It’s 1914, and the crew of the SS Talaria descends into a puzzling charade of madness after departing the docks of Cairo. Emilia Duprey, a lone stowaway stealing passage to America, now finds herself entangled in a 100,000-year-old secret fuelled by a mysterious entity infecting the minds of those on board.
This is the story of the web-series Unknown 9: Passage, an adaptation of the game Unknown 9: Awakening from Bandai Namco. Both the series and game are out today.
THIS ARTICLE FEATURES SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST TWO EPISODES OF UNKNOWN 9: PASSAGE
The opening moments of Unknown 9: Passage introduce you to a man named Emmanuel, who is experiencing a full-blown religious meltdown. He spends the first few minutes of the show pontificating about being chosen, and having to carry out the work he is supposed to. He is constantly hearing voices in his head, as well as voices from the crew aboard the ship he works on. However, Emmanuel isn’t the ship’s priest, he is the ship’s doctor. You learn right away that he doesn’t appear to be super coherent with what is going on in reality. Something on the boat seems to be driving him to madness, but he sees it as divine intervention.
We learn that Emmanuel has been providing the crew with various tonics to make sure that the madness doesn’t effect them. But only minutes later, we meet Brody, a crewmate who is severely impacted by the madness. Brody is hunched over in bed, his eyes have deep purple bags under them, and he looks like he’s been dead for a few weeks. We also meet Thomas, another crewmate who appears to be the most normal person onboard the ship. Thomas is sent to look for his sister, Amina, as she has recently been seen in an area of the ship she is not meant to be in.
In comes Emilia, the stowaway looking for a free trip back to America. We see her fanning through letters sent by her sister, with one labeled “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL AMERICA.” She has run out of food and water and makes a trek to a nearby kitchen to see what she can steal. While she’s there she hears panic from down the hall and immediately takes cover. Amina, the sister of crewmate Thomas, runs in and they see each other face-to-face for the first time. Amina makes a break for it, and shortly after Emilia is discovered by Thomas, and he realizes she shouldn’t be on board. Emilia locks herself in a freezer, and we see Thomas on the other side of the door falling into madness.
Shortly after losing Thomas, Emilia passes out and begins to have vivid dreams of Amina stabbing her to death. Emilia shoots up out of bed only to hear a scuffle in the hallway between Amina and Emmanuel. After the commotion simmers down, Emilia opens the door and is once again face-to-face with Amina. Only this time Amina is bleeding out on the ground from a stab wound to the stomach. Amina pleads for help and tells Emilia that she needs medicine from the doctor’s quarters.
Emilia sneaks into Emmanuel’s office, a room covered in blood and filled with covered up bodies of questionable status. She looks into the medicine cabinet and sees potassium as well as the laudanum that she’s looking for. Emmanuel walks in behind her and once again begins pontificating about his faith. This time claiming that he is “the saviour” all while injecting a body laid out on one of the tables with an unknown substance. The body lets out moans of pain, showing that he is keeping these people alive to harm them further. He also claims that he does not know her, but he knows that their meeting was destined to happen. He then further states, “This ship is very dangerous. Souls filled with darkness. I am one of the good ones… you must let me help you.” Emilia then grabs the needle with the medicine she needs and leaves the room. Emmanuel falls to the floor and begins hallucinating images of himself screaming in pain, all while whispering to himself that he will “find salvation” and that “we’ll all be protected.”
Emilia gets back to Amina and injects her with the needle right away. Amina then begins to notice that things are very wrong, and she asks what she injected her with. Emilia looks down and sees the word “laudanum” on the label. After a moment she refocuses and sees that the label now reads “potassium.” Amina lays dying on the floor and shares in her final words that Emilia can trust Thomas. Emilia hands Amina’s notebook over to her, as she can no longer properly speak, and writes down the word “butterscotch” just before dying. Emilia notices that the pages all have indents on them, and she scribbles onto the page revealing a strange symbol. Emilia is now left with more questions than she originally had, but at least she has something – somebody she can trust.
The first two episodes of Unknown 9: Passage do a great job with setting up future events that happen in the series. We see the death of a major character, and we learn that things are definitely more fucked up than meets the eye. Unknown 9: Passage explores many themes, such as; religious fanaticism, loneliness, familial relationships, and mania. Emilia and Thomas both go through a lot of tumultuous stuff in the first two episodes.
Emilia is discovered to be hiding on the ship and is forced to steal, threaten violence with a deadly weapon, and accidentally causes the death of the one person who wasn’t trying to harm her.
Thomas has to make sure his sister isn’t doing anything on the ship she’s not supposed to. He finds a stowaway and has to chase her down. Madness takes its toll on him and causes him to have a breakdown. And ultimately, he loses his sister.
Meanwhile, Emmanuel is further convinced with every action happening on the ship that he is chosen by God, and has to cleanse the ship of its sins. He is providing everyone on the ship with “medication” to keep them in check. Essentially, he’s building an army of people who will stay by his side no matter what happens. In his head he is chosen, and nothing will get in the way of that.
Unknown 9: Passage eventually becomes Emilia & Thomas VS. SS Talaria. The show has some genuinely exciting moments and some interesting twists. You are constantly asking yourself “is this real?”
There are many cutbacks to the past as well as potential looks into future events, and the show does a pretty good job of keeping the viewer on edge. Following along with what is in the past or what is in the future gets a little bit confusing at times. There were many moments where my roommate and I had to pause to discuss what just happened, and if it happened at all. Some of those moments were either made clear right away, or were explained later. Other moments like that never got explained to us. Certain scenes later on in the series wind up losing their punch, due to the overall confusion as to what is currently actually happening in the overall narrative. The episodes range from anywhere to 13 minutes to 24 minutes. Had there been a set length for each episode, they maybe could have ironed out the little confusing wrinkles and helped the flow/readability of the plot.
I thought Liv Ryan as Emilia and Tristan McKinnon as Emmanuel were great. Ryan was a great lead, and her struggles were believable – I felt her casting was excellent. McKinnon really shines as Emmanuel. He chews up every single scene he is in, and it’s clear that he was having the time of his life portraying this character. It’s apparent he has a theatre background as he really knows how to act big while acting small. Playing a character as bonkers as Emmanuel lets him live out his on-screen Christian Bale fantasy.
Overall I thought Unknown 9: Passage was a fun watch. It’s biggest issues are its pacing, its constant obsession with trying to confuse the viewer, and some major moments feeling unearned. The show has a really great start, and some standout performances in its duelling leads. Unknown 9: Passage is at its best when it’s Emilia Vs. Emmanuel. If you’ve got a couple hours and are looking for a quick binge, look no further!
You can watch Unknown 9: Passage below:
