YMMV / Love, Death & Robots: "Beyond the Aquila Rift"

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Just how good or evil is Greta, anyway?
  • Greta may or may not be a monster feasting off of aliens who make it to her species' hive. She may just be wanting to help Thom and her crew be happy in the Matrix, or even adjust into a new life in the hive when they're ready. "She" made multiple attempts at waking the female crew member peaceably, she only had to "sedate"^note That in reality wasn't a hypodermic needle, it was the Spiders top legs stabbing the female crew member when she tried, and came close, to killing her.
  • On the flip side, Greta may not be quite as benevolent as she seems either and may just be Affably Evil. The vague nature of the "glitch" that sends people to her coupled with the fact that her psychic abilities let her know what people would want/need to hear means that nothing she said can be trusted and despite her words, she may be the cause of the predicament.
  • Since Suzy is long dead, the avatar Thom interacts with is just another facet of "Greta". This means the erratic, paranoid behaviour exists not to emulate the young navigator, but also to further get Thom used to his predictment. Or is it Thom's own consciousness fighting against the projection it is given, setting up Suzy as his "rational" self?
  • The original short story is explicit in Greta's motivations: she is good, she only wants to "take care of the lost", and the reason she tries to get Thom to adjust to the reality of his situation is that she eventually recruits those of the many alien races that she has saved to act as her assistants and keep the station running. There is no indication that Thom is dying in the original story.
  • The original short story makes it explicitly clear that both other crew members had died during the journey from paint particles in their unauthorised painted surge tanks clogging the filters. Thom survived because his tank was unpainted. It is also stated explicitly that the "Suzy" Thom tried repeatedly to wake was a deliberate creation of Greta's that was fed into Thom's consciousness, acting as Greta had deduced she would act in real life.
• Awesome Music: Matthew Perryman Jones's "Living in the Shadows" is starting to become a fan-favorite song from the OST.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Greta's real form is a horrifying spider-like alien with a huge gaping red mouth. Was that what Thom was having sex with in his dream!?
  • Either the time passes differently inside the simulation Thom is fed or he has been looped through it for few dozens of times already, always reaching the same breaking point and hitting reset. Consider how he looks in reality: with long hair and beard, but most importantly, with his clothes reduced to rags. That takes years to happen.
    • And on top of that, he's very clearly malnourished, implying he's going to starve to death eventually.
    • Though this may be why "Greta" is so desperate to get Thom "ready" to face reality: Greta has no idea what Humans eat, or how to treat illnesses etc. She's probably been feeding Thom the emergency rations from his ship, and trying to make them last as long as possible. If she can't learn from him in time, she'll lose yet another "lost soul" to starvation and disease.