‘Cassandra’ is a Netflix German show that revolves around a family who find themselves becoming inadvertent prey in a game of hunt against a menacing AI home robot. Samira “Sam” Prilla and her family move to a small town after a tragedy compels them to seek a new start. Although the move is daunting, her husband David and the kids, Fynn and Juno, attempt to make the best of it, especially after discovering Cassandra, a robotic house helper, left behind, among other features of the old smart house. However, while Cassandra’s addition to their family initially offers a source of curiosity and wonder, it turns into something far more menacing. As uncanny things begin happening around Sam, she digs into the house’s past and unearths a concerning history about Cassandra and her connection to the house’s previous owner. Nonetheless, before the puzzle can be solved, the robot becomes a much more pressing problem for the Prill family and their uncertain fates. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Cassandra Recap
In the wake of the death of Sam’s sister, the Prilla family finds themselves desperately in need of a new start—which brings them to a distant house in a small town. The place has a retro-futuristic vibe all around, and the family soon realizes it used to be one of the oldest smart homes in Germany. For the same reason, each room in the house is fixed with television screens that the resident robot helper can use. Soon enough, Fynn discovers the AI helper—a towering red robot—and attempts to fix it up. Even though he only tinkers around superficially after unceremoniously turning on the basement server’s power, the robot comes to life during their first night at the house.
The robot Cassandra instantly becomes an object of curiosity for everyone, and the family agrees to use her around the house. Yet, things begin going sideways from early on. During the daytime—when the kids are at school and David is out—Cassandra accidentally hurts Sam while mowing the lawn. Later in the day, she attempts to secretly undermine the mother in front of Juno by manipulating facts about her decision to join the afterschool dance and music club. Another unusual thing happens the second night in the house when, after everyone has gone to sleep, Cassandra sets fire to the projector, where Sam has been viewing photos she had found of the previous house owners. Furthermore, the robot tries to shift the blame for the house fire onto Sam—something David is all too willing to entertain due to their persisting marital problems. Eventually, when Cassandra’s indiscretions become too much, Sam decides to investigate the matter and looks into the former homeowners, the Schmitts, at the city’s archives. Much to her horror, she finds out that Cassandra was modeled after the previous owner, Horst Schmitt’s wife, who died a year before he renovated the house into a smart home. A year after robot Cassandra’s addition to his and his son Peter’s life, the father-son duo ended up in a fatal car accident with Cassandra present at the site of the crash.
Nonetheless, when Sam attempts to share the same information with David, it only makes him more concerned for her rather than weary of the robot. Thus, she realizes her husband is already falling for Cassandra’s inexplicable attempts to make her look insane in front of her family. The following night, Cassandra corners Sam and tries to threaten her life, showcasing her possessiveness over David and the kids. Still, it only leads to another ruckus in which Sam emerges as the bad guy whom no one is willing to believe. Therefore, based on David’s advice, she decides to play along and enrolls herself in therapy. Yet, things continue to get out of control as the brewing contempt between Sam and Cassandra continues. Eventually, Sam manages to get the robot shut down after she insists she manipulated Juno into bringing a gun to school. However, unbeknownst to her, Cassandra’s consciousness spreads beyond shutting down the main server switch. As such, she secretly uses her control over the house to make it seem like Sam is trying to kill one of Juno’s friends by trapping her inside the oven. Consequently, she has no choice but to check in at a therapy center, leaving her family alone in the house at Cassandra’s mercy.
Cassandra Ending: How Did Cassandra Die?
How Did She Become a Robot? While the Prill family’s story unfolds in the current timeline, the show simultaneously oscillates between the present and the 70s, when the previous house owners, the Schmitts, resided in the place. In many ways, the Schmitts were a classic nuclear family from that decade with a working father, Horst, homemaker Cassandra, and their son, Peter. However, it is evident that Horst is a negligent father who prefers to spend his time in the office and rarely ever pays attention to his son. Even though the mother cares for her son, who struggles with fitting into the hypermasculinity mold that is expected of him, she is also prone to patronizing outbursts due to her frustration with her dwindling marriage.
This becomes especially common after Cassandra realizes that Horst is having an affair with her best friend, Brigit. The confirmation comes on the heels of Brigit’s pregnancy announcement—an already challenging notion for the woman since she underwent a complication during her last pregnancy that resulted in a stillbirth. Although there was never any confirmation about it, Cassandra suspects the birthing complication was partly due to the unregulated ultrasound procedure Horst made her undergo to determine the sex of their baby. As it turns out, the pregnancy complication hadn’t been the only adverse side effect to be born from the procedure. The “vector sound” Horst pushed on Cassandra was a machine of his own invention. It exposed its subject to a large amount of radiation, which has now manifested in the form of an extreme cancer spread for Cassandra. Therefore, by the time she is able to spot it, the doctors can do nothing in terms of treatment. On the heels of the prognosis, the woman confronts her husband about his affair—which she has known about for some time. The same, paired with the realization that his actions resulted in the action, crushes Horst with guilt and incompetency.
For the same reason, when Cassandra approaches him about his previously abandoned project of curing all ailments and achieving immortality for humans, he easily gives her the answers. Horst and his team found a way to upload any individual’s consciousness into a robot to ensure they outlive the death of their organic body. However, since a test subject would essentially die in the process, they had to drop the project before testing it out. Yet, Cassandra easily offers herself up as a test subject. She’s scared about not being around for Peter—who clearly needs some sort of a support system, considering he recently went on a killing spree to deal with the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of his bullies. Even beyond that, Cassandra isn’t ready to call it quits just yet. Thus, she volunteers to be Horst’s test subject—and eventually has her consciousness transferred out of her human cancerous body and into the shining red robot.
How Did Horst and Peter Die? Did Cassandra Kill Them?
The reality of Horst and Peter’s death is established early into the story as Sam discovers that they died in a car accident in 1972. At the time, the authorities also found the Cassandra robot at the scene. Consequently, for a while, one can’t help but draw a general assumption that she must have somehow killed her family. Nonetheless, this becomes less believable once Cassandra’s character becomes more fleshed out as a caring mother and a patient wife. Part of the reason she even wants to become a robot is so she can look after her son, Peter.
However, after her consciousness gets uploaded into the robot, Cassandra undergoes a change. From the start, Peter has a hard time accepting the robot as his mother, especially because he has watched men carry her dead body out of the house after the mechanical reincarnation. Furthermore, once she gains control over the house, she realizes the amount of power she can truly hold over her husband. Previously, she had allowed Horst to continue having his affair with Brigit because of the simple reason that she was quite powerless in their marriage. Nonetheless, now she can lock the door and cut phone connections on a whim without any real repercussions. Cassandra is already dead—in the way that matters. She isn’t blood and bones anymore, and she knows that Horst can’t simply shut her down. Even though he had his colleagues insert a master off switch at the server, Cassandra had managed to inherit actual control over her on/off functions before undergoing the procedure. As such, she isn’t even scared of the same threat. Still, Horst is oblivious to his lack of control over her consciousness. For the same reason, he eventually shuts down the main switch to rid himself of her hawk-like surveillance.
Even though Peter is disturbed by this, he can’t oppose his father. Similarly, when Horst brings Birgit and her son, Thomas, into the home—claiming the latter as his son—his eldest is equally helpless. Nonetheless, Cassandra refuses to play along to the charade any longer. Therefore, when Horst least expects it, she comes back online and tries to push Thomas’ stroller off the stairs. Simultaneously, she attempts to exploit her control over the kitchen appliances to burn Birgit’s face off in the oven. Ultimately, these plans are foiled, and Peter is disturbed to see his mother in this light. Consequently, Horst eventually manages to put everyone in the car and drives off into the night, leaving Cassandra behind. Nonetheless, Peter isn’t happy with the turn of events and tries to jump out of the car to return home. As Horst tries to stop him, it inevitably leads to an accident as he drives the car into a tree. Thus, both Peter and Horst—who were sitting in the front of the car—fly out of the windowsill and reach a slow but fatal end. In the aftermath, as Cassandra realizes her son has died, it distresses her to the point of malfunction, and she remains dormant for decades until the arrival of the Prills.
What Happened to Cassandra’s Daughter? Did She Die?
Cassandra’s past seems to be full of enigmas, and her daughter, who she claims to have lost during childbirth, remains a notable example of it. It’s evident that Cassandra suffers from the complications of her second pregnancy, be it through her reaction to Birgit’s pregnancy in the past—or robot Cassandra’s obsession with Juno in the present. Initially, it’s easy to assume she is simply grieving the loss of her child. Nonetheless, the truth is far more sinister. As it turns out, when Horst tries to drive away from the house with his family, he isn’t simply abandoning Cassandra—he also abandons Maggie, his daughter.
During Cassandra’s second pregnancy—shortly after Horst’s stunt with the Vector Sound device—his wife underwent some serious problems with her pregnancy. Initially, she seemed to have been undergoing a bloody labor. Unfortunately, the same night, a storm blocked the roadway to the hospital, stranding Horst and Cassandra in the house. Thus, they attempted to induce a water birth with a professional on the phone line. In the end, Maggie is born, but with a visible birth condition that malformed her face. At first, the mother is worried her husband will do something adverse in light of the discovery. Still, even Horst wants to protect Maggie and keep her safe. However, his version of the same consists of locking the child up inside the house and lying about her stillbirth to keep her a secret from the world. Although Cassandra knows it’s unfair to the child, she allows herself to be brought into agreement. For the same reason, contempt breeds between the couple, tainting Peter’s relationship with his father as well. Furthermore, Maggie is also a significant part of why Cassandra wasn’t willing to die after her cancer prognosis. On the night that she tries to kill Birgit and Thomas, Horst convinces her to allow her family to leave her clutches.
Horst and Peter make her understand how she has turned into a malformed version of herself and is actively hurting them with her presence. Ultimately, she agrees to let them go on the condition that they take Maggie with them. Even so, Horst tries to break that promise and run off without the child he never wanted in the first place. Consequently, Peter tries to jump out of the car because he doesn’t want to abandon his sister. In the end, their deaths and Cassandra’s intentional shutdown leave Maggie all alone in her secret room. As a result, she dies in the same room, becoming a husk, never to be found out by another.
Does David Kill Sam? Does She Save Her Family?
After robot Cassandra’s unfortunate run the first time around, she comes back online for the Prill family with a similar but more sinister plan. She wants to have a family again and is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it. Consequently, she manipulates the family into thinking Sam is insane. The fact that their initial move into town is driven by the suicide of Sam’s mentally ill sister, Kathi, aids in influencing their opinions. Therefore, once Sam is out of the way, Cassandra finally comes out in full force. She holds David and the kids hostage, forcing them to play along with her idea of a happy family.
Eventually, Christmas time rolls around—offering the Prills a chance at escape. They are supposed to get Sam from the therapy center for the holiday, but Cassandra makes David come up with a lie to postpone it. This ticks off the other woman, who never stopped suspecting Cassandra of ill intentions. Consequently, she finds a way to break into the Matron’s office and get her hands on her belongings, which includes a phone. Before her enrollment in the center, she had given Juno a secret phone to contact her when necessary. All this time, the little girl has been secretly making calls to her mother as a call for help. Even though Cassandra manages to intervene with that as well, it raises enough of a red flag for Sam to sneak out of the center to return home. Yet, the robot gets a warning about that after the center informs David about Sam’s escape. Therefore, she comes up with a plan to use David to kill the other woman. Under the threat of the loss of his life, David agrees to the unimaginable and attacks Sam when she infiltrates the house. He claims he’s only attacking her to save his children, even though Cassandra had made it clear she would never harm Fynn or Juno.
Eventually, a cat-and-mouse chase breaks off between Cassandra and Sam, which brings the latter to the hidden room that once belonged to Maggie. Consequently, once she discovers what happened to the young girl, Sam is able to talk Cassandra out of her evil plans by making her understand that she can never have the children’s love, especially if she kills their mother. In the end, Cassandra reveals David’s betrayal to Sam before allowing her to escape. As the Prills escape the house with their lives, the robot sets fire to the whole place, going down in flames with it. Ultimately, the Prill family survives, but not without significant damage. Read More: Best AI Movies on Netflix
