Rohan Jain
Spotify’s ‘Case 63’ is adapted from the Chilean sci-fi podcast ‘Caso 63,’ created and written by Julio Rojas. The 10-episode podcast series revolves around a psychiatrist named Eliza Beatrix Knight and her patient Peter Roiter, who claims to be a time traveler from the future. Each episode chronicles one session between the doctor and patient, where the former tries to make sense of the latter’s mind-bending theories, stories, and motives and their astounding consequences. The podcast series ends with ambiguous developments and a startling revelation. If you are intrigued about the show’s climax, here’s everything you need to know about it. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Case 63 Recap
Set in the year 2022, the podcast begins with the first session between Eliza and Peter, who claims that he has come from the year 2062. Peter reveals that he has to prevent Marie Eva Baker from boarding Flight 262 to be able to change the future. As the sessions progress, the mystery around Peter and his stories slowly unravels and he describes the various events that will occur in the future. However, the doctor is unable to believe any of this. So, to gain her confidence, he integrates the wild stories with personal details about Eliza in each session, which leaves the psychiatrist stunned.
Although Eliza doesn’t believe Peter, she tries to understand how he could have traveled through time and why he wants to stop Marie from boarding the plane. He first tells her how the key to traveling to the past is gravity and explains that laser beams bend space and time, creating a gravitational field of their own. Leveraging this gravity, he claims that he traveled back in time. Peter also reveals that there is nothing left in the future save a few survivors of the Pegasus virus. He explains how the coronavirus had a mutation, leading to the creation of Pegasus, which remained dormant after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
The vaccines couldn’t keep this virus from spreading and it slowly eradicated a major portion of the human population. The survivors had to figure out a way to prevent the same from occurring. So they found out that Marie Baker was patient zero and sent Peter to prevent her from boarding Flight 262. However, this is only the backup plan; the actual plan is to inject Peter’s blood plasma into Marie since he is immune to the strain generated in 2022 to make Marie immune to it as well. Peter and other survivors believe that injecting the former’s plasma into Marie Baker will stop all the subsequent events from occurring and his future will change.
Overwhelmed with all this information and assessing the risk of Peter knowing too much about her, Eliza decides to hand over the case. But before she is able to do so, Peter reveals to another senior doctor at the hospital his real name – Oliver Collins. Oliver is an amateur sci-fi writer, part of a group that hosted a competition for all its writers. Being one of them, Peter/Oliver was tasked with convincing someone that he was from the future. Since he accomplished the same, he is taking a leave from the hospital. With little resistance from the hospital management, Peter/Oliver is able to leave the place.
Later, Peter reaches out to Eliza and says that he had to leave because people were starting to know about the time-traveling story, and the information is dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. He maintains that he is Peter Collins and wants Eliza to take Peter’s blood sample from the hospital and inject the plasma into Marie Baker. This leaves the doctor and audience in a conundrum as they wonder if the person is Peter Roiter or Oliver Collins.
Case 63 Ending: Is Case 63 Peter Roiter or Oliver Collins? Is His Time Traveling Story True? How Does It Work?
Case 63 is indeed Peter Roiter, the time traveler. The story about Oliver Collins is merely a cover-up story for Peter to escape the hospital and ensure that more people don’t become aware of the critical knowledge he has shared with Dr. Eliza Knight. When Peter talks about time travel, he mentions a few vital concepts for Eliza to understand the significance of his stories and actions. Moreover, since he needs her help, he tries to win her over by sharing things that prove his statements. After talking about the time travel, the first thing that shocks Eliza is Peter calling her by her middle name, “Beatrix.”
Peter says he had grown up listening to the weird story about how a woman named Eliza had reached out to his parents about a time traveler. At the time, the two didn’t know each other but the story made Peter’s father reach out to his mother and the two of them hit it off. Years later, Peter was born and when he listened to the story, he came to know of a person named Eliza Beatrix Knight. Due to this passing of information, a loop is created.
Peter further explains how lasers can bend space and time to form rings and create their own gravity. When it does so, one can travel to the past. When Eliza asks how he plans on returning to the future again, he says that this expedition is a one-way ticket. He is here only to change the course of history and enable a better world in the future. Eliza further probes him to understand what he wants to change and the time traveler reveals that he wants to save humanity from a virus that wipes most of them. He explains that he isn’t talking about the recent corona/COVID-19 virus but something much more dangerous.
Peter says that a new variant called Pegasus was generated due to mutation within the virus over time. Over the next 30 years, several variants of Pegasus took over the world and humanity went through multiple cycles of vaccines and variants. However, in the fourth wave, everything changed. People started isolating themselves completely and left cities. Amongst numerous others, Peter’s wife also died. Peter also reveals that Marie is patient zero for the Pegasus virus. Since Eliza finds all this information entirely fictitious, in one of the sessions, Peter asks her to remember the dream she gets that night and tell him the next day. This is after he mentions the word Pegasus to her.
Peter tells Eliza that dreams are a medium through which our future selves can contact us and communicate a message. They are like a trail in the park wherein the Eliza, who is a little ahead on the trail, can communicate with the Eliza a little behind through dreams. Jean Pierre Garnier Malet formulated this theory and since Peter believes in it, he asks Eliza to tell her dream to him in the next session. He also mentions that she will get the dream because, in the future, he will draw her a Pegasus on paper. After listening to the story of the Pegasus pandemic, Peter asks her about her dream, and she says that she saw a white horse with wings and had to kill it. This further proves that Peter is indeed a time traveler.
As the sessions continue, Peter explains how he got selected for the mission. After his wife’s death, Peter joined a community where he would help survivors. During this time, he came across an ad about an experimental therapy against Pegasus that required volunteers. So he went through multiple tests and was found suitable for various reasons. First, he was found to be immune to a particular strain of COVID-19 which was generated in 2022 and set the ball rolling for Pegasus to be formed.
Peter doesn’t reveal the other two reasons and explains the vortex concept. He describes the term as moments that can have planetary consequences and can change the course of the future. In this scenario, Marie Baker, boarding Flight 262 from JFK airport to London, is the critical vortex. So, Marie needs to be injected with Peter’s blood plasma because it is immune to the strain affecting her, potentially making the woman immune too. This way, the generation of Pegasus will be avoided altogether. Peter asks Eliza to do this for him and says that the hospital already has his blood sample.
At this point, Eliza feels threatened, and to once again win her over, Peter reveals his other two dreams. He says that during the tests, he dreamt of Eliza, Marie, and him at the JFK airport’s restroom with blood spilled on the floor. In addition, he also dreamt of making breakfast for her the next day and then going to Rome with her. Eliza cannot believe they will be together, so she asks how is any of that possible. Peter again flips the story by saying that his expedition is not a one-way ticket. He further states that he knows the most private thing about her, which she told him after they got together. Peter refers to what Eliza told her husband before he died and says the exact words she said. Shocked by this revelation, Eliza completes the sentence and is left dumbfounded.
In the next session, Eliza makes Peter take a polygraph test, and unsurprisingly he says the truth. The officer who oversees the test asks the therapist to hand over the case because it isn’t safe for her. So, when she decides to do so, Peter pulls another trick up his sleeve and reveals that he is Oliver Collins. However, this is just a diversion because the more people observe him, the more people know about time travel and its various mechanics. Thus, he couldn’t risk more people knowing things and used the backup plan.
Later, Peter meets Eliza and tells her all the aforementioned things, but the doctor can’t believe him. Besides this, he gives her a package with a tape and says that everything she needs to know is recorded on it. Conflicted about what needs to be done, she listens to the tape. In the tape are instructions for injecting Peter’s blood plasma into Marie. There’s another important piece of information. He says that his wife who died was Eliza and that it is strange but true. He explains how he didn’t travel to the past but to a past point in time of another universe, where the people are the same but the roles are different.
According to Peter, he and Eliza are predestined to be together in many ways. Peter confesses how much he loves Eliza and she is the reason behind his time travel mission. Eliza repeatedly listens to the tapes and finds minor inconsistencies in his stories and his narration of future events. Meanwhile, she also gets the news from her mother that her sister, Danny, with whom Eliza hasn’t spoken for a while, has gotten test results. They do not look good and Danny will soon start a new treatment. With all this happening, Eliza feels overwhelmed but decides to go to the airport after taking the necessary things. So, does she go ahead and do what Peter asks her?
Who is Marie Baker? Does Dr. Eliza Inject Peter’s Plasma into Marie?
Marie Eva Baker is Danny’s friend. Eliza does not inject her with Peter’s blood plasma. When Eliza meets Marie at the airport and takes her to the restroom, she discovers that Marie is going to London to meet Danny. The latter suffers from leukemia and the doctors will treat her with plasma immunology therapy. For this, Marie’s plasma will be used because it will help Danny’s treatment. When Eliza comes to know about the same, she understands that she cannot snatch her sister’s chance at life and decides to let Marie go.
The next moment, Eliza is in a psychiatric hospital where Dr. Vincent, who looks exactly like Peter, meets her. He is accompanied by a police officer who tells her that Eliza was found naked at a JFK toilet. Unable to understand what’s happening, Eliza asks them the year they are in and learns that she is in 2012. So, with this, it is evident that time travel is very much real.
How Does Dr. Eliza End Up in 2012?
Although the podcast doesn’t reveal the answer, we have a theory. Since Marie boarding the plane is a vortex moment, Eliza not giving her the injection likely leads her down a path from where she travels to the past. This is a straightforward theory and we’ll know more once we see how the story progresses in a potential season 2. Considering the original Chilean version has 3 seasons, the English version can have 3 seasons too.
However, we do have a second theory. In different conversations with Eliza, Peter reveals information that the doctor has no idea about and completely turns the story. This means there is more information the time traveler is withholding but has given a hint to Eliza. In the recording, Peter mentions how the people are the same across universes but the roles are different, giving a couple of examples. In one of the examples, Eliza is the time traveler, and Peter is the psychiatrist. This is essentially the scenario at the end of episode 10, which means Peter knew of this universe and how things would turn out beforehand. Hence Eliza going to 2012 in a potentially new universe is part of Peter’s plan.
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