We’re Still Reeling From the Last Five Minutes of ‘Sunny’ Episode 8

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Sunny Episode 8.

The Big Picture

• Sunny
  Episode 8 reveals Masa’s mysterious past, shaping his character and connection to robots.
• A cliffhanger in Episode 8 leaves audiences questioning Sunny’s fate and abilities.
• Despite twists, Suzie gets closer to finding her family while Sunny’s role remains crucial.

Every protagonist needs a quest, and for Suzie (Rashida Jones) in Apple TV+’s drama, Sunny, that journey has been all about finding out what really happened to her husband, Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima), and her young son, Zen (Fares Belkheir). With the help of Sunny, her faithful homebot, Suzie has been desperately searching for the truth about the plane crash that allegedly killed both Masa and Zen. In the first seven episodes of the series, Suzie struggles with her immense grief, makes friends with a bartender (annie the clumsy) who quickly becomes her sidekick, and surprisingly finds herself embroiled in a battle against yakuza members. Now, in Episode 8, which aired this week, Suzie has finally gotten to a place where some of her questions will finally be answered.

But before more could be revealed to her, the series decided to take a detour into the past of one of its main characters. Providing additional information not only allows Suzie to discover more about Masa, but also permits the viewer to better understand a character that has so far been pretty elusive. Of course, there’s still plenty of action that unfolds in Episode 8, and one shocking cliffhanger at the end proves that Sunny knows how to keep audiences tuning in. But what do these plot points mean for the show’s future?

We Finally Get Some Background on Masa in ‘Sunny’

Up until Episode 8, Masa was a mysterious guy. He lied to Suzie about his real career (telling her he worked in refrigerators when he was really developing robots) and seemed to be hiding a lot about his life (including who his real father is). But this episode reveals through flashbacks to Masa’s younger years that he truly is a complicated character. He grows up as a lonely child (who takes comfort in focusing on a beetle he catches) and fails to understand why his father dislikes him so much. Even when his father is on his deathbed, he refuses to see Masa in the hospital. This rejection is what leads Masa to become a hermit, or “hikikomori,” for two years (which is referenced in a prior episode). Eventually, his mother, Noriko (Judy Ong), is so worried about him that she contacts his real father, Hiromasa (Jun Kunimura), to ask for help. The man’s true identity is revealed to Masa, who is disgusted that his real father would abandon him (although he now realizes why the father he grew up with was so cold to him). Hiromasa offers Masa the use of his cabin to get away from his mother and to partially escape his seclusion.

It is in this cabin that Masa finally finds his purpose. While interacting with his father’s trash bot, Masa becomes obsessed with developing an improved program for the robot. Through much trial and error, he realizes that his invention needs to better understand human behavior in order to be effective. By treating the trash bot like his friend, Masa is able to reconnect with his own humanity, and this is why he is able to bond with and fall in love with Suzie later on. It is also noteworthy that Masa’s work on the trash bot is what led to his programming of Sunny and her sentient abilities. This is why Suzie was capable of connecting with Sunny (even though it was begrudgingly at first). Through recalling all of this to Suzie, Hiromasa confesses that Masa visited him a few days before the plane crash. He asked Hiromasa to give Sunny to Suzie, and it is indeed Masa’s ability to program robots to kill that is likely what has set the yakuza on his trail — and now Suzie’s.

‘Sunny’ Episode 8 Ends With a Mysterious Cliffhanger

Hiromasa, Suzie, and Mixxy discover that the yakuza are tracking a fourth figure, and Suzie thinks it’s Masa (whose death has never been verified, other than authorities saying they found his shoes at the crash site). They race to the location, and while frantically running around the basement of a building, Suzie is shocked to hear Zen calling, “Mama!” over and over. She finally locates him and is about to run to him, but is grabbed and held at gunpoint by a yakuza member. Sunny approaches, and since she’s been reprogrammed by Hime (You), it seems as though she’s going to kill either Suzie or Zen. Suzie closes her eyes in panic, but when she opens them, she discovers that Sunny has killed Suzie’s attacker.

Before Suzie even has a moment to react, it appears as though the ground is ripped apart, and Sunny starts falling into a dark abyss. She is yelling at Suzie for help, and the episode ends with this strange cliffhanger. Perhaps this ending points to Sunny simply shutting down or a malfunction within her programming. It seemed as though she was programmed to hurt people (maybe even Suzie) after Hime got hold of her. Maybe Sunny overrode her programming to save Suzie, but, in taking down the yakuza man, has now paid a price for it. Could the shaking and disintegrating floor just be Sunny’s reality, or is it something that Suzie and Zen experience as well? Is it possible that the action in the previous episodes was some sort of alternate world, or is it just that Sunny is experiencing a serious glitch?

There are two episodes left in this season of Sunny. Hopefully, Episode 9 will explain what this odd scene is actually implying, and that the plot will move forward in order to help Suzie figure out whether Masa is alive and well or not. It is clear that Hime is still torturing people for information about Suzie, so it’s likely her villainous ways will continue in the next two weeks. In the end, Suzie is one step closer to getting her family back, especially now that she knows her precious Zen is still alive. Even though Masa has kept a lot from her, she has come so far in solving this puzzle, and she’ll stop at nothing to get her husband back (if he is unharmed at this point). And even though Sunny has been put through the ringer, there’s no way that Suzie will rest until her homebot is back in working order.

New episodes of Sunny are available to stream every Wednesday on Apple TV+ in the U.S.

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