Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Sunny Episode 5.
So far, in Apple TV+‘sSunny,Suzie (Rashida Jones) has been put through the wringer. Her husband, Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima), and her young son, Zen (Fares Belkheir), have been declared dead in a plane crash. Her mother-in-law, Noriko (Judy Ongg), criticizes everything she does (including the fact that Suzie isn’t grieving properly), and Masahas gifted her a robotnamed Sunny (voiced byJoanna Sotomura) that she’s initially reluctant to interact with. Suzie is an American in Japan, and she’s never quite adjusted fully to living in a different country. Now that Masa and Zen are no longer around to ground her,Suzie is completely lost, stuck in a haze of alcohol and sadness.
In the first several episodes of the series, Sunny tries bonding as much as she can with Suzie. She tries to be immensely helpful, encouraging Suzie to take care of herself. But because she’s just a robot (and because she was made in secret by Masa), Sunny can never quite earn Suzie’s respect or measure up to Suzie’s new friend, Mixxy (annie the clumsy). After learning that Masa was most likely involved in some pretty shady dealings with the yakuza, Mixxy suggests that they escape to her family’s farm in the countryside. In the show’s latest episode, Mixxy, Suzie, and Sunny arrive at a nearby train station only to find out that a member of the yakuza is pursuing them. They set out on foot to walk to the farm, but they get lost in the woods. After a terrifying night in the forest (which includes an encounter with a bear),the women finally make it to safety, butthe last scene ends with a major cliffhanger.
The life of an American woman living in Kyoto, Japan, is upended when her husband and son disappear in a mysterious plane crash. As consolation, she’s given Sunny, one of a new class of domestic robots made by her husband’s electronics company.
Who Kidnapped Sunny in Episode 5?
Suzie has become increasinglyconcerned about what Masa was mixed up inbefore his death. She knows for certain that her husband wasn’t just working in refrigerators and that he had programmed Sunny to be a gift (and a companion) for her. She is now constantly reflecting on her memories of Masa before his death; it seems that she missed so many signs that he was hiding something important from her. At the end of Episode 5, Sunny has just recovered a repressed memory where she recalls Masa using her to record an interaction between himself and a mystery man. Sunny is even more determined to restore all of her lost memories so that she can help Suzie figure out what really happened to Masa and Zen. But in the last moments of the episode,Suzie wakes up to find that Sunny has disappeared.Under her pillow are a note (written in Japanese) and a smashed prosthetic finger, which definitely belonged to the head of the yakuza, Hime (You).
Several possibilities could haveled to Sunny’s kidnapping. The yakuza man following them in the forest could have finally discovered where the farm was located. Or is it possible that Mixxy actually turned Sunny in? There’d definitely been tension between the robot and Mixxy (they squabble constantly), and one scene right before Sunny’s disappearance shows some obvious jealousy on Mixxy’s part. Perhaps Mixxy isn’t so innocent after all, and she wanted to be the most important person in Suzie’s life — or her envy of Sunny and Suzie’s relationship could just be a red herring meant to throw viewers off the scent of the real culprits. In the end, it is clear that the yakuza were determined to capture Sunny, whether they figured out her location on their own or not. It has been suggested thatSunny might hold “The Dark Manual” within her programming, so she could be the key to the entire puzzle of what Masa and his team were up to.
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Suzie Will Surely Be Pushed to Her Limit in ‘Sunny’
Suzie is already extremely fragile and has acted harshly towards Sunny previously. She typically treats Sunnylike an annoying sibling. But Suzie has also had moments of tenderness towards her, and Sunny has been a constant source of support for Suzie since Masa and Zen’s deaths. At the end of the day,it’s likely that Suzie does consider Sunny a friendand does love her, which means she will probably stop at nothing to rescue her. Not only would Suzie not want anything bad to happen to Sunny (who does seem to experience real emotions), but there is also the fact that Sunny herself probably contains the answer to all of Suzie’s questions about what happened to her family.
Suzie has already put herself at riskseveral times during her quest for the truth. She’s basically broken into Masa’s office (twice), talked to tons of people who might have insider info on the manual that Masa was working on, and has witnessed the violent death of a yakuza member. This all points to the fact that Suzie is determined to figure out what Masa was hiding before his death. She’s operating out of desperation and has nothing to lose anymore. So, how far will she go to get Sunny back? It’s likely that Suzie will need to confront Hime and her henchmen, which would be a very dangerous undertaking, butthere’s no way she’s going to lose one more person/robot that’s important to her. We don’t know yet what the note from Hime said, but the finger is likely a threat, which means that Suzie will definitely be putting herself in danger to rescue Sunny.
There are five episodes left in the season, which means thatSuzie could still get into a lot of trouble. The question is: what exactly will she have to do to get Sunny back, and who will accompany her on her quest? Will Mixxy put her jealousy aside and work with Suzie to save Sunny? Will Suzie finally approach Noriko for help and find out what her mother-in-law is hiding? Is there some remote possibility that Masa and Zen are actually alive? We don’t know enough about Hime’s true motives or her involvement in the plane crash yet, so future episodes will need to explore more about her connection to Sunny’s origins. At this point, Suzie has already proven her immense strength, which will be extremely useful as shebattles some serious bad guys(and a pretty scary woman) in order to save Sunny.
New episodes ofSunnyare available to stream every Wednesday on Apple TV+ in the U.S.
