HBO Max’s Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic tale that focuses not on the destruction of the world, but on its renewal. It’s a deeply cathartic experience about strangers, art, and community, and its twisty timeline, braiding pre-, mid-, and post-apocalypse characters and events, threads together beautifully by the end, highlighting how the before and the after echo and shape perceptions, memories, and actions.
At the center of all of these events is Miranda , Arthur’s first wife and author of the titular graphic novel, Station Eleven. Creating the book was a project meant only for herself, a trauma response to having lost her entire family in Hurricane Hugo.
The episode opens with a trio of people who are alone: young Kirsten walks through the snowy forest, young Tyler enters the department store, and Miranda heads to her job interview 20 years earlier, all while their voices recite the oft-repeated passages of the graphic novel. The first time through, we don’t know why Kirsten is alone, or who or where Tyler is, or what knife is being sharpened loudly under the dialogue, but on rewatch, we have all of these answers.
Connecting these hurricane-style shots with the information we have when rewatching, we can link these characters’ journeys and what the show is saying about their flaws and grace. These are destructive people, or people in moments of destructiveness. But as hurricanes destroy, they also leave behind a changed landscape. By the end of the show, we know Arthur connects everyone. Kirsten protects her family, which by the end extends to everyone in the airport.
Perhaps the simplest, and yet most impactful, element that becomes clearer on rewatch: on some level, Kirsten has been looking for Jeevan for the better part of two decades. In Episode 2, dialogue that wasn’t completely decipherable the first time through becomes crystal clear the second time: Alex tells Kirsten she knows the woods remind her of Jeevan. Kirsten references going by the cabin, as she seems to do every year, but finding “no sign of him.