Netflix’s mind-bending 3 Body Problem is one heck of a ride, and it's only getting started. The series, created by Alexander Woo and Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, follows a group of scientists who get entangled with the San-Ti, an alien race headed for Earth. That’s an extremely simplified way to summarize the series, which deals with some seriously complicated ideas, including the titular three-body problem—one I’m frankly not smart enough to explain.

The first season of 3 Body Problem, which continues to sit in the streamer’s most-watched list weeks after its premiere, can’t tie up all of its loose ends. There’s plenty of ground to cover, as the series is based on the first book(-ish) of author Liu Cixin’s dense trilogy, and Season 1 only scratches the surface. It does, however, set up a lot of exciting avenues to explore in future seasons. (While Netflix hasn’t announced a Season 2 yet, based on the show’s reported popularity, it seems pretty likely.)

For those of us who haven’t already read the books or watched the other recent adaptation, these are the seven questions we want answers to most urgently—most of which are serious inquiries, and one of which will haunt me for the rest of my days.

A scene of the timer countdown in episode 103 of 3 Body Problem.

At the beginning of the Netflix show, scientists are winding up dead. Before they die, they’re confronted with a countdown clock—something that only they, and no one else around them, can see. We know that the way to stop the countdown, as Auggie Salazar (Eiza González) discovers, is to stop scientific pursuits. It’s understood that the countdown is ultimately meaningless, merely a........

© The Daily Beast