The Peripheral runs along two different timelines, which despite diverging off, still have a considerable impact on each other. Here’s how the future timeline’s post-apocalyptic society operates and maintains order.
Prime Video’s ‘The Peripheral’ can be daunting in terms of its plot and structure at times.
The show deals with numerous little things that all have to do with advanced sci-fi concepts and sometimes to convey and portray said concepts the dialogue can lean pretty hard on complex nomenclature.
While the scientific concepts and jargon are one thing, the intricate and rich world-building of the show is another. Ever since the show premiered the absurd landscape of 2100 London has confounded and intrigued all.
How did this futuristic world come to be, with all its post-apocalyptic and daunting glory, and the scant population is a question not only Flynne wants an answer for but also for the viewers.
The fourth episode not only sheds light on what transpired that led the world to its concurrent state but also on the way the society in this timeline is governed and maintained.
The three tenets
The future timeline world, as explained by Cherise in the fourth episode, functions with three major entities acting as the central tenets — the Met Police, the Klept Oligarchy, and the Research Institute.
Cherise uses some pieces of bread to make a sort of three-walled room with one loaf representing the roof. She uses this metaphor to explain how the structure works and how each of the tenets is crucial for the structure to properly function.
She also insinuates how when any of these tenets errs, the other ones act to keep them in check. Before that, Cherise explains the roles of these three major forces running society in 2100.
The Klept oligarchy
Lev Zubov is The Peripheral’s biggest, and the only so far, stand-in for the diabolical force of the post-apocalyptic world — the Klept oligarchy.
The oligarchs are filthy rich, as in they are incredibly rich and incredibly filthy. Cherise refers to their way of doing things as extremely violent.
The Klept oligarchy used its violence to reinstate order in the post-apocalyptic world after the Jackpot. And it continues to do so even in the present (the 2100 present).
The Met police
When the oligarchy oversteps its boundaries (the one thing you shouldn’t do because you run the risk of toppling the order), the Met police steps in.
They keep the oligarchy and their wealth-fueled violent ways in check. The show has already shown that the Met police can be really efficient and cold as well, like the robotic officer that confronted Flynne and wouldn’t let her off the hook easily.
The Research Institute
The third major force running the world in the future timeline is perhaps the most powerful of all, for it houses within it the secrets of extremely advanced tech and vicious people like Cheris Nuland.
The RI lends the technological hand to the functioning of modern society. It’s also an entity that plays much more of a central role in ‘The Peripheral’.
With the Cherise arc and the hunt for the former RI worker Aelita, it seems that the institute will continue to make great strides or cause them in the story to moving forward.
Also read: What is Jackpot in The Peripheral?