The Biggest Unanswered Questions From Lost In Space Season 3

The ending of "Lost in Space" Season 3 concludes the story quite nicely, and pretty much every surviving character's arc wraps up in a surprisingly fitting manner. The Netflix sci-fi show keeps its story full of twists and turns until the very finish, and knows exactly when to end things for maximum effect. Even so, there's no such thing as perfection — it would be boring, after all. So, even though the sweet, three-season arc of "Lost in Space" is a pretty great example of well-executed storytelling, an astute viewer might find themselves wondering about certain odds and ends. 

"Lost in Space" does a commendable job at getting the Robinsons to Alpha Centauri in an impressively plot hole-free narrative ship, but given the gazillion events of the show's endgame, there's still plenty of stuff to raise an inquisitive eyebrow at. Let's take a look at some of the biggest unanswered questions from "Lost in Space" Season 3.

Apart from being the first and most prominent human to befriend a robot, Will Robinson (Maxwell Jenkins) holds the dubious record of being the "Lost in Space" character who receives most stabs in the heart. In Season 3 Episode 6, "Final Transmission," main antagonist SAR (Brian Steele) stabs the poor kid, but fortunately, doctors are able to replace his mortally damaged blood pump with an artificial heart in the very next episode ... only for SAR to repeat the deed in the series finale, "Trust." This latter stab, however, turns out to be a big old trap. SAR's mind is promptly overwritten by Robot (also Steele), who earlier uses a strange lightning power to restore Will's ailing new heart to full health, apparently dying in the process — but actually storing its consciousness in Will's brand new heart. 

The heart symbolism is pretty important in the series finale, and Robot demonstrates so many odd powers over the course of the show that it's easy to chalk this one up to the rule of cool. However, this particular plot twist does beg the question: What kind of Robot-compatible supercomputer does Will have in his chest? Real-life mechanical hearts are basically high-tech pump systems (per Britannica), and even taking into account the fact that the show takes place three decades in the future, it's unlikely that they've suddenly started making hearts with the computing power to store highly advanced biomechanical alien intelligences. Does Robot just use the heart as an entry point, and store its consciousness in Will's body? If so, would the end result have been the same if SAR would've accidentally stabbed Will in, say, the spleen? Chances are, we'll never know.

Conclusive endings are a rare and welcome thing in the world of sci-fi shows, but "Lost in Space" pulls it off ... well, almost. The biggest wink-and-nod the show delivers at the adventures yet to come isn't a shot at stunning planetary vistas or an expository dialogue scene. It's Penny Robinson (Mina Sundwall), finally wrapping up her written adventures with the words, "The End of Chapter One". Though this doesn't explicitly promise anything, the existence of Chapter One sure does imply a Chapter Two, doesn't it? 

As such, lighthearted as they may be, those words are probably the closest thing to a direct sequel hook the ending of "Lost in Space" Season 3 provides. Unfortunately, there won't be a Season 4 (per Entertainment Weekly), but in an exclusive interview with Looper, Sundwall shared her own vision about Penny's — and Will's — future. 

"I think that Penny would use her voice for good to tell stories that make a difference," she said. "Probably still asking where Will is. I think that's a repeated question that will continue for many years to come. And I think that the Robinson family would still be quite close and stick together through whatever happened, even 10 years in the future. I should hope that they're able to sit down and be calm for a moment and not have to face danger immediately. But really, what we've learned from the past three years is that you never know. So barring any having to fight alien robots, I'd hope that she's an established writer telling stories that make a difference."

Arguably the biggest endgame revelation in "Lost in Space" is the fact that the alien robots aren't quite the heartless murder machines that they seem to be. In fact, as Episode 8 of the show's final season reveals, the whole "Danger, Will Robinson" thing Robot has going on is a lot more common than you'd expect. As multiple kids extend compassion to various damaged robots, they learn that most, if not all the robots are perfectly capable of forming friendly alliances with living creatures, once a show of kinship frees them from the restraints of their programming. As the episode title implies, it's all about trust. 

However, this doesn't mean they're forever bonded to their new human friends. In fact, after the climactic battle, lots of the "Lost in Space" robots just up and leave. Narratively, this makes sense, because friendly or not, the robots clearly have little incentive to ally themselves with what — from their point of view — is an alien species once SAR is defeated. From a viewer's standpoint, though, it means that tons of cool, super-powerful robots are now out there — free of their restrictive programming, just doing their thing. 

Even cooler, other robots choose to stay and hang around with humans. Since the original Robot is arguably the most compelling character in the entire show, you can't help but wonder: Now that scores of similar, hyper-powerful robots are free from the shackles of their programming, what amazing things are they up to once the show is over? If they're all even half as enticing as Robot, this wealth of alien robot character arcs we'll never get to see is downright tragic. 

The secret of the strange alien robots who are either helping (Robot) or hunting (SAR and its hench-bots) Will Robinson is that they're survivors of a robot apocalypse on a faraway planet. The alien residents of the planet, who looked very much like the robots, designed them to obey their verbal commands. However, SAR set up a massive doomsday device, which killed the alien civilization and stopped the orders. 

This is a neat origin story that explains SAR's motive to go after Will, since it falsely assumes that the kid is somehow commanding Robot, as opposed to befriending it. However, it also raises some pretty pressing questions about the alien race that created the robots. Why did they build such advanced robots in the first place, and gave them all those super-dangerous abilities? Why didn't they take a few extra moments to set up some extra safety protocols to, say, stop one of their advanced creations from pressing a big, red doomsday device button? What, in fact, was their deal?

By the time "Lost in Space" ends, these aliens are obviously long gone, but tons of comparatively nice robots with free will are still around, and working with humanity. No doubt, they'd have plenty of answers about the true nature of their mysterious, dead masters. Unfortunately, it's highly unlikely that we'll ever get that information. 

"Lost in Space" builds a compelling universe, but can you ever visit it again after the show's third season? The series was never going to get a fourth season, due to the simple fact that showrunner Zack Estrin always planned the story to end after Season 3. Because "Lost in Space" wasn't truly cancelled, and its story gets to end in an organic, orderly fashion, it would seem that the show is done for good ... at least, unless another reboot arrives a few decades down the line. 

Still, could there be a way for this iteration of the show to return in some way? The family sci-fi drama has been popular enough on Netflix, and critics have enjoyed it, as well (per Rotten Tomatoes). As such, it wouldn't be all that shocking to find out that the streaming network might be looking for ways to keep the franchise alive — perhaps even using some of these unanswered questions as a stepping stone to new adventures in the show's universe.