The real significance of the baby in the car in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen

Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is full of strange little details that never get explained, like the baby in the car during the first episode. Here’s the real significance of the infant, if you’re confused.

The new thriller, which is executively produced by Stranger Things’ Duffer Brothers, is about a creepy curse that haunts a particular bloodline when they get married, and it’s got people across the world hooked. In the first episode, the lead characters Rachel and Nicky are on their way to his parents’ house for their wedding and stop at a chilling petrol station in the middle of the night, where they find a baby abandoned in a car.

Rachel drives to a nearby bar alone to get help, and the whole thing is really eerie. Eventually, she gets the server to call the police and returns to her fiancé, who has strangely been punched by the baby’s parent. He tells Rachel the mum and dad came back for the baby and wrongly thought he was trying to take the infant, and they continue on with their journey. The baby isn’t mentioned again until the very end, when the dad is coincidentally one of their wedding guests.

Credit: Netflix

So, what is the significance of that random baby? Just like the ice cream man, it’s a red herring to add scary effect and make you think there’s something really odd about Nicky and the Cunningham family. You get so convinced that he must have something to do with the strange things that are happening, that when it’s actually revealed to be Rachel that’s carrying the curse, you’re completely shocked.

It also cleverly builds up Rachel’s anxiety and makes it seem like she’s worrying over nothing. Every time something strange happens, like the abandoned baby, the missing wedding dress, the dad digging the grave, there turns out to be a very logical explanation for why it happened. This makes you even more confused, because you start to wonder if it’s all just in Rachel’s head after all.

The show’s creator Haley Z. Boston told Deadline there are a loads of misleading red herrings in the first couple of episodes, and their sole purpose is to distract you from the truth and throw you off.

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Credit: Netflix

“Once the curse idea came into play, I looked at the season as like, ‘Okay, how do I do the curse horror movie narrative and fit it into the show? And then I still wanted that to be a twist, or a midpoint shift. So I was thinking about it in terms of the first half of the season, Rachel believes the threat is coming from an outside force,” she said.

“And then at the midpoint, she learns that the threat is coming from within. We talked about it in terms of the first four episodes, the house is haunted — and I mean that metaphorically. But last four episodes: no, I’m haunted. So that’s how that structure came into play and why there’s a bunch of red herrings in the first couple episodes.”

When Nicky realises the baby’s parents are actually family friends and are at his wedding, that’s just a nice full-circle moment that links the start of the show to the end. It creepily shows that while all of this paranormal chaos has been going on, everyone else’s life has continued as normal.

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Featured image credit: Netflix