All in all, I thought it was a really good miniseries. Ian McKellen is awesome as usual, the visuals are good, and the story is riveting. Except episode number 4 which I thought was a bit more feeble than the others.
However, I've seen a lot of people criticize it for being illogical, incomprehensible, too weird or too complicated. Or others didn't say that but obviously didn't understand any of it and it spoiled their enjoyment.
Which is why I'll try in my review to give my interpretation of the series. If it helps some people coming for answers here, then so be it. (I know I needed a few days after the series to understand everything, and others' comments helped too).
*********** SPOILERS *****************
Summakor is a giant surveillance company. They spy on people, thousands of thousands of people, and through the reports of their employees (like Michael), they notice who's "in need" according to Curtis, to go to the Village. (More about that later).
Then they give them, I think, the famous red pill whose contents are "unheard of". It allows them to access to that other plane of consciousness which is a common consciousness (whose support is the wife's mind). When they do, their most "active" part is transferred to the village. They go on living, but they're more subdued, because their main attention is in the Village.
That's why Michael notices something. He notices that there are people who began to change. I think it means that they began to change when they were in the village and their "exterior" NYC being started to get more subdued, less "sick". Maybe more automatic.
I think Curtis' idea is a very patronizing social control ideology. He noticed some people who, for some reason, didn't fit in society. In some cases, they were real mentally ill people (like Sara/313), in some other cases they were just undesirables (like the homeless girl). In the case of Michael, I guess Summakor (who obviously watch their employees just like they watch other people), noticed that he became dispassionate about his work, troubled etc. He suddenly didn't fit the *company* anymore. But it was dangerous for them to have someone resign, plus they wanted to know why he had resign: Had he discovered the truth?
So they got him in the village probably without him knowing (by slipping the pill in something he ate/drank?). BUT 6 was an exception, because for whatever reason his mind didn't submit. He was a lucid dreamer: instead of beginning a new existence in this new plane of consciousness, he remembered who he was in "real" life. Later on when 2 began to doubt, and maybe lose interest in the village (for a number of reasons that are hinted at during the series), 2 decided to make 6 the new number 2: precisely because he was a lucid dreamer. As the head of the village, he needed someone who would remain conscious that the whole village thing was not the physical reality. And 6 was that kind of person, so he chose him.
Then you have to understand that what at the beginning looks like flashbacks are actually what is happening in the reality to their physical bodies. Michael resigns but he's still as agitated as before because even after they had him get the pill, for and unknown reason he reacts differently to it and doesn't seem to gets subdued. So he's still conscious and everything. And then he meets Lucy in both worlds. Then he's recuperated by Curtis who wants to plant the idea of taking over the village in his head (so he explains everything to him, shows him real life Sara etc.). And the more 6 fights and time goes by, the more he's able to know what goes on in physical reality at the same time. Which is why in the last episode, you almost have the two things happen simultaneously on screen.
Then of course at the end, 6 has surrendered, and accepts the position of 2, selling out completely. Which is when you think about it the worst and most terrifying ending they could have imagined. Hence the look of sheer despair from 313 and the tears.
A few others dilemmas that I think may be solved by these answers:
- Why is 2's wife sleeping? I think that she has come to hate the Village, and that she "sacrificed herself". She needs to be comatose in real life so that she can dream up the village, but in the village she could be "alive" (as is seen when she's given the black pill). In my opinion, she sleeps inside the Village world too as an escape. It is one of the reasons 2 begins to doubt himself in the end: he has forced his wife to dream up this village, has made her the prisoner in a way, and she can't take it anymore so she's asked him to help her "evade".
- Is 11-12 real? I think that yes. In the reality of the village, all of the kids are real and have their own existence. However, as the wife explains to her son, they don't have "real"-world physical bodies so they cannot leave the village and "go to the other place". Their death is a real, village-world physical death.
- Which leads to: where do villagers go when they die? They "wake up". They're booted out definitely from the Village. I think it shows that it's a form of punishment. They're afraid of Village death because it means they're going to have to function consciously again in the real world. In a way, that is quite ironic since 93 "never gave up", but just committing suicide would have led him to liberation...