John's Death Was Certainly Not An Accident

Things haven't been so great for Molly Woods on the CBS series Extant . First she goes into outer space for a solo mission of 13 months and comes back pregnant with an alien baby. Then the alien baby tries to bring to Earth more aliens so her robot son Ethan has to sacrifice himself to make sure that doesn't happen. Then after all is said and done and Ethan is somehow saved (thank goodness for The Cloud amirite?), Molly finds out her husband John has been cheating on her with his lab assistant. And she doesn't even get to stay mad at him because he gets killed. Season 2 of Extant quickly begins with Molly getting two terrible pieces of news: John cheated on her with Julie, and Ethan is confiscated by the government. Then to add insult to injury, John is killed by faulty robotic machinery. Clearly John's death was not an accident, and Molly obviously thinks the government was involved. She's got to be right, but I think there's more than meets the eye here. I think it's possible that John's death was more than just a government cover up.

One of the main characters on Extant that gets focus on the Season 2 premiere is John's lab assistant Julie. Not only do we find out that while Molly was in space, John and Julie had an affair and in many ways created a life together with Ethan, we also see that Julie's not over the idea that she and John could have that life again. We see that Julie was complicit with the government's seizure of Ethan and all of John's Humanich research and we see that Julie actually keeps Ethan with her while helping to create a Humanich army as a line of defense for the government. What we also see however is that six months prior, Julie tries to convince John to join her in the Humanich army project but he refuses her and her new work, and he vows to get Ethan and his family back together. Julie then makes a phone call where she says she thinks she's "really screwed up." Moments later, John is dead.

What if aside from the government wanting John out of the way so they can create their army with his research, Julie played the role of the lover scorned and wanted to get rid of John and Molly once and for all? After all, John betrayed her by started his makeshift family with her and then instantly taking it away when Molly came back from her space mission. Then he refused Julie again after Molly finds out about their affair. Perhaps Julie's mindset is that if she can't have the family she wanted, no one can. So she carries out the call to end John's life or, at the very least, she doesn't oppose it. It's likely Julie is not nearly the devil I'm making her out to be at the moment, but she does seem to be a determined woman set on being called a leader in the office and having the family she wants at home. Why else would she continue to keep Ethan as her child and insist on him calling her house his new home if she wasn't dead set in having the life she offered John? There's something up with Julie and if it's not that she was involved with John's death, it's something else. It's something big.

Images: Dale Robinette/CBS