Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Sunny Episode 9.
Apple TV+‘sSunnyhas always been an examination of how technology has the potential to become more human. Suzie (Rashida Jones) has uncovered that her husband, Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima), was not working in refrigerators like he told her, but was involved in some mysterious development of homebots before his alleged death.He has gifted her with Sunny, a robot that he designed with Suzie’s needs in mind. During the series, Sunny has helped Suzie push through her grief over losing Masa and their son, Zen (Fares Belkheir), and has become a friend who will do anything in order to protect her.
In last week’s episode, it was revealed that Zen is actually alive. Sunny goes against her programming to never be violent, killing the yakuza member who was holding a gun to Suzie’s head.Episode 8 ends with a cliffhanger, with Sunny seemingly falling into an abyss. At first, it isn’t clear why Sunny is experiencing this meltdown or what this malfunction even means for the bot going forward. But all has been revealed in the latest episode (“Who’s in the Box?"), as Sunny regains consciousness. The episode gives a full background on Sunny’s origins, as well as what Masa had been working on before his death. Many questions are answered, exceptanother major cliffhanger leaves Sunny’s future up in the aironce more.
‘Sunny’s Background Comes to Light in Episode 9
The episode takes place within an over-the-topJapanese game show, where Sunny is basically a contestant in determining her own fate. It turns out that this action is taking place in Sunny’s subconscious because she went against her programming to save Suzie. Sunny must go through several rounds of the game show where she is confronted with her own past actions. The ultimate question of the show is whether Sunny should choose to wipe her own memory or not. Through the help of a kooky game show host and Noriko (Judy Ongg) as a guest,Sunny sees that her decisions have led to several bad outcomes, including the dead bird she tried to care for and the time that she punched Mixxy (annie the clumsy). Sunny slowly starts to understand that her overall drive to keep Suzie safe has led her to counteract her own algorithms to be moral and non-violent.
The game show also allows Sunny to unlock her repressed memoriesof what Masa was actually working on. Through his lab,he was developing robotsthat could help individuals who were suffering from severe loneliness (like he had once experienced). One of Masa’s test subjects is a man named Asahi, who had been stuck in complete isolation. He is eventually able to bond with his homebot, thus allowing him to overcome his extreme social anxiety. Masa wanted these robots to help make people’s lives better and connect individuals with their own humanity. But one of Masa’s employees ends up bugging the bots in an act of sabotage so that they start displaying odd behaviors.During a Christmas partyin a yellow room in the lab (which is featured in the very first scene of the series), one robot goes berserk and pummels another robot. Asahi steps in to help and is savagely beaten to death. Sunny is present for this tragedy.
Masa takes full responsibility for the man’s death, but he knows that he must erase all evidence that the bots are capable of violence (lest the yakuza use this information for nefarious purposes). So, he kills the murderous homebot and wipes Sunny’s memory. But because Masa had a mole within his company, the yakuza eventuallylearns of the potential to use the botsfor violence anyway. This is why Masa gives Sunny to his father (as seen in Episode 8);he hopes that the homebot will be able to help Suzie through her grief and lonelinessif something happens to him.
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After Sunny remembers these events, she is finally able to put the pieces of her past together. This includes where she got her name; she was deemed Homebot #32. In Japanese, the number three is ‘san’ and the number two is ‘ni,’ which forms the name Sunny. This is proof that, despite not always having the memories in her recall, Sunny did really know all along what Masa was working on and what led to his disappearance. In the final round of the game show, Sunny also realizes that thereason her behavior changedafter Hime (You) kidnapped her was because Hime just increased the programming surrounding her human tendencies. When Sunny was violent, it was because she felt she needed to protect Suzie (as any human friend would).In trying to keep Suzie safe, Sunny has only ended up hurting others.
The last scene of the episode depicts Sunny heading towards two doors, one where she wipes her memory and one where she doesn’t.Sunny ultimately decides to take the drastic step of erasing her memory. Sunny has likely realized that her love for Suzie has clouded her judgment and prevented her from living up to her true purpose. She went against her own programming to keep Suzie safe and to help Suzie with her quest to find out what happened to her family. By wiping her memory, Sunny is not onlyreverting to her original self, she is also ensuring that Suzie remains safe, since the knowledge Sunny contains can’t be accessed by the yakuza. Her secrets (which are Masa’s secrets) will be erased along with her memories.
But what does that mean for Sunny, exactly? It’s possible that she won’t lose 100 percent of her memories (since she did retain some fragments even after Masa wiped her memory after the Christmas party). Butwill this change Sunny’s personality?Will she no longer do anything Suzie asks or be as optimistically cheerful? There’s the chance that Suzie won’t be able to figure out the mystery of what happened to Masa because she won’t have Sunny’s memories to rely on. How will that affect Suzie’s journey? Plus, will Sunny wiping her own memory even do anything to keep Hime and the yakuza at bay? It doesn’t seem likely thatthese villains will just give upon accessing the Dark Manual.
There’s one episode left in the season to explore Sunny’s fate. This means there’s still a possibility that maybe Sunny taking this huge step to erase her memory will actually help her move forward to become even more human-like (and even more of a staple in Suzie’s life). No matter what,Sunny has proven to be Masa’s greatest professional achievement, since she has already shown that she can override her programming and display true selflessness.
New episodes ofSunnyare available to stream every Wednesday on Apple TV+ in the U.S.
Sunny follows Suzie, an American woman living in Kyoto, Japan, whose life is turned upside down when her husband and son disappear in a plane crash. As a consolation, Suzie is given Sunny, a domestic robot from her husband’s company. Initially resistant to Sunny, Suzie eventually forms a bond with the robot. Together, they uncover dark secrets about Suzie’s family and become entangled in a dangerous criminal underworld.
