San Junipero - is it Elysium or Gehenna? (SPOILERS)

Absolutely my favorite episode. And it perfectly captured 80s and 90s nostalgia which was wonderful.

[the more I've thought about this episode the more edits I've made to this thread. I posted three questions below, but eventually in question three I figured out the answers to questions one and two. Regardless, I highly suggest you read all three questions to see how I arrived to my final theory on this episode]

Question #1: What was the point of Quagmire, the hellish club outside of San Junipero? Why would dying or dead people choose to go to a danceclub version of Hell? Different strokes, different folks? Did you notice that the deeper Yorkie walked into Quagmire the more sinful and evil it became? It was the danceclub version of Dante's Inferno:

quote:

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(from Wikipedia) nine circles of suffering located within the Earth; it is the "realm of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen

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Question #2: Why did Kelly run her jeep into a road block, an action that would certainly kill her in real life, when she only had 1 minute remaining in San Junipero? That scene didn't make sense to me. Her time was about to end. Plus, in San Junipero there's no way to hurt yourself, no way to die, because it's all a simulation...so what was the point of that?

Question #3: Is it possible that San Junipero is Hell on Earth disguised as Heaven? People in San Junipero seem lost in sinful repetition. It would be like choosing a "Groundhog Day" version of Vegas as your afterlife. It's a place where people who have zero religious faith choose to go when they die, cowardly shunning the "unknown" (God, Heaven, and potential reunification with deceased family and friends) in favor of immediate sinful gratification: Drinking, meaningless sex, empty relationships, etc.

It's simulated eternal selfishness. Very much the opposite of Eternal Salvation. Is it possible that Kelly made a HUGE mistake choosing Yorkie and San Junipero over her faith in God and loyalty to her husband and daughter? She shunned God, Heaven, and her family for eternal simulated sin.

Perhaps the main character in this story isn't Yorkie, but rather Kelly. Perhaps this is Kelly's story - a story of temptation, demonic deception, eternal damnation, and eventually regret.

I think regret and the human condition is key in this story.

If real Heaven represents eternal salvation, happiness, and health...San Junipero represents the exact opposite. Why? Because San Junipero allows the participant's conscious to continue a human, Earthly experience. And some believe life on Earth and the human condition itself is the foundation of Hell.

San Junipero allows participants to be eternally "human" which means participant's still experience all human emotions in San Junipero including anger, jealousy, love, lust, envy, and worst of all - resentfulness, obsession, and regret.

We actually see this in the episode. Yorkie becomes obsessed with Kelly which confuses and angers her. Yorkie feels she cannot be happy, even in San Junipero, without Kelly's companionship. When Yorkie sees Kelly at the bar dancing and flirting with a man, she is jealous. When Kelly disappears from the 1980s for a stretch of time and Yorkie later discovers her in the 2000s, Yorkie is upset. Kelly gets so upset with Yorkie's total misunderstanding of Kelly's decision to choose the spiritual unknown over San Junipero that Kelly actually chooses to commit highway suicide (which the more I think about it is another discussion unto itself)!

And San Junipero is supposed to be a simulated version of Heaven?

I'm convinced San Junipero is a simulated version of Hell. San Junipero cannot be Heaven if the simulation allows human emotions, memories, and attachments from the participant's previous life to remain active in San Junipero. I truly believe Kelly will regret choosing San Junipero because in San Junipero she'll continue to be trapped in her human emotions and past memories which eventually will cause her to resent Yorkie and regret not choosing to pass into the spiritual unknown to hopefully unite with her husband and daughter.

Yorkie never really experienced life so it makes sense that she chose an eternal human experience. Yorkie has nothing to regret - she's living an adult life for the first time. Kelly is in San Junipero not because she really wants to be, but because she wants to please someone else - and that scenario always results in conflict and suffering.

Kelly chose Hell. And the moment their relationship sours in San Junipero is the moment San Junipero will become Hell for Yorkie too.


ETA: The highway suicide scene

Why is this scene important? I've been wondering this since I finished the episode. At first the scene didn't make sense. Why attempt to commit suicide in a simulation which doesn't allow death? At first it doesn't make sense.

But after long thought, it makes INCREDIBLE sense! And that scene, in my opinion, is one of the most important scene's of the episode because it foreshadows what's to come.

When Kelly attempted highway suicide, she was a part time participant in the San Junipero simulation. She had one minute remaining before her session ended. Regardless what happened, her session was about to end.

But, why did she attempt suicide? She attempted suicide because she was overcome with grief related to her late husband and daughter. Her grief and disgust with Yorkie was so strong she wanted out of the simulation at that moment versus just waiting for the minute to expire.

What she discovered is that the simulation doesn't allow for death. The simulation doesn't allow for an artificial escape. She discovers this at the moment her session expires.

But consider for a moment what implication this has for someone who actually passes away and chooses San Junipero as their eternal "Heaven". It means that if someone arrives in San Junipero full time (which implies they've died and there's no going back), there is no escaping the simulation if they have a bad experience. They're stuck there for eternity!

And, folks, nothing is more Hellish than being eternally stuck in place you don't want to be with someone you don't want to be with.

The suicide scene confirms San Junipero is Hell...which makes the ending song "Heaven is a Place on Earth" all the more ironic and sinister.

This episode is perhaps the most depressing and frightening episode of the entire series. The creators performed an awesome magic trick on the viewers by giving viewers the false impression that San Junipero had a positive good ending!

San Junipero is Hell. It's a place for people who have rejected a spiritual existence. It's a place for people who reject God.

It is Hell.