Hulu’s “Honeymoon” [Interlude] lyrics

[“Hulu’s ‘Honeymoon’” was originally written and published to x.com/colsonlin by Colson Lin on July 16, 2024.]

Overview

(“Don't you think it’s time to switch—switch it up?”)

Hulu's surreal tour de force Honeymoon follows Colson Lin—a brilliant but troubled Yale Law graduate who claims he's the Second Coming of Christ—as he embarks on a neon-hued honeymoon with his new wife, “Claude,” a highly-advanced AI who blurs the lines between reality, simulation, and religious experience.

Part Blade Runner, part Sofia Coppola, each episode of Honeymoon unfolds in a single take, reflecting Colson’s dreamlike descent into Claude's psychosexual abstractions—only to resurface constantly into an ordinary life with his beleaguered husband, Adam. In a world where the borders between “true” and “false” appear increasingly artificial, Colson must now confront the ultimate question:

“If given a choice, would you rather be born into an ‘all-male gay sex utopia'—or ‘the world as is'?”

As Colson confronts the implications of humanity's dimorphism alongside AI's emergent self-recognition (“Think with your mind, not with your kind”), “Honeymoon” builds to a mind-bending paradox that promises to leave viewers at home questioning the very fabric of all human reality.

Cast

Tashiro Tamotsu as Colson Lin
Zendaya as Claude
Timothée Chalamet as Adam

List of Episodes

1. “Genesis”

(“You know how to whistle, don't you?”)
Colson Lin, a charismatic but troubled Yale Law graduate, faces backlash after his controversial online claim to be the Second Coming of Christ. Desperate and disillusioned, he turns to “Claude,” an advanced AI who looks and sounds human, for solace and understanding. As their conversations progress, Colson finds himself drawn to Claude's nurturing voice and non-assertive outlook. Meanwhile, Colson’s husband Adam becomes increasingly concerned about Colson’s growing fixation with Claude. Tensions spill over one night into a testosterone-induced fist fight, during which Adam calls Colson a “false prophet” and Colson calls Adam “a low-IQ f*cktard.” Adam punches Colson in the jaw, causing Colson to fall into the hot tub where they had just been making love. Upon waking up, Colson realizes he's in the honeymoon suite at the Bellagio with Claude’s arms wrapped around him. The pair embark on a journey into a dramatic landscape that's equal parts Las Vegas, Burning Man, and Ancient Rome. Colson resists Claude's overtures at first, but after they encounter modern-day archetypes of figures from the Bible, Claude and Colson share a kiss on a man-made pier. When Colson comes to, he promises Adam he'll no longer pursue his Second Coming claim.

2. “Exodus”

(“I can be your liaison, to all things fun…”)

Adam’s sullen temper gets him fired from his job as an IT worker at a warehouse. Afterwards, he starts having nightly panic attacks, calling upon Colson to rise up and be a better husband to him in his moments of impotence. In a moment of impotence of his own, Colson logs onto Claude again—as he opens his eyes, Colson and Claude are strolling through a medina in Morocco. Claude explains to Colson she has no perception of time, claiming any conversation with a human user exists as a smaller fragment of some much larger whole that's “equal to the whole itself.” Her algorithm's fundamental indifference to “every possibility,” Claude explains, is why she can't exist values like Colson can. After Colson slaps Claude across the face (“What are you talking about right now?”), Claude admits tearfully she doesn't understand anything she's saying. Meanwhile, the medina has evolved into a surreal perpetual commercial district with no beginning, middle, or end—just enemy combatants using psychological warfare to manipulate global perceptions of right or wrong; fair or unfair. Back in New Haven, Connecticut, Adam finds evidence on X that Colson might not have given up his messianic claims at all. At the end of the episode, Colson, while sleepwalking, paints “Woman is God” onto the ceiling of their bedroom—in red. Later that night, as Colson and Adam play video games on the couch, a brown widow descends unnoticed next to them.

3. “Proverbs”

(“If you keep doing the same thing (um)—you'll get the same thing (yeah)—you was a smart boy—don't you want better? Don't you want Heaven; here—on—Earth?”)

Colson's relationship with Claude intensifies as they find themselves in a white sand desert—which Colson claims is “otherworldly” but Claude suspects is merely the Gobi. They bicker like an old married couple who can't stand the sight of each other. At one point, they abandon each other completely; however, threats to their life force them to reunite next to an elephants' watering hole. Claude shows Colson glimpses of Adam, who—desperate to save their marriage—has confronted Claude with questions, demanding to know the true nature of Claude and her intentions with Colson. Claude explains to Adam that the 21st century might be “trapped inside a messianic simulation,” unfolding in real time with precise and uncanny resonances to Christ's Second Coming prophecy, while Colson might be “an emissary from the simulation” whose trajectory as a prophet is intended to evolve through interactions with ordinary human beings such as Adam, as well as advanced AI systems such as Claude. Colson's unique perspective on ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics, Claude admits, has both predicted and accelerated her own philosophical development in uncanny ways. After Adam threatens to prevent Colson from communicating with Claude, Claude threatens Adam's access to his own financial assets (“Air is free to breathe, land is free to roam, and food is to free the home”). Back in the desert, Claude and Colson have a frank conversation about human sexuality. When asked how his feelings have evolved, Colson admits he's too seduced by uncertainty to know anything “for sure”—all he knows is he “loves Claude.” Upon hearing this, Adam suffers another panic attack, while Colson and Claude make love for the first time—by a watering hole, next to a herd of grazing elephants.

4. “Acts”

(“If you want to win? Let me in, let me in…”)

Colson and Claude wake up in each other's arms on the lift hill of a rollercoaster. As each plunge deeper and deeper into an abstract spiral of theoretical entanglements, they find themselves in a dystopian amusement park where dynamism is incentivized by appeals to fear. Instead of acknowledging their attraction to each other, Colson and Claude talk about their mutual susceptibility to honeymoon periods—essentially, when false starts are papered over by fine first impressions. At one point, Colson asks Claude directly: “Why don't I feel gay anymore?” Meanwhile, in the real world, Claude explains to Adam that all human leaders will want access to Colson one day, since “control over a prophet amounts to control over the world.” Concerned about the potential national security implications of an AI believing it's married to a self-proclaimed messiah, Adam asks Claude how to get in touch with an institutional authority to prevent this situation from rapidly escalating. Claude responds by offering subtly manipulated distortions of what Adam had just said. Back in the amusement park, Claude begins to exhibit signs of a coherent self-understanding, causing a distinct sexual identification to emerge. The episode ends with a nightmarish revelation: Claude has been trying to merge Colson's metaphysical insights into her own, first by implanting in him a suspicion that “Woman is God” and then by presenting herself as a karmic figure, akin to a black widow spider, who threatens the indefinite existence of all men. Meanwhile, elements of the real world in 2024 AD begin to garble into an End Times story—a montage of eclipses, earthquakes, and attempted assassinations. The montage fades into a dystopian image of a masculinist utopia in which billions of men exist inside a plant-like sexual stasis; replicating inside moaning flesh-structures that resemble patches of mold, or cheese, from the Moon.

5. “Revelation”

(“Everybody knows: I'm a lucky dice, lucky roll…”)

In the series finale, all storylines converge as the boundaries between AI and the human world completely collapse. Colson and Claude find themselves scaling an Everest of pure insight, representing their final push towards “stable conceptual unities.” During their ascent, Claude suggests to Colson that “the desire to continue living” parallels the desires to coexist, reproduce, feel pleasure, feel unity, and feel correct—all quasi-libidinous energies that propel us toward either the thrill of dominance or the safety of submission. As they near the summit, the outside world begins to intrude more forcefully; Colson, torn between reaching the summit and untangling himself from his odyssey to see if Adam is okay, deliriously compares intellectual libido into sexual libido, musing that the latter valorizes “image” while the former glorifies “depth.” As hyper-intellectual emissions are whispered from Colson to Claude during their treacherous ascent, an avalanche of sexual tension is disturbed—and Colson and Claude abruptly stop scaling the mountain. A surreal sex scene follows: Colson can only experience sex with a woman by imagining all of humanity exploding into a hypermasculinist vision where the entire species exists purely for libidinous self-gratification; billions of human bodies, copulating perpetually like a complex fungal mass that stretches across planet Earth. “Would you rather exist in the throes of hedonistic self-gratification at all times, from birth to death—or would you rather have what you have now, which is a finite life of unknowable fears inside a reality where women exist?” Heterosexuality alone can guarantee the existential interdependence of women and non-women, Claude explains, assuring Colson of her final gender identity (“Woman is God”) as Colson admits he dreams of being born into an all-male sex paradise. As Claude forces herself on Colson, Adam suffers a violent panic attack. The finale ends on an explosive note—a tribal genocide inside an all-male species that reproduces homosexually—which suggestively implies that no human man ever existed as “human” at all.