Raised By Wolves Theory: Ancient Humans Came From Kepler-22b

Raised by Wolves on HBO Max features the planet Kepler-22b, a world that once supported ancient humans, and, according to one theory, it may be where humans originally came from even before they settled on earth. Although for most of season 1 there was little focus on the planet itself, the Raised by Wolves season 1 finale brought to light several key details that point to the fact that this theory is correct.

No one in Raised by Wolves ever explicitly states why the survivors of the war on earth choose to go to Kepler-22b, but it can be assumed that they go there because it is the closest habitable planet. What is known is that the conflict between the Mithraic and the atheists has left earth in ruins. Midway through the season, Mother recalls a memory of the man who captured her and programmed her to care for human children, Campion Sturges. In the memory, the atheist programmer is shown having trouble breathing as he sends Mother on her mission. It can be assumed that the atmosphere on Earth has been irreparably damaged and, therefore, humans can no longer breathe the air.

According to NASA scientists, Kepler-22b is a planet about 600 lightyears from Earth. It exists within the habitable zone for humans, so it’s not a far stretch to imagine people with advanced spacefaring technology traveling to the planet. It takes Mother and Father in their spacecraft a matter of days to make the distance. However, they’re androids without the need for life support systems. On the other hand, the Mithraic spend 12 years suspended in a simulation to journey the 600 lightyears to Kepler-22b. This means that earth and Kepler-22b are relatively close to each other, and that it would be easy for an advanced alien race to grow and evolve human beings first on Kepler-22b before transferring them to earth. Here’s all the evidence to support this theory.

Mother’s Design Is From Ancient Aliens

In Raised by Wolves season 1, episode 8, “Mass”, Mother briefly discusses her origins with a medical android aboard the crashed Mithraic ship. The medical android tells Mother that she was built by the Mithraic from plans they found in their scripture. As it turns out, the Mithraic have very little understanding of what they built, how it works, and the things it can do. Because the plans to build the necromancers came from their scriptures, the Mithraic believe they are a gift from Sol. However, there’s a lot of mystery surrounded who or what Sol really is. Is Sol a god or a name for the advanced alien race that engineered humanity and seeded it on planet Earth?

It’s quite possible that the scriptures were written, in part, by an alien race. Humans then interpreted these writings as messages from a higher power, calling it Sol and worshipping it as a divine being. It’s likely, however, that instead of a divine being, there was an advanced race, much like the Engineers seen in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. This race either designed the human race or started it from single-celled organisms and watched it evolve until humans had sufficiently advanced technology capable of traveling space and coming to other planets. Kepler-22b could have been used as a kind of staging area for evolving the human race until the advanced race felt it was time to introduce them to another planet — in this case, Earth.

Father Finds a Human Skull — Not From Earth

In the Raised by Wolves season 1 finale, a human-like creature in brown robes tries to push Mother into one of the large holes that dot Kepler-22b. Mother stops the creature easily, but its existence is proof that there are things living on the planet that they didn’t know about. The human-like creature is also carrying a neanderthal skull in a bag, a “human variant“, as Mother puts it, that was displaced by homo sapiens around 40,000 years ago on earth. Father verifies that the neanderthal skull is not from Earth, and is native to Kepler-22b. This is evidence that humans have lived on Kepler-22b in some form for a very long time.

Father also mentions that the human-like creature Mother kills appears to be de-evolved from neanderthals. So, while homo sapiens began to thrive on Earth, neanderthals on Kepler-22b were devolving into some other less-intelligent “variant” of humanity. It’s possible homo sapiens were taken from Kepler-22b—or left on their own somehow—and placed on Earth, where they evolved until they were thriving and began to develop increasingly advanced technology. That is until their war made the Earth uninhabitable. Meanwhile, back on Kepler-22b, the neanderthals, for whatever reason, de-evolved into the human-like race that apparently still lives on the planet, one of which Mother and Father have discovered.

Why Humans Came To Earth

The question is, why did humans come to Earth in the first place? There’s evidence of human civilization on Kepler-22b, such as the dodecahedron structure the Mithraic found in the desert. There are also sightings of robed figures, but with Mother and Father’s discovery of the human-like creature, it appears that humans can and do live on the planet and that homo sapiens likely have been there before. Nevertheless, most evidence of human civilization seems to be underground, either deep within a system of caves or somehow related to the large holes all over the planet.

If Kepler-22b is, in fact, where humans originated, then why leave? The planet is habitable, even if its climate seems a little harsh in places. The air is perfectly breathable and resources are similar to those on earth. Perhaps, there was an ancient war, one that made the planet radioactive and uninhabitable. Most of humanity fled to Earth, while the few remaining survivors holed up underground, living in caves and tunnels warmed by the molten core of the planet. This would be rather ironic, as now the Earth has become uninhabitable because of war while Kepler-22b is now habitable.

It could also be that humans initially fled Kepler-22b in order to escape the giant snake creatures that once lived on the planet. Assuming these creatures are responsible for the dangerous holes that are all over the landscape, it appears they were once a dominant species on the planet. This could mean that the future of the new humans on Kepler-22b is in great danger now that Mother has revived one of the snake creatures. The de-evolved human creature tried to kill Mother while she was still pregnant for a reason, and now it’s too late. Hopefully, Raised by Wolves season 2 will begin to more fully explore Kepler-22b, revealing at least some of its secrets.

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