Unpacking the Mind-Bending Virtual Reality Game in ‘3 Body Problem’

Big surprise: 3 Body Problem, Netflix’s new show based on a trilogy of sci-fi novels that regularly deal with advanced quantum science theories, doesn’t offer a lot in terms of easy answers. Why did Vera Ye kill herself? What do people see when those shaky countdowns get to zero? And who, really, are the incoming aliens known as the San-Ti (Chinese for “three-body [people]”)?

Many of the answers to the latter question revolve around a virtual reality game encased in a sleek chrome headset that resembles something Apple would sell for several thousand dollars. Early in Episode 1, Jin Cheng (Jess Hong) is given one of these devices on a visit to Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao), the mother of Jin’s recently deceased friend Vera. Wenjie claims Vera was gaming regularly in the weeks before her death, which piques Jin’s interest since her particle physicist friend would never deign to carve out time for video games.

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Headset affixed, Jin finds herself in a hyperrealistic desert landscape. The words “Level One” echo loudly. The headset is able to affect every sense, not just seeing and hearing, effectively transporting her mind to a new plane of being. Jin marvels as the wind ripples the traditional garb she’s been outfitted in, smiles and squints as a massive sun rises over a stately pyramid, and screams in terror when the wind picks up, revealing a desiccated, still-alive humanoid figure buried at her feet. I’m not a big fan of tutorial levels, either.

Eventually, one of Jin’s friends, snack magnate Jack Rooney (John Bradley), gets his hands on her headset. But his experience playing the game is even more bonkers. When Jack first puts on Jin’s device, which was evidently intended just for her, a woman (Sea Shimooka) appears behind him and sternly observes, “You were not invited,” before cutting him down with a sword. The same thing happens when another friend, Auggie (Eiza González), tries to play. The San-Ti want only a select few people to use their tech. But with time, Jack finally makes the cut. A shiny headset of his own comes with a card that reads: “We invite you to play.”

Initially, the VR portions of 3 Body Problem do resemble some kind of incredibly immersive game. Putting on the headset and engaging with the AI once again, Jin meets a suave NPC, the Count of the West, and another simply referred to as Follower, a young girl Jin immediately takes a shine to. The Count welcomes Jin to “Civilization 137” and tells her that this world has “chaotic” and “stable” eras. She must deduce whether an era is chaotic or stable, and if she’s wrong, the civilization is destroyed.

As in any good game, you need a big end-of-level boss. Here in Level One, it’s Emperor Zhou—a real-life tyrant king from about 3,000 years ago. The Count, desperate to appease the emperor, tells Zhou that he can use divination to predict the next stable era, which just so happens to be in eight days and will last 63 years. Jin, a trained scientist rather than a mystic, disagrees with the Count’s assessment. But Zhou is on board with the Count’s prediction and dismisses Jin’s interjections about “the laws of physics: everything we know to be true about the world.”

“Which world?” he asks her.

The emperor moves forward with the Count’s plea to “awaken your dynasty and let it prosper.” But that decision quickly proves to be misguided, as Zhou’s civilization is completely obliterated by a massive ice storm. Nevertheless, Jin’s foresight in choosing science over mysticism results in her passing Level One. Several doomed civilizations later, Jin and Jack solve Level Two together: This world is part of, get this, a three-body star system, moving unpredictably between the gravity of three suns, causing constant ecological disasters and apocalypses. Throughout the “game,” they’re tasked with explaining complex modern physics to NPCs who are based on important figures in Earth’s history and whose temperaments range from “unimpressed” to “cartoonishly hostile.” And I mean cartoonishly. At one point, Kublai Khan tries to boil Jin and Jack in a big pot, which is something Wile E. Coyote would attempt. A series of comedic cameos adds to the heightened reality and playfulness of these scenes compared to the rest of the show, like when League of Gentlemen alum and Sherlock cocreator Mark Gatiss—in character as Isaac Newton—spits at Jin to “shut the fuck up, troll!” after she questions his (very cool) human-powered binary computer. The San-Ti are at least hip to a bit of gamer lingo, then.

It’s a fascinating way to tell the San-Ti’s story, which becomes clearer and clearer with each progressing level. This game is not a puzzle; the three-body problem is unsolvable. Any species existing within such an unstable star system will always face eradication, eventually. It’s a demonstration by the San-Ti that they have no choice but to abandon their planet and find a new home.

Jin and Jack are invited to Level Four, which, as it turns out, is basically an initiation. Donning the headsets one more time, they are greeted by the game’s “guide,” that mysterious woman with a sword. “There is only one solution when your world is doomed,” the woman says. “Flee,” Jin whispers in response. And so, after 9,478 total civilizations have been built, destroyed, and rebuilt, the San-Ti are accepting an invitation to Earth that—surprise—Ye Wenjie extended to them at the end of Episode 2. Wenjie, exasperated with the cruelty she experienced at the hands of her fellow human beings during the Cultural Revolution, believes the San-Ti could save humanity—even if, and perhaps explicitly because, the San-Ti warned Wenjie that her “world will be conquered” if she responded to the their messages sent decades before Jin’s VR excursions.

Jack and Jin, as “Level Four champions,” are invited into a sect of humanity that’s led by Wenjie and is preparing to welcome the San-Ti, whom they call “Our Lord.” The game is designed not only to literalize the history of the San-Ti, but to select players who will be sympathetic and malleable to the San-Ti’s own ends. “Your cingulate cortex [an area of the brain commonly associated with emotion and empathy] activity was the highest we’ve ever recorded,” true believer Tatiana (Marlo Kelly) tells Jin.

Inside the careful and occasionally humorous craftsmanship of the games, there are more hints to be gleaned about the nature of the San-Ti. First—and this is the one that’ll stick in most people’s minds—they have the ability to “dehydrate” themselves, essentially pausing all biological functions and flattening into a rolled-up canvas so that they can preserve themselves during the chaotic eras of their home world. When a stable era arrives, any surviving, hydrated San-Ti toss them into pools of water and they come back to life, like those compressed hand towels that start out looking like tiny pills that you sometimes get at Chinese restaurants. Though the San-Ti civilizations are based on human ones in the game, they clearly have a very different biology. “We don’t look anything like this,” the sword woman tells Jin and Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham) in a final demonstration later on. When asked what they do look like, she calmly tells Wade he “wouldn’t like it.”

More troublingly, the game’s design betrays the implication of the San-Ti’s authority over humanity. In each level, Jin and Jack are presenting their ideas to some of the most powerful and notably violent figures in history. This is not the San-Ti asking for help; they’re already on their way. This is them explaining how things will work once they arrive.

By the season’s end, there’s still a lot about the headsets that remains mysterious. Why did the San-Ti, a species that takes things very literally (to the point that they’re incapable of lying or understanding the concept of a fairy tale), construct such a narratively complex fable to highlight their perspective? They clearly know the broad mechanics of a video game, but not Little Red Riding Hood?

In the end, though, another useful purpose for the headsets emerges: outright threats. The woman with the sword is an avatar for the Sophons: four 11-dimensional supercomputers folded back into the size of a proton (seriously, don’t think too hard about this) and quantum entangled with one another on the San-Ti fleet, allowing for instantaneous communication even though they’re 400 years from reaching Earth. The Sophons can be anywhere, see and hear anything, cause mass hallucinations, and even disrupt the laws of physics, slowing down humanity’s scientific progress so that it’ll be less able to defend itself when the San-Ti arrive. They’re omnipresent gremlins designed to drive everyone employed at the United Nations insane, basically.

By the end of the first season, humanity’s relationship with its alien counterpart, the San-Ti, has already deteriorated to the extent that they publicly announce their intention to conquer Earth. As 3 Body Problem’s first season progresses and Earth and the San-Ti fleet morph from uneasy allies into all-out belligerents, the headsets become less prominent in the story. There’s only so much you can do to recruit more pro-San-Ti influencers after you’ve called all of humanity “BUGS” on an LED display in Piccadilly Circus. But, curiously, Tatiana herself receives a headset at the end of Season 1, even though she was already all in on the San-Ti cause. “If one survives, we all survive,” the card included with her device reads. Expect to see some different tricks from the headset when Season 2 inevitably drops. For the rest of those who received them, the San-Ti’s message is clear: Play ball and help, or die with Earth Civilization no. 1.

Tom Philip is a Scottish writer based in Brooklyn, New York. He’s written about entertainment and culture for GQ, Vulture, and The New York Times and contributed some truly awful jokes for the likes of ClickHole, The New Yorker, and CollegeHumor. You can yell at him on X here: @tommphilip.