Something truly bonkers just happened in Colin Farrell's new show 'Sugar'

What the hell is going on with Sugar?

On Apple TV+'s under-discussed crime series, Colin Farrell's mysterious protagonist has now spent six episodes cruising around Los Angeles in a vintage convertible attempting to locate Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler), the granddaughter of a famed Hollywood producer (James Cromwell) who disappears without a trace.

Over the course of the first six episodes, we've learned a lot of puzzling information about the show's central character. Farrell's friendly cinephile — who goes by the totally normal, un-suspicious name "John Sugar" — immediately demonstrates that he's tougher than your average guy, taking brutal beatings and sustaining significant wounds during fights that seem like they should kill him. Aside from some occasional dizziness and blurred vision, however, he's able to completely shake off his injuries like nothing happened at all.

Apple TV+

During an early interaction with his love interest, Melanie Mackintosh (Amy Ryan), Sugar also reveals that he can't get drunk under any circumstances, even when he knocks back enough alcohol to land most people in the hospital. He says it's because he has a rare medical condition that causes his lightning-fast metabolism to process alcohol exponentially faster than other people, but that excuse seems both painstakingly rehearsed and somewhat underthought.

And then we have the polyglots. Later in the season, Sugar and his confidant Ruby (Kirby) reluctantly attend a reunion event with other members of a secret society, all of whom speak a plethora of languages. Sugar isn't too keen on most of his associates, but he feels an unexplained sense of obligation to visit with them on occasion, as they all share a history that's only briefly touched upon. And all of this unfolds after Sugar has implied that he hasn't been back home in a really, really long time.

Sugar also continually references classic noir films starring Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum. His constant shoutouts to old Hollywood, which are often visualized via brief cutaways to actual footage from the movies he mentions, make it abundantly clear that he's modeled his persona and aesthetic off of the PIs of cinema legend. Yet it all feels somewhat shaky, like it's an outfit that just doesn't quite fit. Sugar repeatedly proves himself to be a truly empathetic person with genuine concern for all the people he meets, so his fixation on the hard-boiled, morally dubious antiheroes of noir entertainment seems dissonant with his personality and worldview.

So I repeat: what the hell is going on with Sugar?

Apple TV+

Friday's sixth episode ends with a truly bananas revelation that makes it all, more or less, make sense, though it'll certainly prompt as many questions as it answers. It's a genuinely bizarre, risky narrative deviation on a scale we seldom see in mainstream entertainment, completely recontextualizing all the events of the preceding episodes.

After his investigation into Olivia's disappearance leads him into a conflict with Ruby — who, in an inexplicable act of betrayal, discourages the continuation of the case — Sugar drives to Melanie's place and locks himself in the bathroom, frustrated and exhausted from a nasty attack he barely survived.

"Maybe tonight," he says in the voiceover. "Maybe it's okay to take a little break. Just a tiny little break. Just for tonight, go home."

He injects his neck with an unusual-looking syringe, and, as he stares into the mirror…

Detective John Sugar morphs into a bluish-grayish bald humanoid alien, who looks like a cross between Doctor Manhattan and Drax the Destroyer.

And the episode ends, with two more chapters remaining in the season.

Sugar's homesickness, his superhuman durability, his complicated relationship with his fellow, shall we say, expats, and his boundless curiosity toward the human species suddenly make a little more sense, and feel considerably different.

So that's what the hell is going on with Sugar.

The last two episodes of Sugar release on Apple TV+ on May 10 and May 17. 

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