In Netflix’s ‘The Great Flood’, viewers are confused about Ja-in’s nature. We explain if he is a robot and how the “Emotion Engine” simulation actually works.
The Great Flood arrived as a pleasant surprise for year-end TV viewers. Amidst the usual barrage of Christmas movies and the massive anticipation for the Stranger Things finale, Netflix users were greeted by an ambitious film. It starts by staging a natural catastrophe in a Korean metropolis, only to transform into a thought-provoking sci-fi tale about human survival, artificial intelligence, and the synthesis of human emotions.
It is one of those typical mind-bending movies. It features a story that initially seems linear but then begins to repeat itself infinitely, bringing into play the concept of an artificial simulation designed to crystallize a specific set of human emotions necessary for the species’ survival.
Naturally, audience questions have flooded the internet: What is the true explanation of the movie? What is real and what is simulated? Is Ja-in a robot in The Great Flood? And what is his ultimate role in the film’s mechanics?
Things are quite complicated. Let’s try to explain them step by step.
The Great Flood: the Plot Explained and the “Emotion Engine”
We are in Seoul, in a not-too-distant imaginary future. A mother wakes up in the middle of a disaster: due to relentless rains, her apartment (located on the third floor of a skyscraper) is flooding, and she must move to the upper floors. Her six-year-old child is terrified, and together they begin their race for survival. Meanwhile, we discover even more frightening details: this is not simply a passing storm. Asteroids are striking the polar ice caps, and water levels will rise fatally, bringing an end to all humanity.
We soon discover that the protagonist, Gu An-na, is an eminent scientist working for the Darwin Centre, a company committed to producing the new generation of androids that will ensure the survival of the human race. Human consciousness will be transferred into super-intelligent artificial creatures, allowing humanity to live forever, albeit in artificial bodies.
The final step to achieving this is the completion of the so-called “Emotion Engine,” the artificial component designed to reproduce the full spectrum of human emotions for the coming artificial generation. An-na is the last scientist in the world capable of completing the Emotion Engine, which is why authorities are trying to save her and board her onto one of the few space shuttles that will leave Earth to develop the species’ future from space.
This is what happens in the first half of the movie. We see An-na enter the shuttle and formulate a precise idea to complete the Emotion Engine. The goal is to create a “complete mother,” endowed with the necessary human emotions to be a parent in the artificial generation. An-na’s idea is to run a series of successive simulations where a woman must prove she possesses the perfect set of human emotions to be a good mother. Once those emotions are perfected, the Emotion Engine will be complete, and the new generation can begin with a primal mother-child pair.
This explains why, in the second part of the film, we see the story repeat itself over and over again. The simulation designed by An-na recreates her own final experience on Earth, with herself as the protagonist. The successive versions of An-na, simulation after simulation, must prove they have the empathy and emotions necessary to find her son in the chaos of the flood we witnessed at the beginning.
The movie ends with the final simulation, the 21,499th, in which An-na finally succeeds in saving her child. This concludes the experiment: the consciousness of the child and An-na is transferred into a digital memory unit and then grafted into two new bodies, which return to Earth in a special capsule. Planet Earth now has a surface covered by more water than we know today, but dry land still exists where the human race can restart. With artificial bodies, but human intelligence and emotions.
Is Ja-in a Robot in The Great Flood?
This is the most critical element of the entire film. Ja-in is an android. He was created by the Darwin Centre some years prior, programmed with the intelligence and emotions necessary to be the “child” of the future artificial generation.
The plan to create the perfect mother-child pair had begun years earlier, as we see in the flashback scene where a young An-na speaks with her boss. The child was ready; he had been entrusted to An-na, who was tasked with caring for him while she completed the Emotion Engine for the mother figure.
Even in the “real world” we see in the first half of the movie, Ja-in is an intelligent android endowed with the human emotions of a six-year-old child. In the simulations that follow, obviously, every element (including Ja-in) is simulated. The various versions of An-na, loop after loop, do everything to re-establish a connection with the child lost at the beginning. She must prove she possesses great maternal instinct, empathy, and a sense of protection to discover where Ja-in is hiding.
When, in the final simulation, An-na finds Ja-in in the wooden closet on the skyscraper’s roof, the experiment concludes successfully. An-na has perfected the emotions needed for the first mother who will begin the coming generation. The simulation is halted, and An-na’s consciousness is fully digitized. The child, Ja-in, was already ready, so now the mother-child pair can begin the future of the species.
Therefore, in all the versions we see, Ja-in is never a biological human child. He begins to understand this himself, crying as he tells his “mom” that he “is always six years old, every day, and she is lying to him.” He is an android in the “real” part of the film (the first half) and a part of the simulation code in the experiment we observe in the second half.
The Meaning of “Hide and Wait”
There is a deep connection between the real timeline and the simulated one: An-na whispering to Ja-in to “hide and wait for her,” which is what actually happens in the simulation. This is a brilliant stylistic choice by the writers, but there is no temporal continuity between that moment and the simulations.
In real life, An-na says those words to Ja-in to calm and reassure him, but the child’s destiny remains the “shutdown” of his android body and the saving of his consciousness into digital memory, waiting for the new mother to be ready.
The simulation devised by An-na after that moment resumes her last experience on Earth. In the simulation, the child gets lost at the beginning, in a moment we do not see. When An-na finds Ja-in in the 21,499th simulation, Ja-in tells her that she was the one who told him to hide. This is part of the simulated narrative, but it is inspired by what An-na actually told Ja-in in the real world years prior.
The Math of the Loop: How long was An-na trapped?
A small curiosity for math enthusiasts: 21,499 simulations. If we assume each simulation lasts roughly 12 hours (a full day of the disaster), the experiment lasts approximately 250,000 hours in An-na’s consciousness.
This means An-na has been trapped in the loop for almost 30 years. An-na retains the memories of every simulation, so her consciousness “ages” by 30 years during the experiment. An-na effectively becomes an older person, spending a lifetime (at least within her consciousness) developing her maternal instinct. This is the very foundation of the process that develops the Emotion Engine. Let’s see why.
What is the “Emotion Engine”? The Psychology of The Great Flood explained
The Emotion Engine is the emotional core of the artificial consciousness being developed by the Darwin Centre. When complete, this engine will contain the full set of human emotions necessary for the species to survive. The last missing piece was precisely the one related to the emotions of the mother figure.
To perfect this set of emotions, An-na has a precise idea rooted in human psychology: developing emotions through experience. The successive simulations are intended to progressively increase the experiences An-na lives within her consciousness. As her experience grows, her emotionality evolves. In a sense, the experiment of the repetitive time loops is a training process for her emotional intelligence.
This has a solid scientific basis. Our emotional intelligence—understood as our ability to be aware of our emotions and manage them effectively—can be improved over time. This is true. Daniel Goleman explains it himself in his seminal book Emotional Intelligence (1995), a must-read for anyone interested in the topic: the more we train ourselves to use them, the easier it will be to put the most effective mechanisms of our emotional intelligence into practice.
This is exactly how the Darwin Centre’s Emotion Engine is developed. The training takes place through simulations that grow the subject’s experience. In the end, it takes 30 years of (simulated) experience for An-na to develop the emotional components necessary to be a “good mother.”
The experiment worked. It was based on solid scientific grounds and will allow human consciousness to live forever, overcoming the end of the world we witness in the first part of The Great Flood. The Netflix movie thus has an optimistic ending: the world as we know it ends, but a new one begins several years later, with a generation of androids containing human intelligence, consciousness, and emotions, refined for a new survival.
