Episode 1
Ye Wenjie witnesses her father being killed by the Red Guard during the cultural revolution in China for not denouncing science.
In present day London, Clarence (Da Shi) finds the body of another scientist who has committed suicide after writing a countdown on the wall in blood.
At the Oxford particle accelerator, Saul is working and confused as to why all of the experiments are wrong. After a brief conversation with him, his boss, and Ye Wenjie’s daughter, Vera commits suicide.
Ye is given the opportunity to work at the secretive Red Coast base. Even with the understanding that she can never leave, she immediately accepts.
After Vera’s funeral, Auggie, who has been seeing a countdown, steps outside alone and encounters a mysterious woman, Tatiana, who tells her to look at the sky tomorrow at midnight. She says, “Has the universe ever winked at you?”
Jin visits Ye Wenjie, and finds that Vera left behind a helmet for a VR game that her mother said she had been obsessed with.
At Red Coast, Ye Wenjie is informed of the true mission of the base, which is to make contact with extraterrestrial life.
Meanwhile Saul and Auggie are at the observatory, where they observe the stars flickering, or “winking” at them at exactly midnight, as Tatiana had said. The flickering is in a code that reveals the same numbers that Auggie has been seeing on the countdown.
Episode 2
Auggie watches the first successful test of her nanomaterial cutting a diamond, but informs her team that they must shut down the project, right after which the countdown disappears.
At Red Coast Base, Ye Wenjie works out how the sun can amplify a radio signal and tells Yang, who steals the credit for the idea and brings it to Lei. They are both chastised by Lei for not considering the political symbolism and forbidden from using this method. However, Ye sends her signal at the sun during a routine test broadcast shortly afterward.
Will Downing gets a call from his doctor during the class he is teaching and later tells Jack that he has pancreatic cancer with a life expectancy of 2-6 months.
In the game, Sophon tells Jin that she has cleared Level 1 by successfully choosing science over mysticism. Shortly after, Jack receives his own helmet and begins playing the game. All the while, Da Shi is watching and listening in on them to collect intel for Wade.
In 1977, Ye meets Mike Evans, who is living in China and trying to save an endangered bird species. During this time she also encounters Tang Hongjing, the Red Guard who killed her father, at a work camp. She has been living a hard life and lost her arm to gangrene, yet refuses to repent for killing Ye Zhetai.
Back at the base, Ye receives a reply to the message that was sent 8 years ago from a self-described pacifist imploring her “Do not answer,” claiming that if she does, their people will come and conquer Earth.
Disillusioned with humanity, Ye sends a reply that they should come, and that she will help them conquer this world.
Episode 3
Jin and Jack play the game in “two player mode” and she correctly presents her findings that the planet is trapped in a 3 star system, advancing them to level 3.
Jin has dinner at Raj’s family’s house. Raj’s father tells a story from when he was in the Indian army during the Kargil War and single-handedly saved his men by killing everyone in an enemy camp to take their resources so that his men could survive.
In the game, Sophon tells them that they have made it to the final level after Jin identifies that there is no solution to the three-body problem, and the physics was a red herring for the true purpose of the game, salvation of the people
Mike Evans reads the fairy tale of Hansel & Gretel to the San-Ti over an intercom, while the voice of Sophon makes some chilling queries about the fear instinct in humans.
Jin and Jack meet Tatiana at the level 4 meetup and they enter the VR world, where Sophon reveals that the inhabitants of the game world are a real civilization who are currently on an interstellar space fleet that’s destined for Earth so that they can survive.
Jack thinks that this explanation is a scam and leaves the meeting. Jin seems to believe Sophon and talks further with Tatiana, who reveals the Trisolarans are real, and that they are referred to as the San-Ti.
Jack returns home and is confronted by Tatiana, who murders him. Da Shi is outside keeping watch, but is unable to see the murder taking place.