From serial productions in the New York Times, this is the Good whale. I'm Daniel Alarcon.

And so it was in a strange way what everyone had always hoped for. The moviegoers, the children,

the fans, the trainers, the activists, the hangers-on, Keiko out at sea, away from humans for the first time since he was a calf,

a Hollywood ending of sorts.

Keiko was last seen with the pot of wild whales as a storm was rolling in,

but when the weather cleared and his care team returned, he was gone.

And what happened next is a bit of a mystery.

We know the broad outline, that for four weeks he traveled east until he resurfaced off the coast of Norway, swimming with kids.

But why? What did this mean?

Did he come back to us, humans, because he couldn't make it in the wild?

Or was it something else,

because he missed us? We don't know. Was his journey based on a memory of a childhood migration,

however dimly recalled, or something more banal like the ocean current? Was he a pilgrim on a

mission, a kid lost at the mall, or a teenage runaway keen on adventure.

We don't know.

We don't know how long he stayed with that pot of whales he was seen with at the start of his

journey, whether he swam with them for an hour or a day or a week.

Whether he chased after them or begged for their attention, was accepted or ignored.

Everything Keiko had gone through was leading to this, all the rehab and training in Oregon and

Iceland, for this, four weeks of swimming east in an almost straight line.

If only we knew what he experienced, we'd know if this long, grand experiment to restore

wildness to a captive orca had succeeded. We'd know if this long, grand experiment to restore wildness to a captive orca

...