methods of harvesting it and the exact nature of the drug are not explained. The giant squid and cult aspects of Below would have been enough on their own to make the show into a groundbreaking horror series that broke the mold. Little Pot Rock's blue drug, the residents' reasons for consuming it, and the way it affects them were left as one of Below's final mysteries, but the storyline had the potential to be one of the most compelling in the series. How Does The Squid's Virus Work?​​​​​​​ Some reviewers have felt that Below wastes its Lovecraftian potential, with the first two episodes introducing a monster that affects the nearby ice, causing it to give people hallucinations and an unquenchable thirst that can cause them to rush to the water and drown. These episodes have a drastically different tone to the rest of the series, with the mass infection threat appearing to loom over the community, before the effects proved to last for just 48 hours. Wade's encounter with Mudder left him with an enormous scar and more affected by the squid's influence than the other residents, yet despite the terrifying potential of his condition, this storyline soon gave way to others, with the virus passing over the residents with very little lasting harm and surprisingly few deaths. Below never explained how the virus worked, whether The Old Hag sightings were linked to Mudder, or if they were Wade's own hallucinations. What Happened To The Baby Squid In The Freezer? Credit: Jan Thijs/Netflix Below's ending answers one question about the nature of Mudder, but it raises another. Mudder is established to behave like other cephalopods, in that she dies after taking care of her eggs until they hatch. However, Fonda explains that the water is too warm for them, dooming each of the squid that hatched, leaving one possible exception in the form of the one that Fonda saw escaping into the freezer. When Fonda goes on to say that Mudder may have been the last of her kind, this raises several possibilities that could answer the question about the fate of the squid in the freezer. Fonda may have released it into the ocean, but this is unlikely as she knows that it would not survive. She may have kept it for examination, or have kept it frozen for the possibility of future release. The show's ending does not reveal which of these potential scenarios is the correct one, leaving viewers to wonder. What Do Those New Icebergs Mean? Below's ending left the door open for a second season, despite creator Jesse McKeown telling Time that the ending "is not a cliffhanger, like, oh my God, what’s going to happen next?" Calvin and Wade set sail on their boat, the High Hopes, and while the music is upbeat at first, it shifts to a more ominous tone, with both men looking shocked at the sight ahead, which is a mass of new icebergs. These could just bring back painful memories for both men, especially Wade, but they could also signal something far more disturbing. The ending suggests that there are actually many more giant squid and that global warming is driving them South, but they could also hide different monsters, which could take Below in an entirely new direction, with a second season answering this question and more. Source: Roger Ebert, Time Below 5/10 Release Date 2026 - 2026-00-00 Network Netflix Cast Mackenzie Davis Fonda Howander