Sweet Tooth‘s Season 1 Finale Kicks Off A Brand New Mystery

Spoilers for Sweet Tooth season 1 are ahead. Any show set in a post-pandemic world where animal-human hybrid children are hunted as humans desperately grapple with an incurable virus was never really going to get a happy ending. And, be warned, the ending of Sweet Tooth season 1 is just as shocking as it is absolutely devastating. 

First, the devastating: after bravely venturing out into the world and risking everything to find his mom, Gus (Christian Convery) is captured by General Abbot (Neil Sandilands) and the Last Men and taken to the Zoo, where Dr. Adi Singh (Adeel Akhtar) is being forced to experiment on hybrid kids in the hopes of finding a cure to the H5G9 virus killing millions of humans across the globe.

The only silver lining is that he’s finally with other hybrid kids, including Wendy (Naledi Murray) and her siblings who had sought refuge at Aimee’s (Dania Ramirez) Preserve — truly the only good thing that could possibly come out of being captured by men who want to dissect hybrids. They may be prisoners, but at least they’re not alone. 

It’s possible that they could overthrow General Abbot and escape, especially if Gus can get Adi on his side, though the doctor does end up killing an innocent child mere minutes after sparing Gus, so his potential goodness is still questionable. Hopefully, though, Aimee and Big Man (Nonso Anozie) will be able to successfully save their kids before Adi has a chance to harm one hair on Wendy or Gus’ heads. (Sorry to those other hybrids Adi will definitely kill in the meantime, though.)

But Gus meeting Wendy in captivity is just the beginning. The really big cliffhanger of season 1 comes later, when Bear (Stefania LaVie Owen) somehow manages to make contact with Birdie (Amy Seimetz) using the scientist’s old satellite phone. But is Birdie really alive, or is there something else going on?

The way the final scene played out, it certainly looked like Bear had made contact with Birdie, who is doing research in Alaska, where she found the bacteria that created hybrids and the pandemic in the first place. But what if there’s more to it than meets the eye? What if the clips of Birdie answering the sat phone in Alaska isn’t actually her communicating with Bear in the present, but a flashback to her time as a researcher — a time before the hybrids and the pandemic?

The key here is the poster. Prominently displayed on the wall of her shelter is a poster of a ship barreling through ice and large waves. It’s the exact same print Bear found with Birdie’s things in the attic. So, either Birdie had two identical prints and left one behind, or it’s the same print, just a decade older. And then there’s the satellite phone that Bear finds. Why would she just leave it in the attic? Why not tell her friend it’s there? If this is the one way to contact her, why bury it? 

If Birdie’s Alaska cliffhanger is actually in the past, it would make a lot of sense. For one thing, it really doesn’t seem like any infrastructure within the U.S. has survived the Great Crumble. So, the odds of Birdie somehow getting government funding for a research trip to Alaska are low. As a lone scientist, there’s no way she’d be able to mount an expedition by herself as the world falls apart. Plus, last we saw Birdie, she was being locked into a government lab being raided by soldiers. We know she was released and able to live for some time in her home nearby, and we know she supposedly left to go searching for Gus. But the idea of her making it to Alaska on her own is incredibly suspect.

On the other hand, if Birdie is really alive, that would mean that she’s looking for the same bacteria she used to accidentally make Gus, which would also suggest that she’s looking for a cure to the H5G9 virus. Logically, there’s no way she could be there on her own. She’d need other scientists to help man any equipment, not to mention the supply runs. Maybe instead of asking what she’s doing, we should be asking who she’s working for.
Sweet Tooth might be based on a comic book series by Jeff Lemire, but it’s a relatively loose adaptation, so don’t expect to find any answers to these questions in the source material. If we want to find out what’s really going on, we’ll just have to wait for a season 2.