Archive 81's ancient demon god Kaelego, the comet he's connected to, and the coven of witches who protect the world from his escape are all connected.
Netflix’s sci-fi horror series Archive 81 has plenty of twists and turns, including a complex connection between the ancient entity Kaelego, the Baldung coven of witches, and the comet known as Kharon. The story is loosely based on the horror podcast of the same name and portrayed with Archive 81's excellent cast of characters. Mamoudou Athie stars as Dan Turner, a young archivist who is hired by a mysterious company to restore a set of videotapes that were nearly destroyed in a fire in 1994. What he finds on the tapes, however, is evidence of something sinister, and supernatural, that may somehow be connected to his own family’s deaths in a similar fire at his childhood home.
When Dan is first introduced, he works for the Museum of the Moving Image, where he restores old or damaged film. He is invited to meet with a wealthy and mysterious man named Virgil Davenport at his company, a firm with no online presence called LMG. Virgil offers Dan $100,000 to restore and digitize a set of VHS tapes that had been damaged in a fire at an apartment building called the Visser in 1994. The catch is that he will have to stay by himself on-site in a facility in the Catskills owned by LMG without internet or cell service until the job is done. The tapes were filmed by a grad student named Melody Pendras, who had moved into the Visser presumably to film a project about the residents and history of the old building.
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Dan agrees to complete the project, but after restoring the first tape, he notices that something strange had been going on at the Visser in 1994. He is even more disturbed when he sees his father on one of the tapes having Melody dragged away from the Visser and taken to a psych ward. As it turns out, the residents of the Visser were members of a demonic cult who worshipped an entity known as Kaelego. Archive 81's found footage tapes reveal that Samuel, the leader of the cult and a resident of the Visser, wanted to use Melody to perform a ritual that would awaken Kaelego and open up a door to the Otherworld. Samuel's cult follows the teachings of previous cults that had worshipped Kaelego long before the Visser existed, but that raises questions about what exactly is Kaelego, where the entity comes from, and why Melody was so important to the ritual.
The entity that the 1994 cult is devoted to is a fictional god and demon figure called Kaelego. He is an ancient entity that was once attached to a pair of twin comets named Kharon. One of the comets broke off from the pairing and crashed into Earth thousands of years ago. Now, Kaelego lives by himself in Archive 81's pocket dimension known as the Otherworld. He can create idealistic versions of a person’s life, once they are inside of his pocket dimension, and because time works differently in the Otherworld, he is able to experience the past, present, and future at the same time. For thousands of years, humans of different cultures considered Kaelego to be either a god or a demon. Once it became clear that Kaelego was a force of destruction, a coven of witches known as the Baldung imprisoned Kaelego in a statue made of Kharonite in order to protect the world from him.
In the series, Kaelego has two prominent cults, the Vos Society of the 1920s and the Spirit Receivers of 1994. The 1920s cult was started by the Vos family, three wealthy siblings who were continuing their father’s belief in the power of Kaelego. Iris Vos and her brothers Jonah and Lukas find the statute that the Baldung had imprisoned Kaelego inside of and plan to use the statue to open the door to the Otherworld and bring Kaelego into their world. Iris tricks a girl named Rose into becoming a human sacrifice so that Kaelego can inhabit her body, and they use the blood of a Baldung that they murdered to pour over the Kharonite statute, to open the door in an attempt to bring Kaelego through. Instead, the Vos mansion burns down and Iris Vos is pulled into the Otherworld. Decades later, after the Vos family mansion had long since been rebuilt into the Visser building, the Spirit Receivers plan to execute the same ritual, which must be done on the night of Kharon’s return, and needs the blood of a Baldung to complete.
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Kaelego also appears in the form of a shimmering black mold, which is a neurotoxin and causes anyone who breathes it in or ingests it to become susceptible to his power. Inside of the Otherworld, flecks of mold can be seen floating in the air, similar to the Upside Down in Stranger Things. The mold appeared all over the Vos mansion, and later infests most of the Visser. Samuel uses the mold as a drug to lure addicts to the building and uses them to continuously chant a specific melodic prayer to Kaelego. The mold is also used on Jess, a 14-year-old resident of the Visser who Samuel plans to use as the sacrifice and vessel that will eventually be inhabited by Kaelego. Dan discovers the same mold in his equipment and in storage rooms at the facility. The mold seems to also be the reason that Dan and Melody are able to communicate across time through their dreams.
The Baldung is a coven of witches who once believed Kaelego to be a savior for mankind, just like the Vos Society and the Spirit Receivers. The Baldung once tried to resurrect Kaelego, but something tragic happened that revealed the truth about Kaelego- that he was more demon than god and needed to be stopped. In order to protect the world from the demon, they gave up most of their magic to imprison Kaelego in a statue made of Kharonite, an element made from the comet which brought Kaelego to Earth. The Baldung have since dedicated their lives to protecting the world from Kaelego and preventing his release from the Otherworld.
Melody, who ironically experiences a natural aversion to Kaelego's melodic prayer, is revealed to be a descendent of the Baldung coven. She moved into the Visser hoping to find her birth mother, whom she was led to believe lived there at one point by Samuel. Her mother is later revealed to be Bobbi, the groundskeeper at the LMG facility where Dan works. Bobbi, a Baldung witch herself, gave Melody up for adoption hoping that the pressure of their bloodline would never affect her. However, Samuel plans to use Melody's blood to help open the Otherworld. However, Bobbi later tells Dan and his friend Mark that they need the Baldung witch's full participation to successfully open the portal, hinting that this is the reason the cults failed disastrously with their attempts.
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Descendents from the Baldung bloodline, like Melody, experience periodic blackouts during which they frantically scribble dark lines that show their connection to the Otherworld. Similarly, Melody's aversion to the prayer seems to come from her Baldung heritage as well. The Baldung are just one faction in the secret war over Kaelego. Though it has yet to be revealed in the Netflix series, it is implied that groups like the Vos Society will continue to attempt to bring Kaelego through from the Otherworld while the Baldung continue to fight to keep him imprisoned. Hopefully, Archive 81 season 2's story will answer some of these questions, should it be greenlit.
Kharon is a fictional comet that orbits the Earth and returns every 70.6 years. A piece of the comet collided with the Earth millions of years ago, bringing an element called Kharonite to Earth. The comet is named for Kharon (or Charon), the ferryman of the underworld in Greek mythology who brings souls to Hades. While Kharon isn't a real comet, it shares characteristics with Halley's Comet, which similarly orbits Earth and is visible every 75 years, and Charon, one of Pluto's moons which shares a name with Archive 81's Kharon. The cults that worship Kaelego in the series are similar to the Heaven's Gate cult, which believed that they would ascend into Heaven with the appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp, prompting them to commit mass suicide in 1997. The Baldung and the Kaelego cults all believe that the return of the comet Kharon thins the veil between realities, making it much easier to open the door to the Otherworld and leading to Archive 81 season 1's cliffhanger ending.
In Archive 81, the comet appears in 1924, which prompts the Vos Society to attempt to bring Kaelego into their world. It appears again in 1994, which prompts Samuel to recreate the ritual using Jess as the vessel for Kaelego and Melody's blood to open the door by pouring it over Kaelego's statue. The statue is made of Kharonite, which is a fictional element that comes from the comet and is believed to have spiritual properties. Objects made of Kharonite have a strong connection to Kaelego. In Archive 81, Iris Vos owns a pendant made of Kharonite, which she wears in order to sense the presence of Kaelego. The pendant is given to Rose right before her sacrifice and later shows up at the Visser, where it is also given to Jess as she is groomed to be sacrificed. Kharonite seems to help create a bridge between the worlds, just as the comet does. In the present day, Bobbi is able to open the door to the Otherworld without the comet's return, simply by using the Kharonite statue and performing a similar ritual to the ones used by the Vos Society and the Spirit Receivers.
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Raven is a graduate of New York University and UNC Charlotte. She is a writer and theatre artist who is a lover of all things comics, fantasy, and sci-fi.