WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 1 of Pacific Rim: The Black, now streaming on Netflix.
Pacific Rim: The Black adds quite a lot to the blockbuster film franchise, expanding on the mythos of the Kaiju, the breaches they use to come over to Earth and exactly how humanity has been rocked in trying to fight them.
The first season of the Netflix anime even hints that the aliens known as the Precursors have more sinister plans afoot to infiltrate mankind, which not even the movies tapped into. So with that in mind, let's dissect some of the biggest mysteries we didn't get answers for yet.
ARE TAYLOR AND HAYLEY'S PARENTS ALIVE?
The beginning of this series focuses on Jaeger pilots, Ford and Brina, in Hunter Vertigo as they save their kids' school bus and take it to the Shadow Basin in the Australian desert. With the kids having enough food, water and such, the parents leave them there as they have to make a perilous trek to Sydney to find backup. But as much as they promise to return, they never do.
Six years pass and eventually, when Taylor and Hayley get to Clayton in their own bot to find Mei, they discover their parents' machine. Scared as hell, Taylor investigates but finds it empty. This has him confident they got to Sydney but Hayley's unsure. We never find out if the parents are alive, where they are and why they didn't return, setting up great fodder for Season 2 as Taylor could become obsessed and endanger the group.
WHERE ARE MARSHALL RASK'S SOLDIERS?
Taylor and Hayley know their parents were hoping to come back with Rask's soldiers but even if they didn't, the show never addresses what happened to this legion. It's not just about piloting Jaegers to fight off monsters. They're responsible for relief and aid, so we'd love to know why this humanitarian mission ended and allowed Australia to become a post-apocalyptic, war-ridden wasteland.
Was the Marshall's project discontinued? Did the army die? It's hinted Rask's crew are still operational so hopefully, a second season sheds light, as there are other colonies -- even the wicked ones like Shane's camp -- that would want to attack and steal resources for themselves. Rask's team would have a lot of weapons so they'd also be a great fit for Taylor and Hayley, who have shown potential to follow in their parents' footsteps.
IS SHANE REALLY MEI'S FATHER?
Mei discovers Shane used a neural helmet to mess with her memories, and that he actually stole her from her family. Joel tells her this was a secret he wanted to spill for a while, and now that they've abandoned their wicked colony, he feels confident enough to let her know the truth: she was raised to be a child soldier and assassin.
But he could be spiteful towards Shane. Plus, Joel's memories were scrambled too as he messed with the neural uplinks himself. Mei knows she saw her mom in her visions and Shane too, so fans are wondering if Shane might be her dad. The series never has them talking this out as she leaves the camp immediately, but the fact Shane doesn't let his goons kill her even though there are numerous opportunities hints he's really her father. Hopefully, Season 2 irons this out and confirms what was altered in her mind because Shane is the kind of person to plant false details too.
WHY WAS AUSTRALIA LEFT TO DIE?
The Black was basically a decommissioning project, leaving Australia to die and become this abandoned zone with satellites crashing and all comms going down. But there's never a reason given as to why the government did this and other nations sanctioned it. America had the same problems, being overrun with Kaiju and whatnot, but the Pan Pacific Defense Corps keep going there, so this is one mystery that needs to be addressed. Australia still has people, resources and even weapons like training Jaegers left behind so it has immense value.
A second season has to expand on this because leaving the national lone has allowed the Precursors to unleash experiments there, not to mention cults like the Sisters communicate with and use Kaiju-dogs as pets. The fact the continent wasn't nuked also hints at something deeper that lies beneath the surface and that maybe certain politicians across the globe are waiting to harness unique aspects of the land once society crumbles fully.
WHO CREATED BOY?
After seeing Boy turn into a Kaiju to save Hayley, as he considers her a sister, a stunned Taylor is adamant the Precursors planted Boy there. They know he can communicate with creatures so he believes Boy was meant to infiltrate, pretend to be one of them in disguise and then unleash himself as a weapon of mass destruction. But that's never confirmed and seeing as he was found in a Jaeger lab, it could be that humans were the ones who created him.
He may well have been a defense mechanism and a prototype so people could transform and fend off Kaiju attacks. This is the season's biggest mystery and needs explaining ASAP because someone like Boy, a veritable equalizer in the war, would definitely be a huge plus. After all, it does make sense for mankind to be making these hybrids, especially as they want to go into the breaches, which Pacific Rim: Uprising would expand upon later. Thus, it stands to reason they could have viewed super-soldiers as the ultimate solution for when they made incursions in the aliens' home.
Co-created by Craig Kyle and Greg Johnson and produced by Legendary Television and Polygon Pictures, Pacific Rim: The Black Season 1 is currently streaming on Netflix.
