Series / 3 Body Problem

"What do you think is happening?"

3 Body Problem is a 2024 science fiction series, an adaptation of Liu Cixin's novel The Three-Body Problem adapted by Alexander Woo, David Benioff, and D.B. Weiss for Netflix. It is the second live-action series based on the book, after 2023's Three-Body, and the first English-language one.

In 1977, a young Chinese woman makes a decision with immense consequences for humanity. In the present day, a group of experts race to save the planet while trying to understand why the laws of physics seem to be changing.

The cast includes Benedict Wong, Jess Hong, Eiza González, Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Saamer Usmani, Liam Cunningham, Rosalind Chao, and Jonathan Pryce.

The show premiered on March 21st, 2024.

Previews: First look teaser, Geeked Week teaser, Official trailer, Final trailer

---

Tropes:

• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: In the book, Wang Miao had already developed nano-fibers, and now the technical challenge he was working on was making their production economically scalable. When he shut down the project, his technicians were delighted because he'd had the machine running non-stop and it was long overdue for maintenance and upgrades. He had plausible deniability that the pause was for practical reasons and was receiving emotional support (sort of) and a sense of safety from Lao Shi's protective services. In the show, Auggie shuts down the project seconds after its first practical demonstration, offers no explanation for the decision, and is threatened with deportation for it. After initially meeting with her about the countdown, Clarence Shi leaves her to her own devices and only monitors from a distance.
• Adaptational Badass: As explained by a San-Ti scientist in the book, sophons have a limited set of ways to affect Earth: interfering with particle experiments by ramming the particles, leaving black or white imprints in camera film and retinas by passing through them, becoming opaque to visible light by expanding to, e.g., beach ball size, and becoming opaque to background radiation by expanding to global size. They are much more versatile in the show, able to cause satellite monitoring malfunctions, scrub ETO agents from camera footage and real-time human sight, and communicate via radio waves. This also makes the ETO more badass by proxy, as they've been in operation longer and more actively, with the world governments on their tail sooner, but completely untouchable until the San-Ti withdraw active support.
• Adaptational Diversity: While the characters in the books are predominantly Chinese, the cast of the series is far more multi-ethnic, though there still is a decent number of Chinese characters.
• Adaptational Dumbass: In the book, the San-Ti figured out humans can lie, and other aspects of human psychology, years prior to the present day (201X) and cut off contact with the ETO out of suspicion. In the series, Mike Evans is reading them fairytales in 202X and they continue to struggle with basic concepts in human psychology.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: The show introduces characters (or counterparts to them) from all three books right from the get-go. Some of them did appear in the same time period due to the non-linear storytelling of the books, but others did not. Examples include:
  • Thomas Wade wasn't introduced until the third and final installment, but here he's the one supporting Shi's investigation with the backing of several world governments.
  • The sophons didn't have a human-looking body in Sophon until Death's End, when ostensibly allied Deterrence Era humanity developed her a gynoid body with the help of San-Ti scientists. Here, she appears as a virtual avatar in the 3-body game.
  • The show also introduces some sci-fi concepts much earlier. Higher and lower dimensions weren't discussed until briefly at the end of the first book and in much more depth in the third, and The Multiverse wasn't hinted at in the slightest before the very end of the third.
• Adaptation Expansion: Jack's counterpart in the books appeared in one scene to write Will's counterpart a check as thanks for giving him the idea he used for the business venture that made him rich, and hadn't otherwise interacted with Will or Jin's counterparts since college. Here, Jack has maintained his relationship with both of them and has some involvement in the plot as a result.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: In the book, the VR headsets used for the 3-body game were of human origin; here, they (and the game itself) were created by the San-Ti. Which raises the question: how did the San-Ti get them to Earth in the first place when their fleet is still four hundred years away? Were they more willing to share advanced technology with the ETO in this version and let them build them?
• Adaptation Name Change: There are many examples, due to the setting of the present day storyline being moved from China to Britain. Wang Miao's closest counterpart is a woman named Auggie Salazar, for instance.
  • Jin Cheng is equally given Wang Miao's storyline from the book of infiltrating the ETO conference so Thomas Wade's Agency can initiate a Raid on them. She takes over much of Cheng Xin's role from the book afterwards.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • In the books, Mike Evans was a Misanthrope Supreme who hated the human race and openly wanted the aliens to wipe us all out as penance for what we've done to the planet. Here, he's an Affably Evil Cool Old Guy who, like Ye Wenjie, merely wants the San-Ti to fix the flaws inherent to human civilization and is horrified when they decide to Kill All Humans instead. His death is also portrayed sympathetically in the show, while in the book he is Killed Offscreen and never expresses remorse for his actions.
  • Downplayed in the case of Thomas Wade, who's still an unscrupulous jerkass but nowhere near as sadistic as his book counterpart.
• Adaptational Wimp: In the book, the San-Ti almost exclusively targeted theoretical physicists, because only they could make the breakthroughs in fundamental physics that would allow humans to develop technology capable of threatening the San-Ti. Wang Miao was unique among applied physicists in being targeted, because his nano-fibers could potentially allow humanity to develop space elevators and spread out through the solar system faster than the San-Ti could send enough sophons to cover that much space and continue to interfere with all their particle experiments. Here, scientists more broadly are enough of a threat to be worth targeting. A cyberneticist is given as an example of a target, and Mike Evans fosters mundane anti-science trends such as 5G conspiracy theories and anti-vaxxers.
• Advertising by Association: The trailers use "from the creators of Game of Thrones" to help sell the succeeding footage.
• Aliens Are Bastards: The San-Ti are so smug and contemptuous toward humanity that it's difficult to empathize with them at all, even knowing their tragic backstory.
• Arc Words:
  • "In nature, nothing exists alone."
  • "If one of us survives, we all survive."
• Artistic License – History:
  • Contrary to what Thomas Wade claims, stirrups were invented and popularized over a thousand years before Genghis Khan's rise to power, and they are not the reason the Mongol Empire was so successful.
  • In the show, Ye Wenjie meets Mike Evans planting trees in China in the year 1977, and his dialogue implies that by this point he has been doing it for years, i.e. even before the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. That the Chinese authorities would have allowed a random American to not only enter the country but also to go around without supervision during this period seems improbable, to put it mildly. (In the book, Ye Wenjie instead first meets Evans years later, well into the country's opening-up period.)
• Camera Abuse: In the Tudum teaser, a woman attacks the camera with a sword, causing a smear of blood onto the screen.
• Composite Character: Jin Cheng takes traits from Wang Miao and Chen Xin, the main characters of the first and third books.
• Cosmic Horror Story: As in the book, a lot of this series' tension stems from the premise that Science Is Wrong and our understanding of the universe is fundamentally flawed and unreliable. The reveal that Sufficiently Advanced Aliens have been messing with us to create this impression so that we can never catch up to them is just the icing on the cake.
• Cult Colony: Mike Evans has established one aboard Judgement Day, a converted oil tanker. They venerate the San-Ti and believe that they will fix humanity's mistakes when they arrive.
• Death by Adaptation: Jack is killed in episode three, whereas his book counterpart exited the narrative without a scratch.
• Death World: The San-Ti homeworld is temperate during a Stable Era, when it orbits a single sun, but turns unpredictably hostile upon entering a Chaotic Era and drifting between all three semi-randomly. The transitions often destroy any nascent civilizations developing on its surface. The San-Ti predict that it will eventually be destroyed completely, hence their intention to conquer Earth.
• Decomposite Character: The protagonist of the first book's modern storyline, Wang Miao, has been split between two characters; the Mexican woman Augusta "Auggie" Salazar, who's deep in the turmoil affecting the scientific community, and Chinese-British Jin Cheng, who explores the headset game.
• Despair Event Horizon: In a shocking twist of fate, Ye Wenjie is confronted at the labor camp by the same girl who killed her father in the public square execution years before. Apparently the girl outlived her usefulness to the state, and so they imposed on her the same exile and suffering as Ye Wenjie. Even so, the girl clings so tightly to her hatefulness that she boasts she would kill Ye Wenjie's father all over again if she could. It is this moment that causes Ye Wenjie to consider humanity to be beyond redemption without a greater outside force to control it.
• Diabolus ex Machina: In the final episode of the season, the plan to send a probe to spy on the San-Ti with Will's brain as the pilot goes awry because one of the tethers for the Solar Sail to catch the nuclear explosions that speed it up break, sending the whole thing spiraling off course and towards deep space. The San-Ti had nothing to do with it at all and the Sophon tells Wade that it’s a shame that it happened because they wanted to meet Will.
• Downer Beginning: The very first scene depicts Ye Wenjie's father being beaten to death by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution while she can only watch helplessly.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Seems to be happening to physicists all over the world for reasons unknown.
  • Done by Ye Wenjie in the penultimate episode, who is broken by the realization that she doomed humanity rather than save it and prepares to die by falling off the mountain she broadcasted the signal to the San-Ti from decades ago. Tatianna, however, shows up to offer her a Mercy Kill instead.
• Driving Question: There are three: "why is science broken?", "why are physicists killing themselves?", and "what do those mysterious numbers mean?"
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • After his terminal cancer diagnosis, Will spends most of his remaining time on Earth either drunk or high.
  • Auggie begins drinking herself to sleep every night after her nanofibers are used to destroy the Judgement Day.
• Establishing Character Moment: Saul is introduced staying late at night, staring at the inexplicable physics experiment data, hoping that some solution will come to him. This establishes the tenacity he has when he applies himself, which will : eventually prove valuable for his roles as Wallfacer and Swordbearer.
• Exact Words: When Jack refuses to join the collaborator cult, Tatianna assures him he's free to leave. She didn't say anything about letting him live afterward.
• Eye Scream:
  • One of the physicists who committed suicide also gouged out his own eyes.
  • In the season 1 finale the Sophon forces a hallucination on Wade where he sees himself with his eyes gouged out suddenly appear next to him on the plane as a form of intimidation. Wade is, understandably, left rather shaken by the experience.
• Fission Mailed: The headset game does this repeatedly. Each level presents an apparent objective of saving an alien civilization, and each time the players fail. The real, hidden objective is to discover principles behind their world's astronomy, and why the solution provided by the NPCs does not work, at which point the players advance to the next level.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: The San-Ti take the form of Human Aliens when interacting with humans through the sophons or the VR game; when Wade asks what she actually looks like, Sophon replies that he "wouldn't like it."
• Gaia's Lament: In the flashbacks, Ye Wenjie is quite disturbed by the deforestation taking place near Red Coast base. A transmission test from said base also drives the surrounding birds into a mad frenzy, killing many of them.
• Gilligan Cut: Twice in episode three:
  • Jin promises they'll stop playing the 3-body game. Smash cut to her and Jack discussing their many subsequent play sessions.
  • Jin promises she'll avoid science talk when meeting her boyfriend's family. Smash cut to her energetically describing dimensional physics.
• Homeworld Evacuation: The San-Ti are invading Earth because their own planet will inevitably be destroyed by its suns and they need a new world to inhabit.
• Hotter and Sexier: The novels were fairly chaste, with lofty on-page romantic yearning and only making reference to the sexual occasionally. The show's opening credits give a sophon's-eye view of a couple having sex and the show makes Ye Wenjie's two close relationships with men other than her husband sexual and lingers on the naked "women" rehydrating in the 3-body game.
• Humans Advance Swiftly: The San-Ti recognize that by the time their fleet arrives in four hundred years, humanity will have long surpassed them technologically. So they enact a plan to enforce Modern Stasis on us by disrupting our particle accelerators.
• Humans Are Bastards: Ye Wenjie's experience during the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath convince her that humanity is too callous and violent to survive. So she invites an alien civilization to conquer Earth and rule over us instead.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: The San-Ti are so disturbed by the idea that humans can lie to one another that they change their plan from conquest to extermination on the spot.
• Humans Are Survivors: The final scene of the series ends with Clarence recalling to Saul and Jin how humanity has fought bugs for centuries and they still endure. The implication, like in the novel, is that humanity will, one way or another, find a way to endure, as an act of spite to the San-Ti's declaration that humanity is bugs and he proceeds to encourage them to get back to work.
• Ignored Epiphany: Ye Wenjie clearly has a re-invigoration of her idealism and sense of good in the world and belief in Humanity when meeting and speaking with Mike Evans. She even attempts to help him in his quest to save a rare species of bird by standing up to her CO. Unfortunately, immediately after this and immediately prior to the broadcast from the San-Ti, she meets with the girl who helped murder her father earlier, now destitute, imprisoned, maimed and embittered, and hears the girl refuse repentance and the chance for absolution by instead declaring she'd murder the man again. This unfortunately ends up leading to her major series (and world) impacting decision soon after and inviting the San-Ti to come invade Earth.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: The voiceover in the Tudum teaser talks about how some people prefer that we not search too hard for other life forms: "Better not to know".
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After being told of the existence of aliens, Jack says he's heading straight for the pub.
• Invading Refugees: The San-Ti plan to invade Earth because their own planet's unstable orbit will eventually result in its destruction, and they need a new world to inhabit.
• In Vino Veritas: It's only while high from anesthetic that Will is able to voice his feeling that Jin knows he's dying but doesn't care, and his distrust and dislike of her boyfriend. He also bluntly informs Wade that he feels no particular loyalty to humanity, but is willing to spy on the San-Ti for Jin's sake.
• Invincible Villain: Discussed regarding the San-Ti. They may not be, but they are so far beyond what humanity can achieve right now in terms of technology that the odds of beating them are absurdly, extremely, astronomically long. Wade still attempts to organize a resistance, because the only other option is let the San-Ti annihilate humanity.
• Join or Die: While Titania doesn't initially couch the offer to join the ETO in these terms, she later clarifies that Jack was only free to go from that particular venue. When he gets home is another matter.
• Lava Adds Awesome: A unique visual from the Tudum trailer: a woman walking barefoot on what looks to be a world full of magma.
• Match Cut: The Tudum teaser has an overhead shot of someone standing in the middle of an orange circle, before it sharply cuts to a white circle in a different location.
• Mind Control: Saul theorizes that since the 3-body game helmets can directly input sensory data indistinguishable from reality and can interpret motor output and interfere with it (letting people walk around in the game without walking around in real life), the helmets could make lasting alterations to one's mind, and that Vera Ye was compelled by the helmet to commit suicide.
• Modern Stasis: Enforced by the sophons, which are disrupting Earth's particle accelerators so that humanity won't be able to out-tech the San-Ti before their fleet arrives.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Saul Durand is one of the top minds of the planet, happy to party, screw and just live out his life, Content to view the upcoming San-Ti invasion, some 400 years away, as too far off to really care about. Unfortunately the San-Ti viewing him as a viable threat, attempt to kill him twice, forcing him to become the very threat they were trying to eliminate.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The Red Guard fanatics viciously pummeled Professor Ye Zhetai until he is dead during the Cultural Revolution.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Evidently, while Auggie's board of directors have the authority to fire her, there is no documentation or technical understanding among any of her workers that would allow the company to continue the research without her personally.
• Oh, Crap!: Mike Evans reacts with visible horror when he realizes that by explaining the concept of lying to the San-Ti, who are incapable of it, he's convinced them to eradicate the human race as an intolerable threat. Ye Wenjie has the same reaction when listening to the audio recording.
• Orion Drive: The Staircase Project uses a variant of this. Rather than being a large ship dropping and detonating nuclear bombs to propel itself (which is rejected offhand), the nukes are carefully positioned in low-Earth orbit and detonated in sequence as a small craft using a Solar Sail flies past.
• The Quisling: Episode 2 ends with Ye Wenjie inviting the San-Ti to conquer Earth, believing that Humans Are Bastards and don't deserve independence.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Thomas Wade casually calls one of his staff a "retard" after they volunteer themselves for the Staircase Project.
• Promoted to Love Interest: In the books, the father of Ye Wenjie's daughter Yang Dong is her husband, Yang Weining. Unique to this version, Wenjie had a relationship with Mike Evans that resulted in her daughter Vera Ye.
• Refusal of the Call: Attempted by Saul Durand when "volunteered" against his will as a Wallfacer, believing that the San-Ti were too powerful and humanity too far gone. Unfortunately for him, the San-Ti — believing him a threat — attempt to have him killed multiple times, leading him to reluctantly to join in Earth's defense.
• Repurposed Pop Song: The final trailer uses the haunting "This Bitter Earth" by Dinah Washington to score its ambitious scenes.
• Room Full of Crazy: In the Tudum teaser, Shi shines a flashlight on a white wall filled from top to bottom with bloody numbers, as well as "I STILL SEE IT".
• Sacrificial Lion: Jack is killed by Titania to establish the ruthlessness of the ETO.
• Science Is Wrong: Three months ago, all of the world's particle accelerators started inexplicably producing garbage results, throwing decades of research into doubt and effectively halting mankind's progress in the field of physics. It turns out the San-Ti are disrupting these experiments to enforce Modern Stasis on humanity.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Jack is so suspicious and bewildered by the claims of alien civilization that he abandons Jin Cheng and leaves her alone with Titania.
  • Disgusted with the usage of her nano fibers to slaughter the people aboard the Judgment Day, and especially Wade's lack of scruples in fighting the San-Ti, including preparing to use Will's brain to send to the San-Ti on the basis he's already dying, Auggie chooses to leave Project Staircase and lets herself get fired from the Nanotechnology Research Center, departing to Mexico to see to it her work is used for benign purposes like she intended.
• Suddenly Voiced: In the books, Sophon was not capable of speech until given a gynoid body in the Deterrence Era and communicated with Mike Evans by making text appear in his eyes through the same means as the countdown. Here, she speaks as an NPC in the 3-body game and uses radio to talk with Mike Evans.
• Threat Backfire: In Episode 3, when confronted by Tatiana, Jack warns her not to try anything as "there's cameras everywhere," unaware Tatiana doesn't show up on video.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Jin Cheng grows attached to The Follower in the 3-body game. This is an Invoked Trope, for players in general and for her in particular.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Upon logging in to the 3-body game, Jack immediately assaults the first NPC he sees as vengeance for Sophon violently kicking him out if Jin Cheng's game. And then a couple more times, seemingly because he realizes the NPC will just get back on-script afterwards.
• Wham Episode: "Judgement Day". Wade has the titular ship and its crew (and their children) massacred in order to obtain Mike Evans' data on the San-Ti, which reveals just how outgunned humanity is against the invaders. The San-Ti then drive the message home by unfolding a sophon to form a reflective bubble around the entire Earth, shattering the masquerade and driving the world into a panic.
• Wham Line:
  • Ye Wenjie's response to the San-Ti at the end of "Red Coast":
    "Come here. We cannot save ourselves. I will help you conquer this world."
  • After Mike Evans explains what lying is to the San-Ti, they take a moment to consider the implications before announcing a change of plans:
    "We cannot coexist with liars."
• The Woobie: In-Universe, the Follower is clearly designed to tug at the heartstrings of the players of the headset game, which serves the game's true purpose as a recruitment tool for the San-Ti.
• You Will Be Spared: The San-Ti implies this for Wade in the season finale, desiring to meet him, possibly for being a Worthy Opponent for them.

---