The sixth episode of Swarm follows two human scientists on a risky trip to discover the cost of curiosity and eagerness. The episode is truly a work of art in terms of animation and effects. In this video, we will take a closer look at the sixth episode of Love Death Robot Season 3 before delving into the program’s enigmatic conclusion. Let us get started, shall we?
Swarm opens with Dr. Afriel, a human scientist, visiting an ancient alien nest. His mode of transportation is a spaceship piloted by a race of super-intelligent goat-like beings. Afriel had made a transit deal with these beings, and the alien in charge of the spaceship tells Afriel that they’d return after 600 Earth days, as per the contract. The human scientist exits the spaceship in a glass bubble and enters a cave-like structure.
There, he meets Dr. Galina Mirny, another human who has been living within an ancient alien nest called the Swarm. Essentially, the Swarm consists of numerous different specialized casts, who are all ruled and dictated by their Queen through a hive mind. However, the Swarm also houses various symbiotic races that it has absorbed over a period of time. The denizens of the Swarm essentially feed on various nutrient-rich fungi; in fact, Galina feeds on the fungi after it is regurgitated by a worker cast alien.
Apparently, the fermentation in its gut improves the taste and adds nutritional value. The two humans encounter a tunneler cast alien, and they hold on to it to explore the depths of the hive. Galina takes Afriel to the heart of the cave, to the Queen. It turns out that whatever cast the hive needs, the Queen can create it by laying millions of eggs. The entire hive is like a marvel of genetic automation that is equal parts ingenuine and organized.
They also come across a member of the warrior cast, deadly creatures who can go to any extent to save their Queen and her eggs. If you think about it, the Swarm functions pretty much like the Xenomorphs as far as the social structure is concerned. However, unlike Xenomorphs, the Swarm is less hostile. However, Afriel soon reveals the real intention behind his presence in the hive.
He intends to use this near-perfect organic system to solve the problem of population explosion on Earth. He claims that their power should be harnessed, but Galina is against the idea and believes that harnessing is just a fancy way of saying exploitation. Afriel needs a single egg so that he can take it home and humans can build their own Queen and a nest, with millions of aliens from each cast. Galina claimed that he wanted to build a slave race, but Afriel claimed that the creatures were not sentient, and it didn’t matter if they served the Queen or humans.
What Afriel doesn’t realize is that the Swarm had been around for millions of years, and will remain in existence for millions of years. However, the humans were a young species, and it was nothing short of arrogance to imagine that humans could control the Swarm. But in the end, Afriel’s arguments convince Galina to become a part of his plans. I mean, the dude convinced the lonely scientist so much that the two of them ended up making some extraterrestrial love.
The two of them tried to steal one of the fertilized eggs, but things were far from fine. Afriel is informed by an alien that Mirny was in trouble, and Afriel leaves to find her. However, he gets attacked by warrior-cast aliens who know about his intention. He does his best to fight the aliens, but in the end, gets badly beaten up before being taken to a special cast member of the Swarm. This was a super-intelligent being who had millions of years of racial memory, but was only a few weeks old.
Afriel finds that Galina was attached to this intelligent lifeform. It talks to Afriel through Galina and tells him how the Swarm creates smarter and tougher versions of a race to fight their own kind. And now, the Swarm wanted to use Afriel and Galina to create a better version of humans to fight humans. The creature gave Afriel two choices, to either live like an intelligent being and breed for humans for the Swarm, or die and get cloned.
Ending Explained
The ending of the sixth episode was a tad bit ambiguous, but don’t you worry, we’ve got you covered. Unbeknownst to Afriel and Galina, their attempt to steal a fertilized egg had triggered a chain reaction of protocols designed to protect the Swarm. These defensive protocols led to the creation of this intelligent being that took over Galina’s mind.
It turns out that whenever the Swarm is under attack, it gives birth to an intelligent life form to combat the threat, which in this case, were humans. In the end, the being offered Afriel a choice, but the scientist responded by saying that he was accepting the challenge.
It turns out that Afriel plans to stay in the hive and pretend to serve the hive, but he probably has ulterior motives that would serve the betterment of humanity. It is quite possible that Afriel would later plan to seize control of the upgraded humans that the Swarm planned to raise. That was all in this video, but don’t forget to check out our other videos on Love Death Robot Season 3.