Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Sunny Episode 8.

The big picture

• Sunny
  Episode 8 reveals Masa’s mysterious past and shapes his character and his connection to robots.
• A cliffhanger in episode 8 leaves the audience doubting Sunny’s fate and abilities.
• Despite all the twists and turns, Suzie gets closer to finding her family, while Sunny’s role remains crucial.

Every protagonist needs a task, and for Suzie (Rashida Jones) in the Apple TV+ drama, SunnyThe aim of this trip was to find out what really happened to her husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and her little son Zen (Belkheir rates). With the help of Sunny, her trusty homebot, Suzie desperately searches for the truth about the plane crash that supposedly killed both Masa and Zen. In the first seven episodes of the series, Suzie struggles with her immense grief, befriends a bartender (Annie the Clumsy), who quickly becomes her companion and is surprisingly involved in a fight against Yakuza members. In episode 8, which aired this week, Suzie has finally arrived at a place where some of her questions are finally answered.

But before revealing more about her, the series decided to take a detour into the past of one of its main characters. By providing additional information, Suzie can not only learn more about Masa, but the viewer can also better understand a character who has been quite elusive up to now. Of course, there is still plenty of action in episode 8, and a shocking cliffhanger at the end proves that Sunny knows how to keep the audience engaged. But what do these plot points mean for the future of the show?

Finally we get some background information about Masa in “Sunny”

Until the eighth episode, Masa was a mysterious guy. He lied to Suzie about his real profession (he told her he worked in refrigerators when in reality he was developing robots) and seemed to hide a lot about his life (including who his real father is). But this episode reveals through Flashbacks to Masa’s younger years that he is truly a complicated character. He grows up as a lonely child (who finds comfort in focusing on a bug he catches) and does not understand why his father detests him so much. Even when his father is on his deathbed, he refuses to see Masa in the hospital. This refusal leads to Masa becoming a hermit or “hikikomori” for two years (which is mentioned in an earlier episode). Eventually, his mother Noriko (Judy Ong), is so worried about him that she contacts his real father, Hiromasa (Jun Kunimura) to ask for help. The man’s true identity is revealed to Masa, who is disgusted that his real father abandoned him (though he now realizes why the father he grew up with was so cold to him). Hiromasa offers Masa the use of his hut to get away from his mother and partially escape his isolation.

It is in this cabin that Masa finally finds his calling. While interacting with his father’s garbage robot, Masa becomes obsessed with developing an improved program for the robot. Through much trial and error, he realizes that his invention must better understand human behavior to be effective. By treating the garbage robot like a friend, Masa is able to reconnect with his own humanity.and because of this, he is later able to form a bond with Suzie and fall in love with her. It is also notable that Masa’s work on the garbage robot led to him programming Sunny and her sentient abilities. This is why Suzie was able to form a connection with Sunny (even if it was reluctant at first). Reminding Suzie of all this, Hiromasa confesses that Masa visited him a few days before the plane crash. He asked Hiromasa to give Sunny to Suzie, and in fact, it is likely Masa’s ability to program robots to kill that put the Yakuza on his trail – and now Suzie’s as well.

“Sunny” Episode 8 ends with a mysterious cliffhanger

Hiromasa, Suzie, and Mixxy discover that the Yakuza are pursuing a fourth person, and Suzie believes it to be Masa (whose death was never confirmed, except that authorities say they found his shoes at the crash site). They race to the location, and while frantically running around the basement of a building, Suzie is shocked to hear Zen calling “Mama!” over and over again. She eventually finds him and is about to run to him, but is grabbed by a Yakuza member and held at gunpoint. Sunny approaches, and since she was reprogrammed by Hime (You), it seems as if she is going to kill either Suzie or Zen. Suzie closes her eyes in panic, but when she opens them, she finds that Sunny killed Suzie’s attacker.

Before Suzie has a moment to react, the ground seems to be torn apart and Sunny begins to fall into a dark abyss. She screams to Suzie for help and the episode ends on this strange cliffhanger. Perhaps this ending indicates Sunny simply switches off or there is a malfunction in its programming. It seemed like she was programmed to hurt people (maybe even Suzie) after Hime got his hands on her. Maybe Sunny overrode her programming to save Suzie, but now she’s paid a price for it by taking down the Yakuza man. Could the shaking and crumbling ground just be Sunny’s reality, or is it something Suzie and Zen are experiencing as well? Is it possible that the plot in the previous episodes was some sort of parallel world, or is Sunny simply experiencing a major error?

There are two episodes left in this season of Sunny. Hopefully, episode 9 will explain what this strange scene actually means and that the plot will move forward to help Suzie find out whether or not Masa is alive and well. It’s clear that Hime is still torturing people to get information on Suzie, so it’s likely that her villainous deeds will continue over the next two weeks. In the end Suzie is one step closer to her goal of getting her family backespecially now that she knows her beloved Zen is still alive. Even though Masa has kept a lot from her, she’s come a long way in solving this mystery, and she’ll stop at nothing to get her husband back (assuming he’s unharmed at the time). And even though Sunny has been put through the wringer, Suzie isn’t going to rest until her homebot is working again.

New episodes of Sunny are available to stream every Wednesday on Apple TV+ in the US

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