A dangerous creature offshore threatens Snook’s Arm just as its residents face pressure to leave their homes. Calvin Penney has encountered it before, and his family becomes caught up in both the attacks and the fight over the town’s future. This Below season 1 recap brings the important developments from episodes 1–5 together before covering episode 6 and explaining where the ending leaves everyone.
Full spoilers for all six episodes of Netflix’s Below follow.
Below season 1 recap: episodes 1–5
Calvin’s past returns, and Wade encounters the creature
In 1986, Calvin’s family is moving its house across the water as part of Newfoundland’s resettlement program. Something catches the house while his father, Leo, is inside. Calvin sees an eye beneath the surface and cuts the towing rope to save the boat and the rest of his family. The house sinks with Leo in it.
Forty years later, Calvin still lives with that loss. His wife has died, and his children return to Snook’s Arm for a community reunion. Wade lives at home, while Mary arrives with her boyfriend, Noah, and Jay returns carrying problems he initially keeps to himself.
Another proposed resettlement divides the town. Calvin and his sister Ruth oppose it, but dwindling work makes the payout attractive to other residents. Their chances of blocking it worsen when the required approval drops from 90 percent to 75 percent.
Calvin hopes to expand his ice-harvesting business. When scientist Fonda examines a suspicious sample he brings her, she finds material connected to something much older than ordinary harvested ice.
The danger becomes immediate when Wade accompanies Jerry on a nighttime trip to break ice from an iceberg. Their boat is attacked, and Jerry is killed. Calvin and Fonda find Wade clinging to a buoy with part of Jerry’s body. Wade has seen the same enormous eye Calvin remembers from childhood.
The contaminated ice spreads the danger ashore
Wade struggles after the attack. He has gaps in his memory, circular marks on his back and an intense thirst. He also experiences disturbing visions of a woman approaching him.
Fonda investigates a giant squid as the possible cause of the attacks. Footage recovered near Calvin’s guests’ campsite shows a tentacle taking a moose and then a man into the water. Other disappearances and remains add to the evidence, although the town initially resists her explanation.
A visiting ship gives Wade somewhere to go beyond his father’s restrictions. Steve offers him work, and his colleague Dr. Sayed describes a cephalopod whose secretions can affect those exposed to them. Sayed believes the creature comes from deep Arctic waters and has travelled south as its habitat breaks apart.
Ice contaminated by those secretions reaches the community’s drinks. Residents become desperately thirsty and increasingly disoriented. Fonda finds Barry behaving erratically at the science centre, and a makeshift treatment area fills with patients.
Ruth is affected too. While trying to contact the Coast Guard, she walks toward the water, and Fonda stops her from jumping in. Barry later enters the ocean despite efforts to keep him safe.
Jay’s debts and Calvin’s search complicate the crisis
Jay owes $80,000 to men who threaten and assault him. He looks to the resettlement payout as a way out and asks Jan, with whom he is sleeping, to put him on the list for $60,000. She agrees.
Mary and Noah’s relationship develops amid the emergency. Noah loses the ring he intends to propose with, but when he fears he may not survive the outbreak, he tells Mary about his plans. She accepts without it.
Calvin’s immediate concern is Wade. After finding his son missing, he heads to Steve’s ship, where Steve says Wade is no longer aboard. An attack kills the captain and first mate, leaving Calvin to operate the vessel.
Steve and Sayed want to study the squid. They attach a tracker and prepare to descend in a submarine. Calvin discovers that Steve has concealed a working radio, despite claiming they cannot call for help. Steve catches him with it and forces him to join the dive at gunpoint.
Underwater, the tracker becomes useless when the squid sheds the tentacle carrying it. She catches the submarine and drives it toward the surface. During a struggle, Sayed takes Steve’s gun and shoots him. Calvin releases the hatch, and he and Sayed are thrown into the water.
Jan hears Calvin’s distress call ashore but pours water over the radio. Calvin survives and washes up on an island.
Mudder’s island reveals what the Crockers want
On the island, Calvin finds Wade with Walton, someone he knows from his past, and a woman named Maggie. Walton also shows him Leo’s grave: enough of his father’s remains were recovered for a burial.
The island’s inhabitants call the squid Mudder. They use a device to obtain fish from her, and substances associated with her are used as drugs. Walton wants Wade to remain with Maggie, claiming Mudder has marked him.
Calvin discovers a mine and a permit bearing the Crocker Group’s name. The land contains cobalt and copper. He learns that the valuable deposits are behind the effort to resettle the community and wants to return home with that information.
Wade initially refuses to leave. Calvin then sees Maggie drugging Phil and removing his remaining leg. He attempts to get Phil away and sets the house on fire during their escape. Walton kills Phil with an arrow. Before Walton can shoot Calvin, Wade strikes him with a tire iron, allowing father and son to flee.
Back in Snook’s Arm, Jay escapes a car that plunges into the water during a confrontation with his creditors. The squid takes the vehicle and Connor, one of the men. Jay plans to claim Connor ran away with the repayment money.
Fonda makes the discovery that becomes crucial to the finale: a small squid emerges from material inside a block of ice. The large iceberg offshore is a nest.
Episode 6 recap and ending explained: the fight to save Snook’s Arm
Jan’s connection to the Crockers is revealed
Calvin and Wade return from the island as soldiers evacuate Snook’s Arm. On the journey, Calvin apologizes for keeping Wade from working on the boats. They reach home and reunite with the family.
Jan is revealed to be Jim Crocker’s daughter. Her involvement in the resettlement has served the family’s interests, while Calvin now knows about the mineral deposits they want.
Fonda briefs the military on the squid. The warm water threatens her eggs, contributing to her aggression. The planned response is an airstrike. Fonda objects, but Jim offers her the creature’s remains for research once it has been killed.
The Penneys begin evacuating. Calvin decides to stay and interfere with the operation, and Wade joins him. The others follow, with Mary and Noah eventually returning to help as well.
How Calvin stops the airstrike
Calvin’s plan is to move the nest and draw the squid away from the harbour before the military attacks.
He and Wade get past the guards in Fonda’s truck. Jan finds the mining report in Calvin’s house and discovers he has escaped the evacuation zone. Jim is willing to proceed against him.
Wade returns Noah’s missing ring to Mary. She then fires the shot that breaks the iceberg into pieces, allowing Calvin to gather the ice in a net and tow it behind his boat.
Fonda refuses the Crockers’ demand to stop him. Jim threatens her job, but she rejects his money. When Jan tries to take her radio, Fonda slaps her down.
A helicopter reaches Calvin after he brings the ice into deeper water. Jim demands an attack even with Calvin still in the strike zone. The military officer refuses: the squid is away from the harbour and no longer presents the threat used to justify the operation.
Calvin cuts the ropes and releases the ice. The squid surfaces and looks at him, recalling their encounter forty years earlier. This time, he leaves safely.
Does Mudder survive, and what happens to her eggs?
Calvin saves Mudder from the planned bombing, but she later dies after releasing her eggs.
Fonda studies them, and none survive the warm water. Moving the nest therefore stops the immediate attack without securing the survival of Mudder’s offspring.
Her aggression was caused by the danger facing the eggs.
What happens to Calvin’s family and the resettlement plan?
A year later, Calvin has opened the Big Squid Distillery and Brewing company. Wade now captains the boat with his father aboard, having finally been allowed to do the work Calvin once kept him from. Calvin and Fonda also seem to be growing closer.
Mary and Noah are engaged, and she finally has the ring. Jay survives the squid attack, though we never find out whether blaming Connor for the missing money gets him out of debt.
The Crockers want the cobalt and copper beneath the land, and Jan has been helping her father push the resettlement through. What happens to those plans afterward is less clear. Calvin is still running a business there a year later, but we do not learn whether the mining scheme is stopped or how the resettlement dispute is settled.
What does the final iceberg mean?
Calvin and Wade spot another iceberg in the final scene. After discovering Mudder’s nest inside the first one, they have reason to wonder what this one holds.
Mudder has died, and none of the eggs Fonda studies survive. There could be something inside this new iceberg, but the season ends before we find out.