Moving Stories often involve sacrifice
Films or TV series that move us often climax in a Christ-like sacrifice of a particular character on behalf of the others, perhaps because self-sacrifice is the highest expression of love; as Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this: that he give his life for his friends.”
Lost in Space Season three contains an unusually clear metaphor of Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf, on the cross.
Spoilers below
The below article contains spoilers. Please do not read if you do not want to know the ending of season three of Lost in Space.
Christ-metaphor at the crisis/climax of season three.
The climax of Netflix’s series Lost in Space Season Three contains a clear metaphor for the gospel.
The series as a whole is concerned primarily with the relationship between Will Robinson and the Robot, and secondarily with the Robinson family.
In season three, an evil robot, Sar, wants to destroy humanity, and chases them down to the last refuge of humanity on Alpha Centauri (which actually the name of a star, but in the series it is the name of the planet around that star.)
Will Robinson and Robot travel to a planet where many robots live in order to convince them to join them in saving the humans on Alpha Centauri from the attack of the evil robots, led by Sar.
Victory through the death of the Christ figure.
Will Robinson’s heart, that was pierced by Sar and then replaced with an artificial human heart, is failing. Robot has taken him to the robot planet. He places Will inside a special machine on the planet, and at the cost of his own life, puts a new Robot heart into Will Robinson’s chest.
Being a heavenly creature, Robot is perhaps a metaphor for God the Father, and definitely a father figure to Will. The Robot’s heart is in Will, now, just as the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father (John chapter 14-16)
Will Robinson, now healed, and Doctor Smith who has had her heart changed by repentance and is piloting the ship, travel back to earth, where Will arrives in the nick of time to save the colony.
The evil robot Sar attacks Will, and pierces his heart once again, intending to finish him off this time. But the heart in Will is now the heart Robot put in him, and this heart is able to hack Sar through the needle Sar pierced Will’s heart with. Sar, in piercing Will’s heart, is defeated, for the Robot’s power inside Will’s heart travels up Sar’s arm, destroys Sar, and takes his body over.
Robot’s sacrifice is like Christ’s sacrifice on the cross: through death, Jesus attained victory over Satan and was able to resurrect himself by the Power of the Eternal Spirit.
Resurrection makes the victory manifest
Sar, in piercing Will’s heart, is like Satan who pierced Christ’s heel on the cross - Satan thought he had won by killing Christ. In fact it was his doom. Christ in dying secured God’s victory over death, Satan and hell, Christ’s resurrection made this victory manifest, just as Robot’s resurrection made his victory manifest.
SAR as Satan? Or SAR as SARS-COV-2?
Sar, by the way, is an interesting name for the evil robot considering the Coronavirus is SARS COV-2, and the metaphor of piercing Will’s heart with a needle may well also be intentionally reminiscent of the SARS COV-2 vaccination campaign; I simply make the observation that it is the evil robot that is administering the needle in this case.