In the final episode, the Old Man washes up on a desert island where, in a surreal encounter, he and the Worm meet the Narrator of the series. The bottle that the genie threw into the lake in Episode 4 reappears and inside is a slip of paper that, the genie said, explains the Meaning of Life. What will it say? 

The final two episodes are linked together, exploring the idea of whether an individual has a purpose, or a reason, for existing and then moves on to the biggest question: the Meaning of Life. Here, the Old Man begins speaking to his Boat, who says his purpose is simply to float. The Old Man ponders his own purpose as a big storm approaches.

The Old Man’s hunger takes hold of him in this episode and he imagines he can see a box of food floating on the lake. Sadly, it’s only a mirage. This provokes an increasingly panicky debate between the Old Man and the Worm about when and whether they can trust their senses, and what, exactly, is ‘reality’.

The Old Man meets the Sun in this episode, which is a little broader than most of the others. It’s about the individual’s place in the universe, and in the history of time. The Old Man thinks about the time he’s been on earth and the millions of years that came before him, and the massive distances involved when he looks at the sun and the stars. He also wonders about the existence of extra-terrestrial life.

In this episode the Old Man begins talking to his own shadow, plus the shadows of the Worm and the Seagull. They all have differing views on what it’s like to be a shadow, but the Old Man’s shadow is particularly depressed by his role. What they’re discussing together is broadly happiness, and what makes us happy.

This episode is really all about the concept of ‘fairness’ and what is and isn’t fair. The Old Man finally catches a fish, who is at first grateful to have the hook removed from her mouth, but then appalled when she discovers that the Old Man plans to eat her. Her inability to comprehend this idea makes the Old Man question whether he should eat the fish after all.

The Old Man finds a bottle in the lake and when he uncorks it, a genie pops out. It turns out, that, somehow, the genie is The Old Man - or, at least, part of the Old Man’s soul. Inside the bottle is a note the Old Man wrote many years earlier when he was a child, before putting it into the bottle and throwing it out to sea. The note says: ‘Who am I?’ The Old Man and the genie discuss this difficult question.

It begins to rain and the Old Man finds himself in conversation with a raindrop. After some discussion about why humans dislike rain, the Old Man asks if the raindrop has seen any kind of God sitting up in the clouds where she dropped from. This episode is about whether there is a God, and if so, where is it and what might it look like.

The Old Man gets to meet the Seagull who pooped in his beard in the first episode. The Old Man is a bit cross with him at first, but he slowly thaws as the two of them discuss whether humans are more intelligent than animals, and what ‘intelligence’ really means.

We meet the Old Man in the Boat for the first time. He’s fishing and almost catches a fish, but it jumps off the hook. He’s left with his bait, an indignant Worm, who helps the Old Man question whether he, or the Worm, are free, and what freedom really means.