i'm going on an adventure

Finding the Sword: The Hidden Story Inside 'Within the Wires'

Introduction

Within the Wires is an audio drama podcast which was released between June 2016 and December 2025 over eleven seasons (including one Patreon-exclusive bonus season) and a novel. The subject of this essay primarily concerns Seasons 1-4 of the series, although some outside reference will be made to show evidence of consistent throughlines, themes, and lore.

The story is set in an alternate 20th (and later early 21st) century in which the entire world has recently gone through a cataclysm known as the Great Reckoning, a combination of war, environmental disaster, pandemic, and societal collapse. In the wake of the destruction, an authoritarian regime known as the New Society has established peace by abolishing “tribalism” on a micro and macro scale. There are no more nations, and no more family units. Instead, the world’s children are raised collectively by the state, have their memories erased at age ten, and are forbidden from contacting their biological families or engaging in any other form of tribalism. This setting is established in vague terms in Season 1, which concerns Hester attempting to help her childhood sweetheart Oleta escape the Institute, a secret medical prison which threatens to lobotomise her for having contacted her older sister. The world is rendered in more detail over Seasons 2 and 3 which concern a missing artist and an intrigue-embroiled bureaucrat, respectively. After hints in previous seasons, Season 4 introduces the audience to the Cradle, an anti-Society movement centred around maintaining family units. The series is written in an anthology style, with each season intended to be comprehensible as an independent piece of art, taking place in different locations, different times, and with different characters.

Despite this, there are tangible connections between these seasons aside from merely sharing the same world, most obviously across seasons 1-3, sharing some characters and referring to each others’ events. The analysis in this essay is intended to draw out these connections further so that they can be observed in more detail. Much of the interpretation of the answers to the series’ mysteries here are based on assumption and speculation. This is not intended to be a single definitive reading of the text, nor mutually exclusive with any other reading. The “Three Sisters Theory” as it has come to be known has become a staple of fan discussion and speculation since its inception in 2017 and evolution since, but it is not universally agreed upon.

This essay is not interested in proving the intent of the authors, Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson. I will be using close reading techniques to construct an interpretation of Within the Wires Seasons 1-4 which is coherent and compelling. This does not require confirmation by the creators of the text, though of course, they are welcome to weigh in however they like.

Inside Within the Wires itself, there is a philosophy of art criticism presented to the audience early in Season 2. Of “Still Life with Tomato Plant and Sword”, the narrator says

she certainly expects viewers to understand that if the title says there is a sword in the painting, then there is a sword in the painting, and it is your job to find it. (S2E2)

This relationship between artist and audience is inherently interactive. The artist presents a complete piece, and the audience must bring to it all of their power of analysis and interpretation. There may not be a definitive correct answer that can be arrived at as to “where the sword is”; the show certainly does not ever reveal one. The purpose of the art is to stimulate a conversation and create meaning within the piece for oneself through the interaction. With this in mind, let’s begin.

Part 1 – The Three Sisters

Season 2: Museum Audio Tours is narrated by Roimata Mangakāhia, in a series of museum guides across the world, mostly concerning famous contemporary artist Claudia Atieno. Atieno goes missing early into the ten-cassette series, and Mangakāhia is left to interpret her work and speculate what happened to her. It is a story about love, grief, and legacy. Atieno’s work is hinted to be subversive and critical of the New Society, although the specifics of this are rarely clear. What does become clear during the course of the season is that Atieno had a plagiarism problem, and she got away with it because of her fame and talent relative to those she plagiarised.

In the seventh episode, Roimata describes two paintings. One, by Vanessa Nguyen, is named “Women Alone”. The other, by Claudia Atieno, is named “The Three Sisters”. The paintings are nearly identical. Each depicts a group of three dark-haired women who resemble each other around a pool of water. In the reflection of the women, they each look markedly different, and all very distinct from one another. The painting’s concept, originally by Nguyen, was copied by Atieno and passed off as her own original work. When having the work-in-progress described to her by Nguyen, Atieno stated that she did not like the title, evidently preferring to position the three figures as sisters rather than lone women.

This brings us to our first question to answer and sword to find: What prompted this change? Mangakāhia and the audience can only speculate. She indicates that the common interpretation of the title is that the piece depicts the “three sisters” (also called the “three witches”, “weird sisters”, and “wayward sisters”) from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, which features three witches who prophetise the downfall of the eponymous Macbeth. In Macbeth, the women are called “sisters” in the sense that they share a coven as witches, or possibly in that they represent the Three Fates of Greco-Roman and Norse mythology. Perhaps Atieno is simply a fan of the classics and wished to link the work directly to famous pieces of European theatrical and mythological canon.

However, Mangakāhia states of Atieno that

Atieno's replicas were more reappropriations of classic images. In her way, Atieno was rejecting a return to the past and embracing the Society – albeit the Society she wanted, not the Society that was. (S2E8)

It is reasonable, then, to imagine that by framing the painting in this way, Atieno wished to say something about her desires for the New Society. Assuming that there is some intention to reference the Shakespeare play, it is possible that the three sisters are shown here outliving Macbeth’s kingdom – surviving the dissolution of nations by the New Society. These three sisters are depicted as still being together, though changed and no longer as similar to each other as they once were. Therefore, Atieno might be referencing a desire to reunite with her sisters, in spite of the Society’s laws forbidding it.

In the first episode of Season 2, it is established that Claudia grew up with her mother and two sisters in a house with a yellow door. (S2E1) Later on, an episode references one of Claudia’s sisters, and Roimata’s suspicion that Claudia attempted to keep in contact with her, including illicitly visiting her school. (S2E6) The exhibit concerning Claudia’s childhood provides the strongest evidence Aimée Layeni was one of Claudia’s sisters. Describing one of many sketches in the “programming centre” Claudia was sent to following separation from her parents, Roimata says:

And what of the two girls running together, holding hands, speaking in covert breathlessness in the garden. One of the girls has similar hair to Claudia, but is larger in build. Who were these two girls? Friends? Perhaps girls Claudia wanted to be friends with? A jealousy? (S2E5)

It is reasonable to assume that the girl described here who looks similar to Claudia is Aimée Layeni, as she is described in the same way later in the same episode.

This portrait is strikingly similar to the self-portrait by Aimée Layeni which currently hangs in the LA County Museum in Los Angeles, North America. Layeni was of a larger build, with a rounder face, and no glasses. But her hair was similar to Atieno’s. (S2E5)

Additionally, this kind of description in Within the Wires already has precedent for describing sisters. Oleta is described as having a “dark cloud” of hair and “shoulders, linen clad and slight” while Nell has a “dark cloud” of hair and “shoulders, bare and strong." (S1E2)

While Claudia was separated from her parents at age thirteen, (S2E5) siblings were kept together in the system. This is explained in You Feel It Just Below the Ribs as being due to it having a proven developmental benefit during early life. (YFIJBTR p.270) Siblings would be forbidden from contacting each other after the age of ten starting in 1961, (YFIJBTR p.282) which means it would not have affected Claudia and her siblings, entering the system after age ten in the 1940s. Claudia once commented to Roimata that she missed Aimée, although she "couldn't say" when she had last seen her. (S2E5) This phrasing could imply forgetfulness on Claudia’s part, but could also convey that she did not feel she was allowed to mention her relationship to Aimée, consistent with the idea that they are siblings. Aimée being Claudia’s sister would also add context to why Aimée was such an avid collector of Claudia’s work. (S2E0)

The description of Atieno’s childhood sketch is a direct parallel to the relationship between Oleta, Nell, and Hester in Season 1. ‘Cassette #8: Awareness, Eyes’ consists of two distinct halves, the first of which relates how Oleta reunited with her unwitting sister, Nell. The second half relates eerily similar events, but starring Hester, Oleta’s childhood sweetheart, reuniting with an unwitting Oleta. In another episode, Hester describes watching Oleta at dinner with Nell, on what she presumes to be a date. She confesses to feeling jealousy, not realising that the two are sisters and that Nell is not a rival for Hester’s romantic and sexual affections towards Oleta. (S1E5) Atieno’s drawing in ‘Cassette #5: Van Gogh Museum (1977)’ mirrors this dynamic; Claudia stands at a remove while a girl who looks very much like her, but slightly different, is affectionate with another girl. In this case, it is a girl jealous due to her sister’s romantic relationship, rather than a woman jealous due to her romantic interest’s sororal relationship.

Within the Wires Season 1 in particular, but also the series as a whole to a lesser extent, has an air of not only mystery but puzzle throughout. In Season 1, the principal characters are not named until over halfway through the season, and their relationships to each other are obscured by deliberately cryptic passages and euphemisms. While more straightforward about the world, Seasons 2 and 3 maintain an element of mystery in the characters’ personal lives. This comes in the form of the narrators’ limited, biased, and unreliable narration, as well as prompting speculation about who may connect in some way to figures from previous seasons. In Season 3, it is explicitly confirmed that Vivienne is the mother of Oleta and Nell, (S3E9) though not before she, like her daughters, is described as having a “cloud of dark hair and big round cheeks, broad shoulders.” (S3E4) Many characters throughout the series go entirely without physical descriptions, so the repeated attention drawn to the appearance of Oleta, Nell, and Vivienne stands out and links them firmly together.

Seasons 2 and 4 do not have any explicit connections to the same family, but there are some implicit swords that the dedicated listener can attempt to find, as the next section will explore.

Part 2 – Self-Portrait with Cat

Although allusion is made to Claudia having two sisters, Aimée is the only candidate near-explicitly proposed as an identity for one of them. It seemed Claudia was not in contact with her other sister.

Atieno has two paintings named “Self-Portrait with Cat” despite claiming that she had never owned a cat – in the finale of Season 2, Roimata was quoted as saying, “She denied ever painting that picture” (S2E10). The first painting is not described in detail, although the second contains some description which implies it differs from the original. Its essence is that the portrait shows Claudia is sitting down, holding a calico cat in her lap. Her expression of fondness makes Roimata doubt that Claudia did not own the cat in question, although she later came to believe that she hated cats.

The second painting was started ten years after the original, in about 1972, and both the cat and the human subject of the painting look older, the sky having shifted to sunset. This one was painted to depict the patio at the Cornwall house, (S2E2) which Claudia had likely not lived in before 1970 as Roimata mentions that during her first visit, Claudia and her friends had been there "months". (S2E1)

Vivienne had a calico cat named Constance that she thought of as her child. Her adoption of Connie coincides with her joining the government’s Repopulation Programme, which she is joining voluntarily with the knowledge she will not be allowed to raise her children. (S3E2) Her husband Michael explicitly refers to Vivi as Connie’s “Mom” in 1961 when describing the new commissioned painting in his office – a rendering of Vivienne sitting down with a calico cat in her lap. (S3E10) It is strongly implied that the artist who Bernice Jones hired to produce the piece in 1961 was Claudia Atieno – aside from the similarity of the descriptions of the painting, and the date, Vivienne and Bernice initially became friends due to a shared love of Atieno’s work, though she was not yet internationally famous at the time. This led Michael to suggest commissioning Atieno for an unrelated project, saying that he could get in touch with her through Archie MacPherson, (S3E2) a friend of Claudia’s and President of the Bank of Western Europe. (S2E4)

The obvious question is how a commissioned portrait of Vivienne Torrance could later be misinterpreted as a self-portrait by Claudia Atieno. Unlike Oleta and Nell, Claudia is not described with a cloud of dark hair. Instead, she has “dark braids”, and in her self-portrait inspired by Aimée Layeni’s, she “rendered her brown skin in reds and blues, and [gave] her green irises a sheen of yellow.” (S2E5) Vivienne’s eye colour is not mentioned, but her “cloud of dark hair” is commonly interpreted as an afro. Though Claudia is consistently described with braids, she produced very little self-portraiture after her adolescence (S2E5) and did not like to be painted by others (S2E1). This being the case, there would be little-to-no contemporary Atieno self-portraiture to compare the painting to. Roimata did not know her until 1970, and the painting was already known as “Self-Portrait with Cat” by then; she would have little reason to question this, especially since Claudia never explicitly denied it was a self-portrait. An identical face to Vivienne Torrance could easily be enough to identify the subject of the painting as Claudia.

I propose that what becomes known as “Self-Portrait with Cat” is actually a portrait of Atieno’s identical – or near-identical – sister. Because Claudia and Vivienne associating with each other as sisters was at least frowned on, if not outright illegal under New Society law, it would be safer for Claudia to label the painting as a self-portrait, or simply allow galleries to make the incorrect assumption about it. This might also explain why Claudia was tight-lipped about the original painting and the statements she did make about it are so strange; the notion that she has never owned a cat, nor has she ever painted a self-portrait with one, would be technically true.

Within the Wires loves to create motifs by repetition. We have already seen this in the case of Claudia’s jealousy towards Aimée and her romantic interest mirroring Hester’s jealousy towards Oleta and Nell. It is also more easily observable in examples such as the repeated “cloud of dark hair”, the men in suits smoking cigarettes and walking “unpleasant dogs”, and the emblematic damselfly fable which is extant in every season. This trend itself is referential to the damselfly’s eyes, in “you see the same thing iterated many times.” (S1E1)

Because of this technique and the parallels already drawn between Claudia, Vivienne, and Aimée with Oleta and Nell, there seems to be a conspicuously incomplete pattern; Oleta and Nell are missing a third sister. It is stated that Vivienne had no further children after Oleta due to health complications from the pregnancy. (S3E10) Aimée died in 1968, and very little is ever revealed about her life, including whether or not she had a child. Similarly, Claudia being childless or not is never definitively answered, however if Claudia and Vivienne are identical twins, their children would, despite being relationally cousins, be genetically siblings.

Claudia’s disappearance in Season 2 already has thematic ties to pregnancy and childhood. In the episode immediately following her disappearance, Roimata becomes defensive against the inclusion of the painting “Fingers. Together. (1967)” which shows Atieno’s hand entwined with fellow artist and lover Pavel Zubov’s.

Some writers have suggested that it is a symbol of the child they lost only two months before birth. At best, that is a weak symbolic gesture for the immense tragedy of a miscarried child. At worst, it is a lie conceived by hack writers trying to sell papers, as Atieno never carried Zubov's child. (S2E2)

Roimata’s jealousy is obvious here. It is impossible for the audience to be sure whether her conviction is unfounded or if she is speaking from a place of real authority and knowledge. She is adamant that Atieno never carried Zubov’s child, but does not specify if she ever carried others’. Either way, though, this immediately brings the question to the forefront: Could Claudia’s disappearance be related to pregnancy in some way? Could this be foreshadowing for a later reveal?

In the same episode, there is a section of the official transcript which is missing from the audio file of the episode itself. This is likely due to an error during recording or decision during editing which was not edited in the transcript before release. While this missing section cannot be considered wholly canon, I mention it here because of its acute relevance. Below I have included the section, with square brackets indicating where the missing section begins.

On her lap, the calico cat [named Matryoshka. Matryoshka was a haggard stray who turned up on the island one day. None of us could understand how she could have got there – she could hardly have swum all the way from the shore, and Atieno’s motorboat was too small to have hidden her. We never solved that particular mystery. She was named Matryoshka, because when Zubov first found her, the cat was pregnant]. (S2E2 transcript)

In this passage, Claudia, Roimata, and Pavel debate the origins of the pregnant cat who finds herself on the island and are unable to agree who is responsible for bringing her. What happens to Matryoshka, or her kittens, is never explained in the transcripts or elsewhere. Because Vivienne’s relationship to her cat Constance is explicitly used as a stand-in for her relationship to her daughters, whom she is not allowed to care for or know, it is possible that Atieno’s relationship to Matryoshka is meant to represent something similar. Unlike Vivienne, Claudia is disdainful towards cats, and apparently resistant to taking responsibility for it.

In this episode, and persistently for the following episodes, Roimata insists that Claudia is not missing and will be coming back, although she provides no specific insights as to where she might be. She has some trouble getting her story straight, recounting various inconsistent details pertaining to Claudia’s disappearance. Initially, she was stated to have been last seen in Cornwall in October 1972 (S2E2). However, after her body is found, the date of her disappearance is stated as March 1972, before Roimata corrects herself, suddenly sure that she disappeared in the autumn. (S2E6) As the rewriting of memory is a well-established component of the show’s premise, specifically when relating to children, parents, and pregnancy, it is possible that this mistake is owed to a deliberate tampering, for example if Roimata was admitted to the Institute in order to erase her knowledge of Claudia’s pregnancy. A seven-month discrepancy, allowing for Claudia to discover she was pregnant in the first place, would make October a reasonable time to pursue maternity care away from Cornwall.

Roimata’s admission to the Institute is never confirmed explicitly. However, there is some compelling evidence to suggest that she had first-hand experience of it. Roimata was initially apparently sceptical of Claudia’s conspiracy theories, such as when Claudia insisted the smoking men observing them “were dangerous and covert operatives” and Roimata dismissed them as “well dressed men with a bad habit and an unpleasant dog.” (S2E8) In 1975, she mentions Claudia sharing conspiracy theories about the Institute with Archie MacPherson, but Roimata does not lend this any particular credence. (S2E4) However, by 1980, she has not only become certain of the Institute’s existence, but seems to imply intimate knowledge of it.

The girl's attendant had to report the girl to retraining at The Institute – a place dedicating to ensuring that society’s new precepts aren’t disrupted. Not much is known about The Institute, and what is rumoured about them goes unproven, but… there is reason to be suspicious. There is reason to be more than suspicious. I'm positive that the scars of seeing human remains were less impactful than the scars of whatever… recalibrating they're putting her through now. (S2E8)

It could be that between 1975 and 1980, knowledge of the Institute became public and Roimata is merely reporting her suspicions based on official reports. However, no other individual or organisation in the series’ run corroborates this. In the early-to-mid 80s, a cargo pilot claims he had heard rumours of a secret institution in the Chesapeake Bay but has no proof. (BBE3) In You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, the final section of the book concerns Miriam attempting to collect evidence of the Institute’s illegal activities and leak it to the public, but she is never successful as of the 1990s. (YFIJBTR p.365-6) The Yuriatin Press, who provide annotations for Miriam’s “manuscript” state that

we have not been able to confirm the existence, let alone the practices, of the institute Dr. Gregory describes. We did manage to track down one or two personal accounts by people who claimed to have spent time there, but they were far from credible and gave few details. (YFIJBTR p.3-4)

This statement could easily apply to what Roimata says about the Institute. In connection to the Institute, the Yuriatin Press also makes mention of an alleged holding facility in Providence, Rhode Island (YFIJBTR p.3-4) which is a location mentioned in one other instance. In an exhibit of Roimata’s work, Hester includes a painting of uncertain date depicting Providence, although she can find no record of Roimata ever travelling to that city through official means.

I have spent some time in North America, but I have never been to Providence.  I have been within a few hundred miles of it, I suppose. I lived for a while, within a few hundred miles of this shipyard.  My work in the former United States was neither safe, nor enjoyable, but I am happy I did it. (S2E10)

The work that Hester alludes to here is her time at the Institute. Given the relative distance of Providence from the Chesapeake Bay, this allusion seems very pointed, as if the Institute has some kind of connection to Providence that may explain Roimata’s otherwise unrecorded visit there. If Providence contains a facility connected to the Institute, combined with her faulty memory throughout the season this is a strong indication that Roimata may have spent some time at the Institute. The relevance of this to Claudia’s potential pregnancy is quite straightforward: People are not sent to the Institute for simply grieving their romantic partners and friends. It was explicitly designed to study and eliminate lingering attachments to family members such as with siblings, parents, and children and prevent breaches of the Age Ten Laws. (YFIJBTR p.255, p.267) Therefore to get detained in the Institute, Roimata would most likely need family to break the Laws for.

There is a third cat painting: “Claudia Atieno with Cat, 1974” by Roimata Mangakāhia. The artist was quoted as saying, “She denied ever painting that picture, so I just painted it myself. If she didn't want to put it into existence, then I would put it into existence.” It is more abstract than Atieno’s versions, showing Atieno’s fully rendered head, hair and face atop a “shapeless” body and the eponymous cat which “looks more like a pile of candles melting down Atieno's spiraling legs.” (S2E10) Aside from linking this to Vivienne’s copy of the painting, in which Connie “melts into Vivi's lap, like a candle” (S3E10), this description implies that the cat is entirely unrecognisable as one without the title. As an artistic convention, this does make the cat into a kind of sword to find as in “Tomato Plant and Sword”, made easier by placing the painting in context with its predecessors. Hester’s brief description of this painting cannot provide a full understanding of its composition. However, the word “shapeless” has connotations to fashion in a derogatory sense, eg. “a shapeless sweater” (Oxford Dictionary). Used in this way, it generally means that the clothes obscure the shape of the body. A shapeless blouse could easily be a description of loose-fitting maternity wear.

Meanwhile the description of the cat as a melting pile of candles evokes not a living being feeling safe in her “Mom”’s lap, but an inanimate and decaying object. The imagery of the candle wax dripping down Atieno’s legs is reminiscent of blood in a birth or miscarriage. In her 1978 interview with Hester, Mangakāhia’s final quoted words on this painting are, “She hated cats, and I hated her for it.” (S2E10) What Roimata seems to imply here is that she wanted to have a cat with Claudia, but Claudia did not reciprocate. This aligns with statements she makes about cats in episodes 1 and 2. Understanding the cat to represent a child, this would translate to Claudia pursuing an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy, and Roimata feeling resentment over this. It is also worth noting that these quotes were dated to 1978, one year before the first evidence of Claudia’s death was discovered. Perhaps, still believing Claudia to be alive and simply staying out of the public eye, Roimata had come to the conclusion that Claudia decided to go ahead and terminate her pregnancy, and was avoiding Roimata out of a desire not to face her.

After Claudia’s initial remains were found in 1979, Roimata produced another painting however, named “The Bodies”. In this painting, a figure represented by “white [eyes] in a cacophonous cloud of reds and browns” is shielding or hiding a smaller, limp figure “as if carrying a small child.” (S2E10) While not the exact phrasing of the “cloud of dark hair”, there is a clear symbolic link between the “cloud” and mother-daughter relationships, since that is how Vivienne is linked to Oleta and Nell. Hester’s descriptive commentary gives no particular insight into why she believes Roimata painted it. However, the date being 1979 could explain the title – “The Bodies”. This phrasing creates a connotation with death, as in the body of a deceased person, especially at a crime scene. The larger figure attempting to hide the child in their arms could represent how Roimata believes Claudia might have died: protecting her daughter from the authorities and keeping her from being taken away. This is a very different representation to Claudia and the cat in the previous painting.

Alternately, the larger figure could represent Roimata herself, as unlike Claudia she had “dark hair, coiled on [her] head” which could be described as cloud-like. Also unlike Claudia, Roimata was fond of cats, venturing that she believed Claudia would like having one too (S2E1) – though this turned out to be incorrect. (S2E10) Although Roimata never explicitly states that she would like to have a child, she does exhibit a yearning for family – being roughly a decade Claudia’s junior, she would not have been allowed to retain any memories of her own family. In describing a painting depicting families marching in Paris – possibly one of the “protests that flooded the streets” objecting to the Family Dissolution Act in former-France, mentioned by Freya (S4E2) – Roimata says

Claudia was not made to forget her parents, and her siblings, as those of us born a few years later than her were. She had to leave them, and relearn what they had taught her. She had to divest herself of her family loyalty and become part of a bigger world. But it turns out loyalty can linger in ways we don’t expect. I like this painting. This is a painting I like. (S2E3)

She also spent a significant amount of time contemplating families in her spare time.

Sometimes I would take the boat and head back to the mainland. Go for walks in the rubble of nearby neighborhoods, searching for old photographs of families, just to see what families used to look like, wondering if my family were still alive and what it must have been like back in the time of fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters. (S2E6)

The people standing outside the house [Atieno’s childhood home] are ordinary people, but they look like people who would care about how you are, and offer you a place to stay if you needed one. Do you need a place to stay? What does caring look like? (S2E9)

If Roimata, as a cat lover, wanted to have children and perhaps even considered Claudia’s child to be hers as well, “Claudia Atieno with Cat, 1974” and “The Bodies, 1979” could be her way of coming to terms with the loss in two radically different circumstances, based on the limited information she has.

There is one final cat to mention. It is the cat which Hester finds in Roimata’s empty home in 1985, after her death. The cat is only mentioned in two sentences, but those two sentences are the last two of the entire Season, conferring some symbolic or narrative weight. “I found only a cat. I tried to feed it, but it drew blood and ran away.” (S2E10) This cat is not otherwise described, and it is not even specified if it bit or scratched Hester, to draw blood. The only facts that the audience has about this cat are that it is distrustful of Hester, and it is apparently stray or feral. It is hard to say what this could represent, as it is not even known whether this cat was Roimata’s, or simply a stray/feral that Hester found on the property. However, Roimata never mentions having her own cat, and does not have any extant drawings of cats other than the dubious inclusion of the one from “Claudia Atieno with Cat”. Assuming from this that the cat only arrived after her death, her too-late presence could be representative of Roimata's missed chance to have a relationship with a child (in contrast to Connie representing Vivienne’s desire for motherhood and Matryoshka representing Claudia’s aversion to parental responsibility).

Roimata shares a surprising amount of detail about the condition that Claudia’s body was found in, but there is no mention made that there was evidence of a pregnancy in her remains. (S2E8) Claudia’s baby, then, is the final sword we must find.

Part 3 – The Cradle

When Roimata originally describes the last time she saw Claudia, she said Pavel arrived at the house, and they nodded at each other before she left, which is unusual since they disliked each other and he had previously been excluded from the house. (S2E2) When she recounts the incident again, right before correcting the date of disappearance from March to October, she does express confusion about Pavel’s presence. (S2E6) This may indicate that with the context of Claudia’s pregnancy (ie. without the knowledge having been erased), his arrival makes more sense.

One reason for his arrival at the Cornwall house directly before Claudia “disappears” could be that he was the person who connected her to an organisation that would help her deliver her child without the New Society’s intervention or knowledge. He was mentioned by Roimata to be someone who spoke about “the new new revolution” (S2E8) which it can be reasonably assumed was a movement – or at least the suggestion of a movement – which resisted the New Society’s policies. The Cradle is the most prominent and widespread known anti-Society movement, which pertains to raising children outside of government control. If Pavel is connected to any genuine resistance movement, it would stand to reason that he could facilitate an arrangement between Claudia and the Cradle wherein she could give birth to her child outside of a New Society Pregnancy Centre.

Roimata’s insistence that Claudia would be coming back speaks to an expectation that Claudia would not entirely join the Cradle and leave her old life behind. When attempting to rationalise why she had not returned in 1973, Roimata said she hoped “she is back home near Dodoma or in a commune in Halifax or perhaps in another cottage by the sea” (S2E2). This is significant because Halifax is the known site of a Cradle. (S4E4)

Halifax is not the only possible location for Claudia’s Cradle contact to be, however. The “original” Cradle was started in 1940s Europe by (among others) Brigette and Louis, a couple who had just had a “miracle” baby in France. The commune was established in Sundsvall, former-Sweden, but after a lethal raid by government agents in 1954, was scattered. Brigette and Freya reformed the group in the French countryside. (S4E2)

Before Claudia’s disappearance, Roimata took a trip which was originally stated to be to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, to give a lecture. However in 1978, she momentarily thought she had been going to Paris, “to visit friends.” (S2E6) If Claudia was in former-France to give birth, Roimata may have gone to Paris to rendezvous afterwards, only for Claudia not to show. This would naturally lead Roimata to the hope that she had simply decided to stay with the commune or otherwise gone travelling, rather than that something bad had happened to her.

The trail goes cold here as far as Roimata is concerned. Season 4: The Cradle does not include a wayward Claudia Atieno from whom we might pick up the trail, either. There are, however, certain interesting details which are worth examining here. Firstly, Freya’s status as a “miracle” baby. Prior to Freya’s birth, Brigette had been informed by her doctor that she was infertile, and so her pregnancy was a happy surprise, and she and her husband wished to protect their relationship to their daughter. By the time Freya recounts this to her own daughter, it has become veritable Cradle legend. (S4E2) As mentioned, the pressure that Freya exerts on Sigrid throughout the season is a major theme, culminating in her demand that Sigrid sacrifice herself to the cause.

They respect you because you are my daughter, and I am Brigette’s daughter. You are part of the lineage of The Cradle’s creation. You are a scion, Sigrid, royalty, matriarchy, and our families will look to you in my absence. (S4E1)

By the time the events of Season 4 take place, Brigette has been dead for some time, but it is clear that her leadership and mothering had a profound impact on Freya. From how she impresses on Sigrid the importance of their “royal” lineage, it is easy to infer that Brigette did the same with her – effectively pressuring her heir to produce an heir of her own, to ensure the family line. If Brigette had fertility problems, though, it is likely that Freya would as well. If she failed to create the same mythologised miracle baby that her mother did, Freya might have been pushed to extreme lengths to secure an heir. Deceiving her family by passing off an adopted child as her own is a strong possibility in this circumstance. Despite frequent bioessentialist proclamations such as, “Praise to the mother, for she creates life. Praise to the father, for he supports life” (S4E6), Freya never provides the listener with any allusion to Sigrid’s paternal family, nor does she talk about her experience with pregnancy or childbirth. The closest thing is a pair of anecdotes from Sigrid’s early childhood, about feeding her sweets and coming back from a trip away.

I went away once for a while, when you were two or three, and when I got back the rest of the family were full of stories about how you wept for your mama. “She thought you had stopped existing,” they laughed, “she thought you were vanished forever.” (S4E2)

For a commune so focused on the joy of childbirth and child-rearing, Freya is surprisingly reticent to share her own stories. This supports the idea that Freya did not go through the experiences she claims to venerate. In the final episode of Season 4, Sigrid is described as having a “round face and [a] cloud of dark hair” (S4E10), and earlier in the season, she was described as having “hazel eyes” (S4E2). Notably, Freya does not point out a resemblance between Sigrid’s features and her own or her family’s. Sigrid is the only character in the series besides Vivienne, Nell, and Oleta to be described with the “cloud of dark hair”. Some other variants exist, such as “curly black hair” (S6E5) and a “cascade of black hair” (S7E1). In my view, this phrasing is different enough to be dismissed for our purposes. It is an example of classic Within the Wires reiteration, but not an indication of a tangible connection as the “cloud of dark hair” has been up to this point. Similarly, while hazel eyes can comprise a large range of colours, “hazel” is most commonly used to refer to green-brown eyes, which might mean that Sigrid shares an eye colour with Claudia Atieno, whose eyes were notably described as “green” in a self-portrait. (S2E5)

Sigrid, being apparently nineteen in spring 1993, would have been born in roughly 1973-74. That is just outside the window that I have argued Claudia Atieno would have had her baby – however, Freya would have needed to cover the period of her own supposed “pregnancy” to make it believable that she came back with a baby, so the date may have been fudged by her.

What I am suggesting happened here is that in 1972, Pavel Zubov put Claudia in touch with the Cradle – Freya specifically – in order to facilitate an outside-Society birth. Claudia travelled to former-France and gave birth to her baby in secret. She likely planned to stay long enough to receive postpartum care, at which point Freya would take the child back to the Cradle and claim to have given birth to Sigrid herself. The plan was then for Claudia to return to the Society and her life in the public eye, but that obviously did not happen. She is not in the Hedmark Cradle with Sigrid and Freya. Because Freya’s lineage in the Cradle was at stake, if Claudia wished to continue checking in on her daughter, or changed her mind about giving her to Freya entirely, Freya would take extreme measures to get Claudia out of the way. All she would have to do in this circumstance would be to call the authorities to arrest Claudia for purposefully giving birth outside of the New Society.

Claudia’s body was eventually identified in 1980 having washed up on the coast of Cornwall. When Roimata says, “She’s been dead all this time,” (S2E8) she is implying that she believes Claudia never left Cornwall after Roimata left for Amsterdam in 1972; that there was no period of time between her disappearance and her death. It is not possible to prove this one way or the other – it is equally possible that Claudia left Cornwall for a number of years before returning and dying. For the first time, Roimata recounts in S2E9 her final memory of Claudia, but there is something disconnected and uncanny about it.

That moment is frozen now – perhaps it always has been. I see it from outside my own body. I watch my face, trying to see there what I was thinking. Trying to see myself make that decision. Or fail to make that decision. I can’t see it. My face is blank, impassive. Pleasant. I watch myself in the moment where I didn’t tell Claudia Atieno not to cliff dive. The moment where I didn’t tell her the tide was out, and the water had given way to sharp rocks. (S2E9)

This memory might be real. It could be that Roimata is simply failing to recall how she was thinking or feeling in that moment, and she has revisited the memory so many times that it has become inscrutable and infused with a sense of guilt. However, this could also be another instance of memory tampering. It is awfully convenient after all this time for there to be this neat, tragic end to Claudia Atieno, due to a simple miscalculation of the timings of the tides. However, this memory hinges on one very important detail: “She did not understand the tides.” (S2E9) The idea that Claudia Atieno, who lived on a tiny island in the English Channel only accessible by private motorboat, did not understand the tides is far-fetched. She would have needed to be aware of the tides to get to and from the island. Although Roimata did observe that Claudia was unwilling to dive from the cliffs into the sea, she did note, “She swam regularly, when she could walk down to the shore.” (S2E2) Roimata’s failure to warn Claudia of the tide coming in, if this conversation happened at all, was likely not the cause of Claudia’s death.

Nevertheless, she did die. If she had the authorities called on her by Freya, it is likely she would be imprisoned, possibly admitted to the Institute to have her memory reprogrammed. The operation of the Institute is largely opaque as it appears in Season 1, though the process is clarified somewhat in You Feel It Just Below the Ribs. In the early 1970s, a patient admitted to the Institute would be put through a kind of hypnotic therapy designed to reorder, change, and hide their memories as appropriate. Only if the patient repeatedly resisted treatment would they be subjected to the invasive procedures of the Extensive Studies Lab which Hester implies would leave Oleta lobotomised or dead.

What happened to Claudia after this point is even more speculatory than everything which we have already discussed. It is possible that she resisted treatment, died during the course of examination, and her body was staged to appear to have died from impacting the cliffs around Cornwall. It is possible that she completed the regimen, partially or totally losing her memories of her pregnancy, but due to mental health complications, took her own life afterwards. One theory is that she could have completed the regimen, partially recovered her memories of the pregnancy, and subsequently perished in an altercation with Freya over the custody of Sigrid – this could be during the trip that Freya took away from the Cradle when Sigrid was a toddler.

In the background of two paintings in Season 2, a mysterious “figure” is visible. The first is “Self-Portrait with Cat, unfinished (1972)”, and is described as a “rough blotch” standing on the cliff in the background of the painting. Although some critics had referred to this as a tree, Roimata was sure there was no tree in that spot. Of this figure, Roimata states "It is a human, or at least a man. I do not know who the man is or what he wants or intends." (S2E2) This strange turn of phrase is not very illuminating, perhaps indicating some amount of paranoia on Roimata’s part and the implicit exclusion of herself as a candidate for the figure – despite the fact it is standing in her favourite diving spot. The figure reappears in another unfinished Atieno piece exhibited in 1981, apparently also from 1972. Though she identifies it as her own favourite spot, Mangakāhia states that it is standing in the place where she last saw Claudia before she disappeared. (S2E9) The figure also appears in the background of Mangakāhia’s own 1970 self-portrait, sandwiched between “Women Alone” and “The Three Sisters” and she describes it as “waiting to jump” although no further explanation is provided. (S2E7) Hester suggests that the figure in Mangakāhia’s self-portrait is Atieno, who was always hesitant to cliff dive despite Roimata’s urging. (S2E10)

When Mangakahia said, “I always wanted to jump, to plunge,” she meant this both literally and figuratively, wishing Atieno would “risk pain or embarrassment” and, as it were, make a splash with her art. (S2E2) In the memory she recounts in 1981 of her last memory of Claudia, attached to the unfinished sketch of the cliff – the same one in which she intimates that Claudia did not understand the tides – Roimata claims that Claudia said, “I’m going to take the plunge.” In the present, with the context of Claudia’s body having been found, she interprets this literally, but as established, this memory and its recall is suspect. (S2E9) Roimata feels guilt towards this memory, and attributes it to her failure to warn Claudia of the tides, however it could take on an entirely different meaning if Claudia in fact meant her statement figuratively. If Claudia had determined that she was going to try something genuinely dangerous, for example defying the laws of the New Society to give birth to and raise a child outside the system, and it resulted in her death, Roimata would also feel understandable guilt about encouraging Claudia to take political risks.

Looking forward to Season 4, the mysterious figures make a return, though this time not standing on cliffs’ edges. Instead, they are dark lumbering shapes in the woods of Hedmark and Sandpoint. Not merely a shared fear of the unknown, Freya suggests that these apparitions are psychological manifestations of guilt. Specifically in the case of Rosie Morales, Freya describes this as guilt and fear which the mother-of-two feels about abandoning her husband, although it preserved her custody of their daughters.

I have told you before of this shadow in the woods. I do not believe it to be a real being. I believe it to be our own consciences haunting us. Who have we left behind? Who have we betrayed? Who have we not helped? Who have we not welcomed? (S4E2)

These questions are posed to Sigrid by Freya early in her globe-spanning pilgrimage. This is before Freya begins work on her manifesto, “The Hand”, or any collaboration with the New Society government. Because the story is focused on Rosie, Freya does not offer any examples of guilt and betrayal from her own life, though she does use the collective pronoun “we” and “our” in the supposed “hauntings” by the figures. Who has Freya left behind? Who has she betrayed? Eventually, of course, she will betray Sigrid, taken in by the fantasy that sacrificing her daughter will serve the Cradle’s movement. The guilt of those actions cannot haunt her yet, so there must be someone else she feels she has let down. Rosie’s story could be an interesting parallel to Freya's own case, a pervasive sense of guilt towards the actions she took to secure custody of her daughter. In the possible events described earlier, Freya would have left behind and betrayed Claudia when she called the authorities on her. If Claudia returned to pursue her daughter, Freya clearly refused to welcome her into the Cradle. She may even be responsible for Claudia finally “taking the plunge” into the sharp rocks at the foot of the Cornwall cliffs.

No character in Within the Wires seems to ever gain a clear idea of what happened to Claudia – except perhaps Marcy Robotham, a “seasoned investigator” affiliated with the Society government who “managed to uncover the truth behind some baffling crimes, including a cold case involving an artist” (S5E1). Whatever insights Marcy had about the case, however, the audience never learns. If this line does refer to Claudia, it at least implies that her case was in the purview of the Internal Investigations Division, a government organisation that is primarily concerned with monitoring, intimidating, and interrogating dissidents, including those who breach the Age Ten Laws and Family Dissolution Acts. They would have little reason to get involved with a simple missing person or apparent suicide unless some breach of those laws was in question.

The shadowy figures, distinct from the smoking men with dogs, are almost entirely confined to the two described usages in Seasons 2 and 4. Even within Season 4, when other monsters in the woods are mentioned as a source of paranoia and malcontent within the Hedmark Cradle, they are described as creatures from traditional Norse folklore such as Seljordsormen (sea serpent). (S4E9) Given Within the Wires’ propensity for repetition, it seems pointed that these are the only two instances of these harbingers of guilt. When connecting the Cornwall cliffs to the woods of Hedmark, it becomes easier to see a possible relationship between Claudia’s death and Freya’s custody of Sigrid. Combined with what we have teased out about Claudia's likely pregnancy and Freya's likely infertility, it all starts to make sense.

Conclusion

To summarise, this essay posits that Claudia Atieno’s “The Three Sisters” is representative of her relationship to her sisters, who can be identified as Aimée Layeni and Vivienne Torrance by paying close attention to the descriptions provided of the women, and artistic depictions of them. Within the Wires’ propensity for establishing motifs by “iterating many times” suggests that there is a third “sister” in Oleta and Nell’s generation who could be Claudia’s daughter if Vivienne is her identical twin. We have seen that cats are consistently linked to themes of parenthood in both a positive and negative sense between Vivienne, Claudia, and Roimata. Hints in the narrative, including the presence of a pregnant calico cat, link Claudia’s disappearance with a pregnancy. There is additional evidence to suggest that Roimata was admitted to the Institute following Claudia’s disappearance and had her memory tampered with. Following the same descriptive patterns which linked Vivienne to her daughters, this leads to the possibility that Sigrid, heir to the Cradle, was genetically Claudia’s daughter who Freya adopted as her own. Freya, determined to secure her legacy, may have gone to extreme lengths to ensure Claudia did not try to reverse this adoption.

The interpretation of one of Within the Wires’ core mysteries I have presented here was born during the active release of Season 2. It started as a theory I devised for Claudia’s disappearance which incorporated pregnancy, the Institute, and a familial link to Oleta and Nell of Season 1. In this initial version, Claudia had given birth to Nell and Oleta prior to meeting Roimata, and I completed the pattern with a third daughter born in 1972, who would go on to be the young girl who discovered Claudia’s body.

As Season 3 was released in the following year, I began to let go of a familial connection between Oleta and Claudia as more hints were dropped that Vivienne was Oleta’s mother. However, with the finale of Season 3 and the unveiling of Vivienne and Connie’s painting, the apparently misnamed “Self-Portrait with Cat”, a familial link between all three seasons seemed more likely. From there, it was natural to analyse Season 4 in search of another connection to this central family – excluding the “Ole and Nell” mentioned in the Hedmark Cradle, who seem to be no relation to Oleta and her sister Nell. The theory was ultimately a collaborative effort between numerous members of the Within the Wires fan community, without whom this final essay would not have been possible.

After Season 4, there are no more instances of the “cloud of dark hair” and less reason to speculate about named characters being connected to the “three sisters family.” Illicit family relationships became less relevant to each season as the show went on (Season 7 being the exception). For the first four seasons, I interpreted the story as one spread across decades concerning a scattered family which was not allowed to reunite itself. Between Oleta and Nell’s fraught sisterly reunion, Roimata’s yearning for family, Vivienne’s separation from her children, and Freya’s expectations for Sigrid, family was a consistent throughline in these initial instalments. From Season 5 and beyond, that pattern does not hold, and cannot be as much of a central tenet of the series as I once suggested. However, the first four seasons do hang together coherently with this interpretation, and I hope I have shown in this essay that it is not merely an attempt to force the show to be more interconnected than the text explicitly states.