Series / The Rain

The Rain is a Danish post-apocalyptic Netflix original series, released onto the streaming platform in May of 2018.

In the very-near future, a deadly plague sweeps across Scandinavia, carried by the rain and killing everyone that contracts it. Two siblings, Simone and Rasmus, manage to survive for six years by themselves in an underground bunker their parents led them to on the day the virus came, and emerge back on the surface to discover a world they do not recognize. In the hopes that they can get answers and safety from their father, a doctor for the pharmaceutical company Apollon, Simone and Rasmus ally themselves with a group of survivors, including the cold and pragmatic Martin, the cheerful and spiritual Lea, the meek and quiet Jean, the stoic and aloof Beatrice, and the hot-headed Patrick. Together, they'll need to contend with other survivors driven mad by the apocalypse, the mysterious armed "strangers", and the elements themselves.

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Tropes in this show include:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: It could be today if not for the spotted instances of future technology, like advanced drones and simple holograms.
• A Day in the Spotlight: Most episodes have a focus on one particular character, with flashbacks to who they were and what they did before and after the plague came.
  • Episode 2 focuses on Martin: Martin was in the military around the time the plagues came, and was in charge of protecting a checkpoint from anyone infected, with lethal force if necessary. Young and scared, Martin couldn't bring himself to shoot at a woman carrying a child who crossed the checkpoint. His hesitation caused everyone in his unit to become infected and die.
  • Episode 3 focuses on Beatrice: Beatrice was traveling with Lea and Jean when she was confronted by Martin and Patrick, who demanded their food. Beatrice manages to keep herself and her friends alive by offering to cook for them, then during the night, seducing Martin, manipulating him into keeping them along.
  • Episode 4 puts the spotlight on Jean: Jean had lived with a kind family that took him in after the plague came, and made fast friends with their cheerful and deaf daughter. One day, the strangers came. Jean hid in the cottage with the daughter, holding a hand over her mouth to silence her protests and protect her as he watched, in horror, how the strangers murder the father when he refused to cooperate with them, then abduct the mother. After they leave, he realizes, to his horror, that he accidentally suffocated the daughter to death when he kept his hand over her mouth.
  • Episode 5 shows us Lea's story: Lea's mother was a very strict and conservative Christian who protested against her daughter going to a party. Lea insisted, wanting to seem normal to her peers, and attended the party, where drugs and alcohol were served. She woke up the following morning to discover that not only did she have sex in her drunken stupor with three boys, but they recorded video of it and uploaded it to social media, embarrassing her mother. Lea desperately begged God for His forgiveness, right around the time the plague came, killing not only all of the other party-goers, but her mother as well when she stepped out to pick her up.
  • Episode 6 is about Patrick: Before the plague, Patrick was an unmotivated stoner who found himself kicked out of his house by his father one fateful day. He spent the remainder of his day in his car, parked by the beach and smoking pot. When he awakens the next day, he finds the beach lined with corpses. He rushes back home, where he runs into Martin, back then a solo survivalist who had come in search of food, the two forming a bond and sticking together up to the present day.
  • Episode 7 shows some backstory on the mysterious "strangers": They are actually private soldiers in the employ of Appolon, come to Scandinavia to find anyone immune to the virus. To ensure their compliance, each soldier took a pill containing nano-capsules that would release the virus into their bloodstream, killing them instantly, if they left the quarantine zone. In essence, Scandinavia is their prison until the cure is found.
  • Episode 8 provides insight into Frederick, Simone and Rasmus's father: after the plague was released, Frederick was tasked with retrieving his son, who had been injected with a pure strain of the virus as a child to help create a cure. Knowing that the process of extracting the cure would kill Rasmus, Frederick claimed that his children had already died to keep them safe and started performing experiments with the virus on others to find anyone else who might be immune. When one of his colleagues realizes that he lied about his son's fate and goes to retrieve him, Frederick brutally murders him.
• Aesop Amnesia: Averted. After eating the meat from the cannibal cult, the group is more wary about what they eat when an Apollon scientist gives them 'nutritional supplements'. To see if it isn't poison or something, they have the presenter consume the supplements herself. It turns out to be fine. Not really. It was laced with trackers that are set to go off and kill the host if the host attempts to leave the designated area.
• After the End: A biological weapon escaped into the atmosphere, contaminating all rainwater with a deadly pathogen. The bulk of the story happens six years later, in the shattered remnants of Scandinavia. Though the rest of the world is unscathed enough to transform the entire region into a large quarantine zone and has safe places for Apollon Corporation to hold their meetings.
• Apocalypse How: Since the entire premise is set in post-apocalyptic Denmark after a diseased rainfall, the main characters only realize its extent as Type 0 (Regional, Societal Collapse variety) once they discover a holographic map displaying a newly built quarantine barrier and a facility with access to outside world. Finale also showed that the rest of the world in good shape with Apollon directors holding a secret meeting over their use of nanites to scare the governments into compliance.
• Artistic License – Biology: The motivation for Frederik to fake his children's deaths and beat a co-worker to death was allegedly because extracting the antibodies from his son would involve taking a spinal fluid or brain sample in a procedure that would kill him. This reasoning does not hold water once you realise his position as a leading scientist would mean he would be aware that extracting spinal fluid is actually easily done. The procedure is called a spinal tap and is actually pretty safe, rarely resulting in complications. He just sacrificed possibly thousands of people's life for nothing.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: A disease being transmitted through rainwater would simply be inescapable in the Danish forests. Drinking water being properly handled and purified is irrelevant, as fog is an omnipresent disease vector, though water clinging on leaves often "rain" down on hikers hours after the fact with not all that much wind. It also has a non-zero quantity on most surfaces the humans can touch — surviving six years as nomads using the methods shown is simply not possible.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: Frederik was unable to return to his children out of fear that Apollon would go after them. He visits their bunker one last time to falsely determine them as dead and supposedly shut down the bunker, which was when Rasmus caught a glimpse of him.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • In Episode 3, one of the city survivors notices Simone slipping away from the scene and glares at her as she leaves. He follows her to the rest of the group and stabs Rasmus in a hostage situation.
  • The dog in Episode 6. It can survive in the rain, and though the characters don't question it, you are led to assume that either the virus only affects humans or the dog is asymptomatic. While it isn't made clear if the virus affects non-humans, it turns out that the dog is a vector for the virus. The dog accidentally kills Beatrice when it enters the cabin and licks her face in her sleep.
• Computer Equals Monitor: Or tablet interface, in this case. One of the bunker's tablets which is connected to the bunker's servers was smashed by Simone. Of course, anyone with the most basic tech skills would just grab another tablet or head to a terminal and browse, but she leveraged this knowledge to join the survivor group. Turns out they needed her anyway.
• Cult: Episode 5 sees the protagonists taking up refuge with a group of cultists who offer shelter and food, including a monthly banquet. Said banquet feature fresh human stew as the main course before one member is selected to offer their body for the next banquet.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Frederik never retrieved his children from the bunker because Apollon would have Rasmus killed in order to produce a cure.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Martin was on sniper duty, with orders to keep out possible infectees along a road. One day, he refused to shoot a woman and her baby despite them being unresponsive to his demands to halt, later finding that the woman had infected and killed his teammates at their base. Though he found that one of his teammates survived, he insisted on bringing the infected baby and was killed by it, leaving Martin as the Sole Survivor.
  • Beatrice's parents were in the middle of a divorce. Tired of being caught in the crossfire, one day, she snuck out to the theater to watch a movie. While she was gone, the rain fell and her dad tried to call her, saying he was going to get help for her infected mom. Neither survived.
  • Jean was taken in by a couple and their young deaf daughter, Vilde, after the rain. When the Strangers came, Jean and Vilde hid while the father was killed and the mother was taken. Jean accidentally killed Vilde by suffocation when he covered her mouth to keep her silent, having been unable to tell the different between her sobs and her pleas for air.
  • Lea lived with her mom and felt that she smothered her too much. Going to a party with schoolmates despite her mother insisting that she shouldn't go, she ended up drugged and in a one-night stand. Having been ostracized for it by her schoolmates and mother, she stayed indoors just as the rain hit. Phone-calling her mother about the horror that ensued, her mother left the house to pick her up, only to die from the rain while she was still on the phone.
  • Patrick was hungover when he discovered that everyone was killed by the rain, causing him to develop a fear of rain and infected.
• Does Not Like Men: Jean's mother is said to be this. According to Lea, at one point, Jean's mother forced her son to go to school with a dress. She also named him after Jeanne d'Arc.
• Descent into Addiction: After he gets stabbed, Simone offers Rasmus morphine that she found in Copenhagen to cope with the pain. Rasmus quickly becomes addicted to it, sneaking pills behind his sister's back to stave off both pain from his wound and withdrawal.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Despite the group members meeting each other through hostility and only teaming up to make use of each other to survive (mainly by fault of Martin and Patrick), they grow genuine friendships with each other and are willing to go beyond just keeping the others alive as tools.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Simone and Rasmus's mother dies from the rain while trying to get them to close the bunker door.
  • Karen, having spent the entire episode befriending Lea, lets herself be chosen as the next meal for the cult in place of Lea.
  • Lea herself sacrifices herself to save Simone's life when Ramsus's virus goes out of control. It not only saves her life, it also gives Simone the chance to inject him with the cure.
• Hologram: There are basic, cylindrical holographic projectors that can display flat images (such as a map) a short distance from their base.
• Hope Spot:
  • It is revealed in Episode 6 that the rain is no longer dangerous after Simone is exposed to it. Martin and Lea also join her in the rain, to no ill effect. Rasmus and Beatrice are also exposed, but Rasmus remains right as rain. Unfortunately, Beatrice still contracts the virus from another vector and dies.
  • In episode 7, Rasmus, heartbroken over Beatrice's death, is Driven to Suicide and injects himself with the virus. However, he awakens after taking the dose, completely unharmed: he's immune! When one of the Appolon soldiers kisses him on the forehead when he says his goodbyes before Rasmus and company are taken to Apollon, however, the soldier dies from the virus due to the fact that Rasmus is not actually immune, but had become an asymptomatic carrier.
• Karma Houdini: The city survivor, who he and his lackies had just ganged up on a father-son duo and ate them alive, holds Rasmus hostage and threatens to slice open his throat if the group doesn't tell him where they got their food. He instead stabs him and runs off. The group accidentally lets it slip that they got their food from the bunkers, but it isn't enough information for him to go off and look for those himself and cause problems for them later.
• Living MacGuffin: Rasmus was given a pure form of the virus, making him immune and the cure. However; it is contained in his brain and bone marrow/spine, so extracting it would kill him.
• Manchild: A downplayed example: Rasmus spent his formative years isolated from the world with his sister. As such, at sixteen, he is still very naive and almost childlike.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Beatrice tells the same story about the house she was born in twice to two different sets of people, but she points out a different house in a different place on each occasion. The fact that she dies without her true past being revealed, or even mentioning any of it again somehow makes it creepier.
• Naïve Newcomer: Martin calls Simone and Rassus out on this.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Rasmus getting antsy in his seat to the point of taking off his seatbelt while his parents are speeding through the highway results in Frederik getting distracted and causing a traffic jam, blocking off the road with a crashed truck, meaning other people will be unable to outrace the rainstorm.
  • Simone and Rasmus open the bunker door when they hear aggressive pounding on it, believing that it is their father, despite their mother telling them no and that it can't be him as he wouldn't be back so soon and would know how to open the door. This results in her sacrificing herself to save them from the infectee and rain while they watch.
  • Simone urging Martin to not kill the patrolling Strangers they interrogated results in them coming back and taking Jean.
• No OSHA Compliance: Anyone immune to a disease can very well still be an asymptomatic carrier, but none of the doctors handling Rasmus are wearing any Hazmat suits. Reality ensues and one of them naturally gets infected. Considering how many precautions Appolon seems to have taken to mitigate the spread of the disease this comes across as a rather puzzling oversight on their part.

• Papa Wolf: Frederik. He fakes his children's deaths to Apollon, as Apollon would kill Rasmus for the cure. He spends the next six years away from them to protect them and find a replacement for Rasmus as the cure, and even beats one of co-workers to death when he discovers the truth. His protectiveness of his children, however, might've come at the cost of humanity.
• The Plague: It is carried by the rain and quickly induces violent vomiting and seizures before death.
• Revenge Before Reason: When Jean discovers that Martin had actually spared a group of strangers, one of whom Jean recognized from when his adopted family was abducted and killed, he flies off the handle and shoots one of the strangers in the head, only to be captured by the others and taken away.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The reveal that the rain (and possibly other water sources) doesn't carry the virus anymore becomes this when Martin put down a fellow survivor earlier on in the show because she had supposedly gotten infected when she fell in the river.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: One of Apollon's mook recruits panicked shortly after ingesting a smart capsule that infects them with a fast-acting virus if they go out of an approved range. He tried to run out the building. Needless to say, he was proof that it worked.
• What Ever Happened To The Mouse: Or masks, one should ask. After their initial encounter, and moreover once it was clear they were not to be mere faceless goons, the survivors stopped wearing masks altogether.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Beatrice calls Martin out on this for wanting to leave the two siblings locked in a room in the bunker to die, saying that they don't kill innocent people.
  • Jean flips out on Martin when he discovers that he hadn't actually killed the strangers they were interrogating, one of whom he recognized from when the family he was staying with died.
  • Martin's final straw with Patrick is him attempting to kill Simone by pushing her into the rain while drunk, causing him to kick him out.
  • Simone asks her father why he never came back for her and Rasmus.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • The hungry zombie-like survivors of the city eat a father and his young son alive because they noticed the latter eating food. One of them also holds Rasmus hostage with a knife to his throat in an attempt to get the group to tell him where they got their food, and ends up stabbing him in the stomach before running off when they refuse to spill.
  • The doctor views Frederik as this for being involved in the making of the virus rain, as it killed her children. As payback, she tries to kill Rasmus and Simone so that he knows what it's like to be lonely. She only stops when she learns that their mother died from the rain too.
  • Apollon has been experimenting on random survivors, including a noteworthy case of a father and his young eight year-old daughter. It turns out that Frederik was fine with it and technically responsible for it, because he didn't want Apollon killing his own son for the cure.

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