Finished season 3. Overall was a really well done series. Agree with a lot of the sentiment here.
I didn't really doubt Nora's story in the last episode as I was watching, but later it really started to bother me, it's why I looked up this thread. Glad to see everyone was as skeptical as I was after thinking about it. At first I just thought it was a result of lazy writing to just give the audience some type of closure with with what happened to the departed, as I did read that the book did not give any explanation, but the glaring ridiculousness of Nora going through all the trouble to find the scientist and somehow convince him to make the machine there just to live as a hermit when she got back was just too much after awhile.
It makes more sense that at the last moment Nora, like Lauri, couldn't go through with ending it all, and that Nora probably deep down thought that wherever the machine sent her, she would cease to be alive. So instead she made up the story that if her husband and kids WERE alive somewhere, they probably moved on after 7 years and she could just tell herself that they were living happily somewhere else and feel better. Also, upon rewatch of the last episode, right as the water gets to her face before it cuts to the next scene, her mouth starts forming the "ST-" sound.
I think it's a pretty ingenious way to end it because after all, I really want to believe she is telling the truth, because it makes for a better story about the departed and I find that I keep reconvincing myself that it really was true.
7nine
