The Devil's Hour and The Eternal Return

I can't tell how many times I've watched this mind-blowing TV series in search of signs, confirmation, clues and stuff that I might have missed to connect all the dots. Each time I noticed something new: a small detail, or a phrase that finally made sense. Still, many open questions remain left floating in the air, and that is precisely what makes The Devil's Hour so engaging: the deep and philosophical debate it generates among the audience. While I'm eagerly awaiting the launch of season 2 on next 18th of October - I've got this day highlighted on my Notebook and it happens to be already tomorrow -, I'd like to share one of the most brilliant points tackled in this TV series: the circularity of time. 

A Brief Overview of The Devil's Hour Season 1

Without giving away too much, the series is about Lucy Chambers, a separated woman in her mid-thirties who struggles in everyday life, juggling her job and 8-year-old child, Isaac, a rather peculiar boy. Lucy wakes up at 3:33 a.m. every single night to horrible recurring nightmares, while Isaac sees people who are not there, besides being unable to communicate and express his emotions. Soon, Lucy starts seeing visions of the future and helps DI Ravi Dillon investigate an elusive serial killer. However, in the end, things prove way more complicated than simply catching a murderer. 

Jessica Raine and Peter Capaldi co-star in The Devil's Hour on Prime Video. 

I have to admit I was somehow sceptical during the first half of episode 1 of season 1. I was watching the typical overstretched single mum of a troubled eight-year-old in a kind of psychological terror environment. In the middle of it, a spooky Peter Capaldi flashed under arrest in an interrogation room, talking pretentious nonsense. Yet, as the plot unfolds one quickly notices deeper intertwined layers than the one shown at the surface. The action becomes gradually more exciting as previous lives and parallel worlds repeating themselves over and over again begin to explain the initial nonsense. 

The concept of Eternal Return

The point of The Devil's Hour stems from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of eternal return, also known as eternal recurrence. In his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he develops the concept of time as circular, not linear as traditionally conceived, also expounding that time repeats itself in an eternal loop, so the same events take place periodically. As Gideon Shepherd, played by Peter Capaldi, states: "There's no beginning, there's no end". 

For those not in the know, this philosophical concept about the circularity of time was not invented by Nietzsche; it can be found in ancient Greece associated with Pythagoreanism and Stoicism. The Stoics believed that the universe is periodically destroyed and reborn and that each new universe is exactly the same as the one that existed before. This doctrine was fiercely criticized by early Christian authors like Augustine of Hippo, who saw in it a fundamental denial of free will and of the possibility of salvation. Finally, the global spread of Christianity brought an end to classical theories of eternal return. 

In spite of the repression that Christianity exerted, in the nineteenth century Nietzche, who was a fervent atheist, revived this concept. It first appeared as a thought experiment in his work The Gay Science, and later developed it more in-depth in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which the protagonist learns to overcome the horror of the thought of the eternal return. 

If you love surreal and thought-provoking TV series like Twin Peaks, Black Mirror or the more recent Darkness, then The Devil's Hour is a must-watch. Also, if you're interested in parallel worlds and time travel, I'm sure you'll get stuck!