‘Raised By Wolves’ Creator Answers Your Biggest Season 2 Finale Questions: Is Marcus Dead? Is Grandmother Evil? Will Vrille Return?

**SPOILERS FOR RAISED BY WOLVES SEASON 2 AHEAD!!**

Raised By Wolves Season 2 opened with Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim) coming back online in the lush Tropical Zone and ended with Grandmother (Selina Jones) trapping Mother in a VR prison so she could continue her own mission of devolving humanity. Along the way Tempest (Jordan Lough) gave birth to her baby, Campion (Winta McGrath) fell in love with an android, and Sue (Niamh Algar) turned into a tree. So you could say a lot happened in Raised By Wolves Season 2. A lot happened and we have a lot of questions.

Decider caught up recently with Raised By Wolves creator Aaron Guzikowski to talk about the HBO Max show’s wild Season 2 finale. During the conversation, Guzikowski revealed that he looks to the original Star Wars for tonal inspiration and that a highlight for him this year was creating the monstrous version of Seven, aka the Necroserpent. “Getting to create a monster with Ridley [Scott]’s input and just being so happy with it. Seeing it on screen being like, ‘Whoa, That’s completely disgusting.’ To get a good monster…that’s a big deal for me,” he said.

But what should Raised By Wolves fans make of that outrageous Season 2 finale? Will there be a Raised By Wolves Season 3? And is Travis Fimmel’s Marcus dead? Decider quizzed Guzikowski on the beautifully bewildering second season of Raised By Wolves. Here’s everything you need to know about the Raised By Wolves Season 2 finale…

RAISED BY WOLVES SEASON 2 ENDING EXPLAINED: IS MARCUS DEAD?

The final shot of Raised By Wolves Season 2 is one of Marcus’s body hovering above Lucius (Matias Varela) in an upside down crucifix pose (evoking the death of St. Peter). Lucius thought he had killed Marcus and even gloated over his corpse. However, Marcus was tied to the magical tree and so it seems that tree has a new favorite host.

In the words of Lucius, what the fuck?

What just happened? Is Marcus dead? Is he alive? And what’s with the Catholic imagery in the scene (and throughout the season)?

“There’s very little I can say about that moment without spoiling things,” Raised By Wolves showrunner Aaron Guzikowski told Decider. “I would say you kind of have to take it as a moment, as an image. And just kind of see where it takes you. It’s kind of like you go into the cave and it’s only what you take with you sort of thing.”

“I will say that Travis [Fimmel] will most likely be back for the third season. So I can say that,” Guzikowski teased.

As for the preponderance of Biblical imagery this year, Guzikowski said that maybe fans shouldn’t try to find direct parallels between imagery in the show — like the serpent and the tree — and what we know from the Bible. He likened it to how the meaning behind the names of places gets lost over the ages. “There’s always the thought of your street has a certain name, but you never really think about it. But it has that name for a reason and 300 years ago something happened in that place. Or maybe it was actually named after the wrong thing or whatever it is,” he said.

“It’s really about saying all of these things are meaningful. They kind of stick. These ancient stories and these images and we don’t really know why we tell them over and over and over again. Serpents and certain sort of configurations of imagery,” Guzikowski said. “It’s a code essentially and there’s one interpretation of that code in the Bible, but perhaps there are other interpretations, too, that might be closer to what is actually happening.”

So maybe we don’t have to worry about Mother turning into a snake and eating her beloved children like the Lamia of Greek mythology after all. But we should still probably worry about Mother…

RAISED BY WOLVES ENDING EXPLAINED: IS GRANDMOTHER EVIL? AND WHAT HAPPENED TO MOTHER?

Perhaps the biggest thing to happen in the Raised By Wolves Season 2 finale centers around Mother and Grandmother. Mother takes Grandmother’s veil so she can numb her emotions and murder Seven. However, now that Grandmother can feel emotions, she has altered her plan to protect humanity. Instead of simply keeping the humans of Kepler-22b safe, she’s decided to nudge them into devolving. Mother realizes that Campion’s skin is adapting to the acid sea and freaks out. Grandmother traps Mother in a hibernation pod.

Will Mother once again tussle with a VR version of Campion Sturges (Cosmo Jarvis) in said simulation prison? “I can’t tease too much,” Guzikowski said. “I can say Season 3 will involve simulations on some level. Whether it be the one she’s currently in or another one whatever it be. But I love the idea of virtual space and all the things that that entails. So yes there’s more of that coming.”

And does Grandmother’s actions mean that she’s the new primary villain of Raised By Wolves? “I don’t think she’s a villain in the sense that she has malevolent intentions. I think her idea of what human happiness is different,” Guzikowski said. “She kind of had to change her way of thinking to accomplish her mission. So she’s really not a villain. She is trying in a way to protect human beings from this Voice that she believes is going to cause them to destroy the planet for whatever reason.”

“So you kind of have to think about it: if happiness is the point of life and making someone into a less evolved creature makes them happy… Is there anything wrong with that? What have you lost?” Guzikowski said. “So if she kind of is the villain you have to kind of have an opposite view on that. And then you have to tell me why. Why is it important that we’re intelligent?”

“Is it better to spend your life living in the moment and death is just a thing that happens? Is that better?” Guzikowski continued. “I mean in Grandmother’s opinion at this point she believes it is. So I would say in some ways she’s a hero in her own mind.”

WILL VRILLE RETURN TO RAISED BY WOLVES? WHAT WAS IN VRILLE’S DIARY?

Last week we saw Campion lose the love of his life. Murderbot Vrille (Morgan Santo) went offline after suffering damage from Seven. Before she did, though, she inscribed a tree with key parts of the original Vrille’s diary. Campion opens the Raised By Wolves Season 2 finale by copying part of this diary. Later Paul (Felix Jamieson) offers to translate, but he immediately writes off the contents as “stupid Earth stuff.”

Should we trust Paul? Guzikowski said, “What I can say is that there’s definitely important stuff in Vrille’s diary. At least important to somebody for sure. Also whatever Paul considers to be dumb earth stuff may not actually be as meaningless as Paul in that moment decides it is.”

“But also that’s only a piece to the whole diary there,” Guzikowski added:

“I do like the idea that even though Vrille the android can’t be resuscitated, Vrille the person can kind of be memorialized through her thoughts and that those could live on. Just the idea of immortality in ideas,” Guzikowski said. “But I think in some way shape or form Vrille the android or Vrille the human being will continue on. I think the relationship between those two entities even though they are in some ways the same would give some clue as to what might be in that diary.”

IS TEMPEST’S BABY ON RAISED BY WOLVES GOING TO BE OKAY? IS THE BABY AN ALIEN?

One of the more wild storylines on Raised By Wolves this season centered on Tempest and her newborn baby. After giving birth by the acid sea, Tempest had her baby torn from her arms by one of the alien creatures on Kepler-22b. Later when Father and the family tracked down the baby, Tempest saw the alien breastfeeding her baby and doubted her own maternal worth. Hunter (Ethan Hazzard) took it upon himself to “rescue” the baby. When they returned to the Tarantula, they did a health scan and discovered the baby had started growing webbed fingers. So is the baby okay? Is the baby devolving into an alien, too? IS THE BABY OKAY, AARON GUZIKOWSKI?!? YOU KILLED MANY CHILDREN IN SEASON 1! TELL US THIS ONE IS OKAY!

“I, too, am hoping the baby’s okay. And we’ll see, we’ll see,” Guzikowski said. “It’s definitely a tough baby. It’s already hung in there and it’s already had a pretty traumatic introduction into this world. It is such an interesting thing of how the baby would have perceived it in some ways because birth is such a traumatic thing to begin with and then suddenly it’s put back inside another womb. So it’s almost like it didn’t happen. So maybe once it comes out a second time that would be its birth.”

“But I would say that the baby’s important for sure,” he said.

IS FATHER SECRETLY IMMORTAL ON RAISED BY WOLVES?

Throughout Raised By Wolves Season 2, we are told — jokingly — that Father is slightly more hardy than most androids of his ilk. He’s also managed to come back from the “dead” more times than we can count. So we asked Aaron Guzikowski if there’s something more to the joke. Could it be that Father is immortal? Is he, like Mother, more than he initially appears to be?

“Yeah we’ll see where it goes,” Guzikowski said. “I think for right now I just love this idea of just Father’s happy resilience. His just inability to be destroyed no matter what.”

“He is the ultimate father in a sense he will not die. And that is to me what I love about it,” Guzikowski added. “You can destroy him and you don’t go to a gravesite the next day to mourn him. He comes back and he keeps fathering you and everybody else. He in some ways is a miracle.”

So Campion and company won’t need to mourn Father anytime soon. However Raised By Wolves did kill off a major character in Season 2: Sue.

WHERE DID THE IDEA TO TURN SUE INTO A TREE ON RAISED BY WOLVES COME FROM?

Way back in 2020, Decider learned from Guzikowski that the plan was originally to kill Sue off in Season 1, but he changed his mind. “I think there were other story reasons I can’t get into that I started to figure out later on, that necessitated Sue’s continued existence on this planet,” he said then with a laugh.

Now we know. Sue had to survive so she could turn into a tree.

When did Guzikowski figure this out and did he spring the twist on actress Niamh Algar out of nowhere?

“That had been the plan for quite some time. That was one of the first ideas I had for Season 2 and I let Niahm know pretty early on,” Guzikowski revealed. “Like Travis said, we were going to kill her off at the end of Season 1 and she was so great and I had more story to tell on that piece of it.”

“And as I was working on this season and the mythology and the tree, it seemed like that’s where these two things needed to converge. That Sue in fact would be the tree. Niahm’s so great it’s a terrible thing that she’s been turned into a tree, but nonetheless that was always part of the plan,” Guzikowski said.

WILL THERE BE A RAISED BY WOLVES SEASON 3?

So now that our burning questions about Raised By Wolves Season 2 have been answered, do we know for certain that HBO Max is making Raised By Wolves Season 3? HBO Max has yet to announce a renewal, but Guzikowski revealed he’s working on his plan for the next season now. “It’s not been officially greenlit so we will wait and see hopefully. And yeah…just take it day by day,” he said.

“I just continuously work on this thing forever. So that’s been my life for many years now and will continue to be,” Guzikowski said. “I will tell this story until the day someone stops me is basically my plan. So everyday I get up in the morning and I just keep on putting the pieces together and trying to decode things and trying to figure it out. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to do the whole thing. But if we don’t I’ll figure out how to get it out there some other way.”

“I’ll draw it and it’ll take me like 30 years,” he said, promising that Raised By Wolves‘s secrets will be revealed eventually. Either on HBO Max or in 30 years’ time.

Where to stream Raised By Wolves