YMMV / Wolf 359

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Lovelace is one. Some people like her and find her behavior a reasonable response to everything that's happened to her, while others find her actions harder to forgive.
    • She becomes a lot less of one of these as time goes on, which is not to say that she stops making morally questionable choices (cough cough napalm cough cough)
    • Her death and the subsequent reveal that she's not the real Lovelace, but a duplicate produced by the Dear Listeners have been a lot more base-breaking.
  • Also, Hilbert. Some fans see him as sympathetic to the point of woobifying him, others consider him more or less unredeemable.
  • Even trickier, Maxwell. She is an incredibly paradoxical character who cared deeply for Hera, and yet tried to reprogram her. In general, she frequently seems the most likeable member of SI 5, but also possibly the most dangerous, and her apparently friendliness makes her actions that much harder to forgive. Her death makes all this even more complicated, since now we know we won't ever see her actions redeemed or explained.
  Hera: You did so much for me and to me and I still have no idea who you are.

  • Somehow even more after "Shut Up and Listen" reveals that she wasn't even sent to Wolf 359 to repair Hera, but instead to figure out a way to communicate with the Dear Listeners. Her being able to help Hera was simply on the way for her.
• Broken Base: Lovelace's brutal death caused a stir big enough that the cast had a lengthy discussion on it in their third AMA. One side feels it's another example of gratuitous violence against people of color - black women in particular - that was nothing more than tasteless shock value. The other side argues that's an overly sensitive view that minimizes her character and actions into just race and gender. There's also a third side that isn't even sure Lovelace is supposed to be black to begin with.
• Complete Monster:
  • Marcus H. Cutter, officially merely the Communications Director is, in fact, de facto dictator of Goddard Futuristics and the mastermind responsible for the events of the series. A calculating, manipulative pragmatic megalomaniac with a sickening faux sweet manner, Cutter has ruled Goddard from the shadows for decades, steering mankind's technological development in line with his "big picture". Creating the process where hundreds of sapient AIs are experimented on and "permanently decommissioned" if they fail to meet his standards, Cutter also secretly practices both physical and psychological human experimentation, often using a loyal employees as lab rats or otherwise discarding them as soon as they fail to be useful. Cutter personally enables Hilbert's research of the Decima Virus, causing multiple slow, agonizing deaths. Cutter also installed upon every station and ship an advanced Neural Link device, which when activated would put the crew through a nightmarish series of tests drawn from their own fears and insecurities, tortured by the unwilling sapient virus Eris, with it requiring them to kill her to escape. Taking over the station, Cutter contacted the Dear Listeners, and threatening to release the Decima virus into the Earth's air, wiping out all of humanity, he blackmailed them into giving him the process to create surrogates. Upon receiving it, Cutter snapped the neck of the Dear Listeners' avatar. Using his tech to force Lovelace to shoot Minkowski, Cutter revealed his plan to use the Surrogates to take complete control of humanity.
  • Dr. Miranda Pryce is Cutter's partner and Head of Goddard's AI program, responsible for designing each AI class, including Eris, effectively making her Hera's creator. Pryce created most of the technology that enabled Cutter, including the Neural Link, assisting his plans every step of the way. A sadistic egomaniac, Pryce denies her AIs rights—despite knowing they are fully sapient—regularly abusing her creations and openly enjoying breaking any resistance. In response to Hera's attempt to escape, Pryce reprogrammed Hera to believe her own mind was telling her she was "not good enough", giving her a massive inferiority complex. To starve off boredom, Pryce spent several months experimenting on the innocent Hermes crew, eventually killing them but leaving their bodies functioning and under her control. Using her restraining bolts on the Hephaestus crew, Pryce put them to work preparing Cutter's plan, disabling their pain receptors to make them work harder, while also continuing her abuse of Hera, vastly restricting her freedoms and regularly punishing her. Upon discovering Eiffel had escaped, Pryce made Minkowski beat him senseless then tried to force her to walk out of the airlock without a spacesuit, while Eiffel could only helplessly watch. Ensuring Cutter's plan was successful, Pryce attempted to extract the information from Eiffel's mind, attaching him to another of her neural devices that would steal his memories, with her threatening to keep going until she found what she wanted.

• Diagnosed by the Audience: Depending on how you interpret Variations on a Theme, the audio logs found in Happy To Be Of Assistance, as well as her general paranoia and hostility, Lovelace could fit the diagnostic criteria for more than a few mental illnesses.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In "Are Spacesuits Itchy," Eiffel dismissing a little girl's question about if they talk to their families as a stupid question gets a lot less funny when we learn about his past.
  • His line in "Are Spacesuits Itchy?" regarding Dr. Hilbert making him sick qualifies as this in the wake of Episode 15…
  • Same with all of Eiffel's jokes about 12-step programs and drinking antifreeze.
  • The scene with the Hermes-crew taking shots at each other while playing Pictionary becomes downright heartbreaking after "A Place for Everything" and "Idle Hands" reveals that soon after that, they were invaded by Cutter and Pryce and turned into the brain-dead slaves.
  • All of Hera's glitches, vocal and otherwise, take on a whole new meaning after "Memoria."
  • Hera's reflexive trust of Maxwell, and Eiffel's reflexive distrust, become a whole lot more upsetting when we discover that Eiffel was right.
  • Minkowski's message to her husband in "Am I Alone" is a lot sadder after "Persuasion" when we learn that he never received it.
  • Lovelace's mini episode gets a whole lot sadder after "Boléro" given that this is probably the only time we got to meet the real Lovelace outside of recordings.
  • Eiffel's "Mind-Eraser" rant in "A Little Night Music" is hilarious, but then Eiffel's memories get erased in the finale.
• It Was His Sled: It's very difficult to talk about the show without spoiling the following things: Hilbert turned traitor, Lovelace isn't dead, there are aliens, the Urania crew.
• Love to Hate: Cutter may be a monster, but Scotty Shoemaker's performance is so deliciously evil that it's hard to hate him.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "How could dare you!" ^Explanation  In one of the AMA's, Zach Valenti recalls how, during the recording of "The Empty Man", writer Gabriel Urbina had accidentally mangled two of Eiffel's lines, leading to "How could dare you" making it into the final script. Valenti delivered it with all the hurt and anger the situation required, before realizing what he'd just said. It became a crew in-joke, but fans immediately adopted it as soon as they learned about it.
  • Goddammit Eiffel... ^Explanation  A stock phrase used by Minkowski (and Lovelace on occasion).
  • Eiffel launches himself into space... AGAIN! ^Explanation  Seriously, it happens a lot.
  • The entire whiskey speech.
  • Jacobi's fear of ducks.
  • HARPOON! ^Explanation  Minkowski's love for the harpoon gun quickly became memetic, especially after she used it to kill Cutter
  • Eiffel accomplishes our dream of launching himself into the fucking sun. ^{Explanation (spoilers)}  A Tumblr-meme that became very relevant after Eiffel decided to look at Wolf 359 up close.
  • "I do like the menfolk, Captain." ^Explanation  Jacobi's way of coming out as gay was quickly adopted by other members of the LGBTQ+ community.
  • Dougie Fresh. ^Explanation  Eiffel introduces himself like this during the negotiations in "Terms and Conditions". Kepler's completely deadpan delivery especially creates comedy gold.
  • Fandom stress management skills. ^Explanation  Both "the menfolk" and "Dougie Fresh" originated from incredibly dark episodes, leading people to joke that the fandom should probably stop using memes as a coping mechanism.
    • [funny/memetic/heartwarming thing] was the ONLY thing that happened in this episode!
  • Stabby the Space Roomba. ^Explanation  A made-up character that's literally just a roomba with a knife taped to it that stabs people in the ankles. Bonus points if Hera is the one controlling Stabby.
• Mood Whiplash: The latter half of Season 4 is prone to this, due to being paced out by having the very intense story arc episodes alternate with the Mission Mishaps flashback Breather Episodes, which are written more in the style of Season 1's more comical tone.