3 Body Problem is a series with intricate timelines, character arcs, and mysteries to uncover. Based on the bestselling novels by Cixin Liu, the series has key moments early on that foreshadow how the story will play out later in Season 1. Below, creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (Game of Thrones) and Alexander Woo (The Terror, True Blood) take you through six key clues and revelatory scenes you might have missed on your first watch.

Ed Miller

Episode 3: The dinner scene with Raj’s family

Meeting your partner’s parents is stressful and intimidating at the best of times, but at least it allows you a glimpse into their roots and values. That’s certainly the case when Jin (Jess Hong) meets her boyfriend Raj Varma’s (Saamer Usmani) family in Episode 3. A naval officer who was at the top of his class at the Royal Naval College, Raj comes from a military family — his father was the captain of a platoon in the Indian Army fighting in the Himalayas during the Kargil War. 

Over dinner, Raj’s dad shares that as his soldiers were about to die of hypoxia, he played dead and sneaked into an enemy Pakistani camp, where he made the difficult choice to kill them all in order to take their oxygen and save his men. That win tipped the balance of the conflict and earned Raj’s father India’s highest military honor, the Param Vir Chakra. It also taught Raj that, in war, killing the enemy is justifiable if it ensures your own kind’s survival. 

In Episode 5, Raj lacks remorse when using Auggie’s (Eiza González) nanofiber technology to kill Mike Evans’ (Jonathan Pryce) entire organization on the Judgment Day tanker. He did this to retrieve Evans’ hard drive of communications with the San-Ti. For Raj, the possibility of securing the hard drive outweighs the potential loss of life, but he clashes with Auggie, who’s devastated at the thought of sacrificing any innocent humans for the sake of the “greater good.” Does this foreshadow more of what’s to come with Raj?

Episodes 3 and 4: Evans reads a fairy tale to Sophon.
Episode 7: Will and Jin discuss the fairy-tale book she gave him as a gift.

3 Body Problem is distinctly a sci-fi series, but it also has some compelling elements of fantasy. Fairy tales are a major part of the books, and they’re a motif in the series adaptation as well. “For centuries, fairy tales and folk stories have been ways for children and their parents to make sense of the world around them, in all its glory and horror,” Weiss tells Tudum. “The world around our characters has just changed utterly and irrevocably. The world the San-Ti are traveling to is completely alien to them. Fairy tales might help all involved to make sense of things. And they might just come in handy for our heroes in the future.” Mike Evans reads fairy tales to the San-Ti on the Judgment Day to teach them about human behavior and morals.

In Episode 3, he reads them the story of “Hansel and Gretel,” and in Episode 4, they move on to “Little Red Riding Hood.” When Evans reveals that — like the Big Bad Wolf — humans lie, the San-Ti realize that as a collective they can’t coexist with humans because they can’t trust them. And there’s another nod to “Little Red Riding Hood” in 3 Body Problem. Also in Episode 4, Will (Alex Sharp) pulls a cherished book of fairy tales from his bookshelf. It’s an old birthday present from Jin, with a note enclosed in which she wishes that their stories will be happier than the ones in its pages. Next to her note, she’s drawn an illustration of the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood. We see Will read from this fairy-tale book later in Episode  6. In Episode 7, when Jin comes to see Will in the hospital and he decides to donate his brain to Project Staircase, he pulls out the book from his bedside drawer to show her he’s always kept it close, joking that the project would turn him into “some kind of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ character.”

Episode 5: Young Vera is Follower.

As Jin and Jack (John Bradley) play the VR game, they keep encountering a young girl, Follower (Eve Ridley), on each level. As they try to solve the world’s three-body problem, Jack finds Follower a distraction, but Jin grows attached and determined to save her. In this episode, we see a framed photo of Follower on Evans’ filing cabinet in his office on Judgment Day. And while Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao) is under arrest after the summit fiasco, she confirms that Evans is Vera’s father “only in the biological sense.” The only time he ever saw Vera (Vedette Lim) was at her funeral.

Later in Episode 7, Ye looks at a framed photo that was on Vera’s shelves in her room, of young Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng) hugging Follower. Putting context clues together, we can guess that Follower in the game was modeled on a young Vera. Since the VR game is a recruitment tool to find the brightest minds to aid the San-Ti’s arrival on Earth, Chao believes Ye designed the game. “She wants her daughter to be saved over and over and over again,” says Chao. Confirms Woo, “The game was a human/San-Ti co-production. Ye certainly played a large role in it, along with Evans. Follower is saved over and over again — but she’s also killed over and over again. [Ye] and Evans wanted Follower to engage the players’ emotions and empathy, and they could think of no one better to accomplish that than their own little girl.”

While filming the scene where Ye looks at the photo of her daughter, Chao kept sobbing, and Benioff, Weiss, and director Jeremy Podeswa kept telling her, “Pull it back, pull it back.” Chao replied, “I can’t! Give me a minute.” Ye calls Saul (Jovan Adepo) to meet her in the graveyard right after that moment, so the creators told Chao, “You’ve got to steady yourself to make that call, because he knows you as [stoic] Ye.”

Chris Baker

Episode 6: Will buys a star for Jin.

After Will’s best friend Jack is murdered (because he denies the San-Ti’s existence), Will inherits half his estate — around ₤20 million. As he faces his fatal pancreatic cancer diagnosis, he struggles to figure out how he can help Jin, who he’s loved since they met at Oxford University. Realizing he can be most supportive by simply showing up for her, he returns to London and puts his money where his heart is: spending his inheritance (well, ₤19.5 million of it) on a star from The Stars Our Destination foundation, which raises funds for planetary defense. “The Planetary Defense Council (and Cixin Liu, who invented them) were making a reference to the book (The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester), which is a classic,” says Benioff. “If we are going to survive our encounter with the San-Ti, then one way or another we are going to have to journey to other stars. Or at least get closer to them than we are currently. So [the name] feels apt.” 

Buying the star (named DX3906) is Will’s version of a grand romantic gesture that will help fund Jin’s own planetary defense work for Project Staircase. In the series, purchasing stars that are 401.5 light-years away (like Jin’s) may seem like a silly lark for the wealthy, but DX3906 may prove to be more of a destination than anyone realizes.

Episode 7: That Einstein joke

Did you catch that Albert Einstein joke in Episode 7? Actors Chao and Adepo were also trying to figure out what it meant when they first read it. “I remember we were doing the rehearsals and I was like, ‘What’s up with this joke?’ ” said Adepo. “And David’s [Benioff] like, ‘It’s important. Trust me.’ ” Shortening the joke wasn’t an option either — the creators insisted on it staying the length it is in the episode. By way of explanation Weiss says, “Humor is a very personal thing. Some people get it, and some do not. We’re sure Ye had her reasons. Or maybe she just enjoys jokes with a leisurely pace! Our fathers do.”

Before Ye stumps Saul with her sense of humor, she seems to draw inspiration from looking at items that used to line her daughter’s shelves, including books like Game Theory: A Simple Introduction by K.H. Erickson and Fermi’s Paradox: Cosmology and Life by Michael Bodin, as well as the framed photo of Ye and a young Vera. “They’re books about interesting subjects,” says Benioff. “Well worth reading, and yes, highly significant in the decisions Ye makes and the actions she takes.”

So what does Ye Wenjie reveal in the joke about Einstein playing the violin in heaven? It’s not much of a “ha-ha” joke: Einstein, who loves the violin, wants to play in heaven, even though the angels tell him God only likes the saxophone and to “never play with God.” As punishment for going ahead anyway and accompanying God’s saxophone, God smashes Einstein’s violin, and heaven becomes hell for Einstein: an eternity without music. Ye tells Saul that humor is a very personal thing. Some people understand the joke, some people don’t. Some jokes are so private that they only make sense to two people. “But jokes are important. We wouldn’t survive without them,” she says, adding that she hopes her joke doesn’t cause him any trouble. We’re left pondering what this means, especially when Saul becomes a Wallfacer where his thoughts will shape strategy to defend Earth from the San-Ti. Still, Chao believes that Ye Wenjie’s “effort to save humanity may have blown up, but she’s left little seeds to hopefully right the ship.” Perhaps the joke is one of those seeds…

Episode 8: Saul becomes a Wallfacer.

When Saul is named a Wallfacer, a title taken from the ancient Buddhist name for meditators, he has no idea why he’s one of the only three people chosen on the entire planet. In this episode, the Planetary Defense Council appoints the Wallfacers to devise plans to fight the San-Ti within their own minds, since the San-Ti can’t read minds or distinguish the truth from a lie. Wallfacers’ decisions are to be considered absolute, with no need for justification or explanation. Saul, who feels like he hasn’t amounted to much by the age of 32, is flummoxed by the appointment. 

However, his conversation with Ye Wenjie about the Einstein joke indicates he’s a person of import. When Ye and Saul have their final meeting in the graveyard, she reminds him that Vera always considered him to be the smartest and, like her, he knows how to figure things out. So why was Saul the last person Ye met before she left the country? And why did an autonomous car (whose computer was likely hijacked by the San-Ti) try to run him over? As an answer, Adepo points to something his dad told him: “Sometimes the person that nobody ever thinks much of is the one that will surprise you,” he says. “That’s something the audiences will see when it comes to why he became the Wallfacer.” But why do Benioff, Weiss, and Woo think Saul was chosen? “The answer to this question is to be found in [a hopeful] Season 2 of 3 Body Problem.” 

3 Body Problem Cast Breaks Down 8 Major Moments