#also either way I seem obsessed with Maura angst

[anxiouspotatorants]

Okay so there are a lot things I’m not sure of or don’t trust in season 1 of 1899, but one thing seems legit to me so far. Maura’s marriage and child is real. It could very well be shipping bias or blind faith in the first plot twist we get talking (I have yet to see Dark so I don’t know how convoluted Jantje and Bo’s plots can get), but based on various shots and actions in season 1 it appears to be real.

When Ada asks Maura about having children, Maura gets a flash of a memory of Elliot’s hand holding the bug. This leads to a full breakdown of flashes that include asylum shots and her room number (indicating the loop) as well as a shot of Maura’s hand in Daniel’s hair (confirmed because the same shot is in 1.07).

When she first meets Daniel in the loop, he feels familiar to her and she tells him. When Elliot is thrown overboard, Maura goes completely blank and defeated. When Elliot steps out of the cabinet and hugs her after The Fight in 1.04, she sheds a tear. When Daniel reveals their connection, Maura cries and shakes and drops her weapon before lifting it again and insisting that he works for her father. When she enters their room in Daniel’s memory space, she gets flashbacks of them being intimate. When her and Daniel kiss, she gets more memory flashes of both this as well as disturbing images related to the mental hospital.

It’s very clear that Maura’s body remembers, both through the tear and with physical touch triggering memories (like Ada’s hand on her belly or kissing Daniel). But it also seems like she’s genuinely on the edge of remembering, but the pain and fear makes her shut down. So many times the flashes of memories are cut together with memories of being in the asylum which seem to be what makes her pull away. It’s after these hospital memories that Maura affirms the simulation as her reality and tries to push Daniel away.

I think Daniel was telling the truth when he said she’d forgotten because she wanted to. It’s probably not as clear cut as choosing to forget, but the pain of everything (be it just losing Elliot or maybe also guilt over everything she did to prevent it) made her mind shut down to protect itself. I’m not sure if she created the asylum memories of her being the patient by herself as a form of mental protection or if Henry or Ciaran put them there to keep her under the simulation, but nevertheless they’re there to keep her from remembering. Because remembering means an amount of pain that she just can’t handle. So much pain that being tortured and killed on loop for all eternity is better than experiencing it.