NETFLIX’S NEW SEA monster series, Below, takes a lot of influence—especially in its early episodes—from Jaws. Steven Spielberg’s shark attack classic is objectively one of the most important movies of the last century; it changed monster movies for the better, and, in a way, invented what we know as the modern summer blockbuster to this day. Jaws is filled with incredible performances and comes with iconic sequence after iconic sequence, with even the quiet moments stamping themselves in viewers’ brains with dialogue as sharp as Bruce the shark’s many, many teeth.
But you know what’s one thing Jaws doesn’t have? Oh, they’ve tried—there were three additional films in the Jaws franchise released after the 1975 original—but none ever came close to capturing the undeniable magic that the original discovered. Which is all to say, sometimes less is more.
Netflix’s Below does, in a way, end with a cliffhanger. The show’s six episodes find Calvin Penney (Josh Hartnett) and family discovering a sea monster (a giant cephalopod) at the outskirts of their Newfoundland village, Snook’s Arm. With the help of Fonda (Mackenzie Davis), a scientist who works in Snook’s Arm, they discover that the monster isn’t as aggressive as she seems—just a mother protective of her young.
And so the Penneys do eventually realize that the real villains all along have been the Crocker family, who want to relocate all the local residents and mine the region’s copper deposits for all they’re worth. In the process, Calvin thwarts the Crocker family’s plans, and draws his family closer. He even repairs his relationship with his son Wade (Charlie Heaton), who he’d previously not allowed to come out on his fishing vessel.
Oh, and he helps relocate the cephalopod to deeper ocean waters by moving the giant iceberg that it had been using as a nest. Things seem good when the show jumps forward a year later near the end. The Penney family has opened up a local brewery and distillery, and, as Fonda makes clear, due to climate change, none of the cephalopod’s offspring made it.
The final shot of the season is an ominous one—as Calvin and Wade take to the seas, they see a number more huge icebergs, which may or may not have their own cephalopods attached underneath. Despite the fact that Below ends with what could easily be interpreted as a cliffhanger, Netflix has always billed the show as a limited series, and there seem to be no current plans for a second season. I don't think there are any plans,” Josh Hartnett told Men’s Health.
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