What the Creature in ‘Below’ Really Is and Why It Haunts Snook’s Arm

Netflix’s limited series ‘Below’ spends its early episodes keeping its central threat in the shadows. Created by Jesse McKeown, the six episode series is set in the remote Newfoundland town of Snook’s Arm, where the townspeople are terrorised by a mysterious sea creature. The show even hints for a while that the menace might be supernatural.

The question of what the creature in ‘Below’ actually is drives much of the series, and the answer is more grounded than the early dread suggests. Major spoilers follow for the entire season, so anyone still working through the episodes may want to stop here.

The Creature in ‘Below’ Is a Giant Squid

The answer arrives in plain terms. The monster turns out to be a giant squid, unlike anything anyone has ever seen. In the command tent, Fonda explains that it is a deep water cephalopod, highly intelligent, unlike anything on the taxonomic record, and female.

The series plants the threat early. From the opening scene, the creature topples an entire house floating on the water. Later, in what the reviewer calls the most thrilling sequence of the series, fisherman Calvin Penney, played by Josh Hartnett, comes under attack inside a submarine while hunting the creature with a team of unorthodox conservationists.

The horror is not purely about teeth and tentacles. The creature lacks the cosmic deity qualities of a Cthulhu or a Dagon. Instead, it pollutes the local drinking water with a hallucinogenic bacteria that causes illness, insatiable thirst and violent outbursts in humans.

Why the Iceberg Nest Changes Everything

The turning point comes with the iceberg that appears in the harbor. Fonda discovers that the iceberg is made out of the mucus membrane of a sea creature. In the finale, the creature is revealed to be a mother and the iceberg is her nest.

Fonda locates the creature and finds it preparing to hatch a clutch of eggs, which recasts its violent territorial behavior as protection of its offspring. Even the slightest sign of danger pushes her to attack anyone or anything that looks like a threat to her eggs.

That context rewrites the earlier bloodshed. The night before the reveal, the creature went on a rampage when people tried to force her out of the harbor. Fonda also explains that cephalopods mate only once in their lives and give everything for their young.

How the Ending of ‘Below’ Treats the Creature

The finale shifts from hunting the animal to shielding it. The series ends with Calvin and his family joining forces to move the iceberg that holds the creature’s eggs. The military had planned to destroy the creature and evacuated the island, which also served the Crockers’ master plan.

Eventually the military stands down and the creature is left to wait with her eggs and nourish them until she dies when they are born. The outcome for the offspring is not a happy one. Howander says in the final episode that none of the baby squid survived because the warmer waters were not hospitable.

The creator has been open about wanting this emotional core. In an interview with TIME, McKeown said the bond between a fisherman and the creature at the center of the finale is what the nest reveal sets up, and that a creature that simply had to be destroyed would have been an easier story to tell.

One sea creature remains unaccounted for when the series ends, and there is no confirmation that Netflix is making a second season.

Snook’s Arm and the Human Monsters in ‘Below’

The creature is only one source of danger in the town. The Crockers never needed the creature to be a monster, only to be useful, and Jim Crocker sees it as a gift. McKeown frames the series as a story of three families, the Penneys, the Budgells and the Crockers, split along an old Newfoundland line between the fisherman class and the merchant class.

The infection also leaves human casualties. Barry, Fonda’s one colleague in Snook’s Arm, caught the infection from the creature and ran to the pier and dove in during the fourth episode. That detail shows how the story keeps tying the animal’s biology to the town’s own fragility.

Critics have split on how the balance plays out. One outlet argues the series abandons creature horror midway and turns into a conservationist drama that runs over its thriller billing. Another reading holds that the real monster is human greed, environmental exploitation and a refusal to confront climate change. A third review credits the show with some scares while concluding it mostly treads water.

Whichever reading holds, the series asks viewers to rethink who deserved sympathy in Snook’s Arm, so did the military and the Crockers earn the blame, or was Fonda right to let the mother squid stay with her eggs at the cost of the harbor?