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3 Body Problem is ostensibly a hard sci-fi show, which means the Netflix series is more concerned with dramatizing big theoretical ideas than action or adventure. However, that doesn’t mean the first season of 3 Body Problem doesn’t tease out a little romance.
**Spoilers for 3 Body Problem, now streaming on Netflix**
We know something went down between a young Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng) and Mike Evans (Ben Schnetzer) that produced a little Vera Ye (Eve Ridley) and that Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo) and Auggie Salazar (Eiza González) have had an off/on thing over the years, but the real nexus of all things romance is Jin Cheng (Jess Hong).
The beautiful, brilliant, and kind-hearted scientist is loved up with handsome military hero Raj (Saamer Usmani) when 3 Body Problem begins, but Jin’s long-time bestie Will Downing (Alex Sharp) is madly in love with her from a far. We watch as the dying Will not only buys a star for Jin, but volunteers to give his brain to a very specific science experiment. Jin has come up with a plan to accelerate humanity’s progress in space travel. The Staircase Project will send a small mass craft zooming towards the encroaching San-Ti fleet at faster-than-light speeds using a series of carefully timed nuclear blasts to propel the object to its rendezvous point. Will agrees to euthanasia so his brain can be cryogenically frozen and placed in the craft; the idea is the San-Ti will hopefully reconstruct his body, and not torture his surviving synapses.
However, Will might not be the only 3 Body Problem character who is sweet on Jin. Raj himself accuses their gruff, ruthless boss, Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham), of having a crush on Jin. Something that Cunningham denied when Decider asked him point blank during a recent interview.
“Well, Raj, the character of Raj, has got the love bug and he doesn’t want any love rivals,” Cunningham said. “But from what we’ve saw, Wade is very much his own man. He’s a bit of a puppet master. He’s very singularly minded about what needs to be achieved.”
“I don’t think, as we see him, that he has any time for any nonsense. So the job is much more important.”
Cunningham’s 3 Body Problem co-star Benedict Wong listened to all this and teasingly disagreed…suggesting there is a moment where you could argue there’s something brewing between Wade and Jin??
“I don’t know, I did, I did see a bit of a whisper at one point during the mission when they were jettisoned,” Wong said. “You whispered a bit of Lost in Translation.”
Wong was referring, of course, to the moment in which the Staircase Project fails and Will’s brain is pushed off track by a broken wire. Jin is devastated that her plan has not only failed, but that her friend — whom she’s just now realized she might also have feelings for — is lost forever.
Wade approaches Jin and whispers something to her that we never hear. It is a moment that evokes the open-ended mystery of the end of Sofia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation, where Bill Murray’s character whispers something in Scarlett Johansson’s character’s ear.
“Well, that was, that was on purpose,” Cunningham said.
“I don’t know what that was.” Wong said, mischievously, “I don’t know, it was Table at 8, reservation for two?”
“We should leave it like a Lost in Translation moment. Nobody knows what he said,” Cunningham playfully said.
Could Wade have been lining up dinner reservations with Jin, as Benedict Wong theorized? Or was he giving cold, cruel advice to his most brilliant lieutenant in the face of a disaster? 3 Body Problem fans have to decide for themselves as Liam Cunningham is staying decidedly mum.
