The Ending Of The Peripheral Season 1 Explained

After the credits, we see Lev and his wife Dominika (Claire Cooper) arrive at a ritzy club and meet with three men. Lev sits down with them and they scold him about an asset he placed at the Research Institute. A nervous Lev apologizes and the group laughs. While vaguely threatening his wife and kids, they tell him they understand what he was trying to do but now he needs to cauterize the wound.

It appears that these are the elder statesmen of the Klept and they've gotten wind of the fact that Lev was paying Aelita to steal data from the Research Institute, as he admitted to Wilf back in Episode 4. However, when Aelita found out that Klept murdered her family, she turned on Lev. That makes Aelita a threat to the Klept and the elders want Lev to eliminate her and anyone who's working with her. Of course, Lev had hired Wilf to locate Aelita already with minimal success, but now, not only does Lev have extra incentive to find her, Wilf's discovered exactly where she is.

It's yet another rather puzzling cliffhanger in an episode that seems surprisingly preoccupied with setting up Season 2, which is yet to be announced. However in an interview with Digital Trends, "The Peripheral" executive producer Jonathan Nolan revealed that the writers have been "working for several months" and are looking ahead, which could see the return of one of the best sci-fi TV shows of 2022.