Tales from the Loop Season 1, Episode 2 recap: What happens to Jakob?

What happens to Jakob?

The boys get into a physical fight that results in Jakob’s father kicking Jakob (thinking he’s Danny) out of the house. Jakob is distraught at Danny holding his body hostage and runs back to the device in the woods. He crawls inside, hoping it will force a body swap. Unfortunately, it results in Jakob falling unconscious. The next time we see Danny’s body, he is lying in a hospital bed in a comatose state. It isn’t clear what happened to Jakob’s mind and soul.

Danny at least has the decency to show up for his friend at the hospital, but his altruism only goes so far. Later, he spends time with Cole, who asks him to help him draw a car, an old past time between the two brothers. But Danny doesn’t have Jakob’s artistry. He brushes Cole off.

But Cole’s prompt motivates Danny to skim through Jakob’s sketchbook. Inside, he finds that Jakob once sketched a self-portrait of May. He rips it out of the book and presents it to her as a gift the next time they’re together.

Jeez, Danny is pretty coldhearted, isn’t he? Is he acting out of his own best interests now, or does some part of him still believe he’s doing this to “help” Jakob?

Eventually, it becomes apparent that “Danny” is missing. His girlfriend asks “Jakob” what happened to him, and he feigns ignorance. Speaking of Danny’s girlfriend, apparently, he didn’t care about her at all since he happily moves on with May without a second thought.

That said, at least some part of Danny must start to feel guilty as he goes out looking for Jakob. Instead, he discovers several staff members from the Loop dismantling the body-swapping device in the woods.

Danny seems to accept that Jakob is gone for good and takes strides to settle into his new body and life permanently. He announces to Loretta and George that he will take that job at the Loop after all.

“You can always draw as a hobby,” Jakob’s father responds.

“I don’t think I like drawing anymore,” Danny replies.

After that unsettling “family” dinner, Danny steps outside and sees the blue robot from the woods on the front lawn.

“Jakob?” Danny asks.

OMG. Is Jakob’s mind inside the robot?!

The robot blinks and runs off.

It seems that the machine swaps the consciousness of the person inside with whoever (or whatever) happens to be nearby. Danny and Jakob’s original body swap was reversible because they were the only two people in the area.

But when Jakob went back, he was alone, which means the device had to find somewhere else to transfer his mind. It looks like that “somewhere else” was the blue robot. That explains why Danny’s real body fell into a comatose state. There was nothing for the machine to transfer into him.

The ending strongly implies that Jakob will now live out the rest of his days trapped inside of a machine.

At least he escaped his job at the Loop, I guess?

One thing I love about Tales from the Loop is that it isn’t as interested in explaining these strange machines and devices. We have plenty of science fiction that focuses entirely on the doodads and whatsits; it’s nice to see one that cares about the human stories at its heart.

Odds & Ends

• If Jakob’s consciousness is now inside of the blue robot we saw in episode one, does that mean Cole was throwing rocks at his brother without realizing it?

All eight episodes of Tales from the Loop are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.