Empirical science can always be trusted. Human beings, however? Not so much.
AMC’s new sci-fi anthology series Soulmates is set 15 years in the future, when the Soul Connex company offers customers the chance to find their soulmate — that one person with whom their “soul particle” is indisputably linked — through a simple, foolproof test.
As the characters in Soulmates discover, nothing can really prepare one for all the consequences of taking (or not taking) the test.
ALSO SEE: In AMC’s Soulmates, You Can Meet Your Perfect Match. (Results May Vary.)
In Episode 2, “The Lovers” (Monday, Oct. 12, at 10pm ET/PT), Sonya Cassidy (Lodge 49, Humans) stars as Alison, a married woman who was able to identify her soulmate by illegally hacking into his Soul Connex account.
College professor David Maddox (David Costabile, Billions) gets the surprise of his life when Alison tracks him down and informs him that she’s his soulmate, even though he set his test results to “private.”
Their meeting stirs up secrets from the past that will irrevocably alter both of their futures.
“If the response to finding a soulmate is something that perhaps goes awry or is not what you expected, that’s not science’s fault,” Cassidy says of the temptation to blame science for not always acting in our best interests. “It all comes back to the human response to science, and I think that’s something that is age-old and is absolutely fascinating, and so revealing of human beings and how we cope with certainty and uncertainty. The science can be trusted, human beings perhaps cannot.”
Soulmates, like most good sci-fi, transports viewers to imaginative times and places to make them think about the here and now.
“I think sci-fi, when it’s done well, it is so exquisitely prophetic,” Cassidy says. “What makes good sci-fi exceptional or the most poignant is that it continues to be rooted into something we can relate to in the world as we know it. I think Humans did that as well, the fact that it was set in a parallel world, one that we recognize. Similarly with Soulmates, I think setting it 15 years in the future is just far away enough for it to feel like something exciting and other, but at the same time, I think we can see that happening. For a long time now, people have been searching for “the one” online. I don’t think we’re too far away from science claiming to have narrowed down that search significantly for us in an attempt to help people find the person for them.”
Soulmates also excels at keeping the viewer guessing throughout the episodes, and leaving the viewer with more to think about after the credits roll.
“I just kind of breathed a sigh of shock and relief and joy and pain at the end of the episode,” Cassidy says. “I love that there aren’t really any real clear-cut answers. You finish watching this show and you talk about it with the person you’re watching it with, or you go away and think about how you might respond in that situation. Any show that encourages us think about our lives and how we approach something like love and relationships, and our relationship to each other and to technology, is a really exciting place to be working. I loved working on this show.”
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