6 Theories About 'The Society' That Help Make Sense Of That Unexpected Ending
Netflix's latest hit teen drama is probably its most mysterious yet. The Society centers on a group of teenagers who find themselves all alone in their town, with all of the adults and young children having disappeared without a trace. And the show only gets weirder from there. Although fans have about a million questions after watching the debut season of The Society, these theories about The Society help try to make sense of all the mind-bending mysteries in the show.
Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers from the entire first season of The Society. Throughout the course of The Society's debut season, the teenagers discover that the town they are stranded in is surrounded by dense woods that seem to continue forever. Not only that, but celestial alignments are off for their hometown of West Ham, which leads them to assume they are in some parallel universe. The real kicker comes in the last moment of the Season 1 finale, when we see that the adults and young children of West Ham are indeed alive and going about their lives as usual in the actual town, and a memorial plaque shows all the names of the teenagers who went missing.
It is all very confusing, but luckily, there are a bunch of convincing theories floating around the fandom that could explain everything. Check out some of the best theories below:
1. The show is an allegory for the Pied Piper story.
Towards the end of the season, the kids discover that a man named Pfeiffer seems to be behind their transportation to New Ham. Kelly spotted Pfeiffer arguing with their parents in the mayoral offices back in West Ham, and also recognized him as one of the bus drivers. Sam also found a document revealing the town hired Pfeiffer to get rid of the mysterious smell, but then did not pay him.
As fans on Reddit have pointed out, the names and premise of this story clearly reflect the legend of the Pied Piper. "Pfeiffer" is the German word for "piper," and West Ham sounds an awful lot like the town of Hamelin, where the story is set. In the Pied Piper story, the piper lures the children out of Hamelin as revenge for the mayor not paying him for his service in ridding the town of its rats, which is the same as Pfeiffer driving the kids to New Ham when he did not get paid for ridding the town of its smell. Unfortunately, though, the Pied Piper story has taken multiple endings throughout the years, so it is unclear where The Society will go with it.
2. New Ham is purgatory.
Although the kids think they are living in an alternate universe, some fans have adopted an even darker theory that the teens actually died while on that bus ride and are in purgatory. This seems to explain the writing on the church wall that Grizz translates to, "You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting." If they are on some purgatorial plane, then they are likely being tested to see who will go to heaven and who will go to hell.
3. New Ham is West Ham in the distant future.
Another theory about New Ham is that the bus drivers actually managed to travel through time and drop the kids off in a distant future version of the town, which has become overrun by forestation all around it, and the time lapse affected the alignment of stars and eclipses. The big problem with this theory is that New Ham is in pristine condition, and the shops are filled with food that has not expired. Then again, maybe Pfeiffer and his team managed to somehow preserve only the town of West Ham during their time traveling. Anything feels possible at this point.
4. The parents were in on the plan the whole time.
Since pretty much the entirety of Season 1 focused on the teens in New Ham, we have barely seen any of their parents at all. This is fueling some theories that the parents may have known exactly what they were doing when they sent their kids away on those buses. As one Redditor pointed out, Kelly's dad and Harry's mom were suspiciously messaging about how it would be easier to continue their affair when the kids were away after mentioning Pfeiffer. Of course, they could have simply been talking about the planned trip to the mountains and nothing more, but we really have not seen enough of the parents to count them out as complicit in whatever is happening.
5. The father of Becca's baby is Campbell.
Aside from the supernatural mysteries of New Ham, the other big question mark is who the father of Becca's baby might be. Since Becca so adamantly refuses to reveal the father's identity to Sam, many viewers have guessed that the father may be Sam's psychopathic brother, Campbell. Becca and Campbell really did not share any scenes together in Season 1, so we do not have a sense of how they interact, but The Society's Instagram account uploaded a video of Becca and Campbell that seems to lend even more weight to this theory.
6. The father of Becca's baby is Luke.
The other name that fans keep bringing up in regards to Becca's baby is Luke. As with Campbell, Becca pretty much never appeared in a scene with Luke, although fans pointed out that they seemed to share a knowing look after he and Helena announced their engagement. While there is not too much evidence to back up this Luke theory yet, it does seem like a good place the show might go for a more surprising reveal with major repercussions.
