After the movie “Free Willy” became a hit, word got out that the star of the film, a killer whale named Keiko, was sick and living in a tiny pool at a Mexican amusement park. Fans were outraged and pleaded for his release. “The Good Whale” tells the story of the wildly ambitious science experiment to return Keiko to the ocean — while the world watched. An epic tale that starts in Mexico and ends in Norway, the six-episode series follows Keiko as he’s transported from country to country, each time landing in the hands of well-intentioned people who believe they know what’s best for him – people who still disagree, decades later, about whether they did the right thing. Sign up for our newsletter to see photos and videos of Keiko, and get a behind the scenes look at the making of The Good Whale. Sign up at nytimes.com/serialnewsletterSubscribers to the New York Times can listen to all episodes of The Good Whale, and access the full archive of other Serial Productions and New York Times podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribe at nytimes.com/podcastsHave a story pitch, a tip, or feedback on The Good Whale or other shows from Serial Productions? Email us at [email protected]
His name was Keiko, and everyone agreed he was a good whale.
Keiko was one of a kind. Keiko had this personality, completely different from any other orca.
I mean, everybody that worked with him called him the one in a million whale. Because no matter how far my career stretches and how long I work with marine mammals, there will never be another whale like that.
Keiko was good at performing, beloved by the crowds at the Mexican amusement park where he lived for more than a decade, most of his life since he was captured as a calf. He was good with his trainers and with the kids who came to visit.
I would have taken my one-year-old daughter and put him on his back without a care or concern in the world. He was that gentle.
And Keiko was good when he was cast in the movie Free Willy. He played the part of Willy, of course, a captive killer whale who's befriended by a 12-year-old boy and then set free.
Afterwards, when the world decided Keiko himself should be set free, that he should learn how to be a wild whale, how to hold his breath and hunt for his own food and live in the ocean, Keiko, like always, was eager to please his humans. So everyone agreed he was good. But there were some things no one seemed to agree on. Like, can good whales be wild whales?
It felt like bringing your pet dog out to the forest and then running away. And the dog being hungry and scared and wanting to go home.
I was furious because I could see what we had done to him.
We played God at that point. Was wildness even something Keiko wanted? Or was it something we needed from him? A chance to redeem ourselves for the harms we'd caused, not just to Keiko, but to all captive whales. I always ask people that are the detractors, where would you have stopped it?
This is the story of a high-profile, high-stakes science experiment whose goal seemed almost impossible, to teach a captive orca to be wild. At the center of it all was Keiko, an orca with fears and limitations that no human could ever hope to interpret with any certainty. Not that they wouldn't try. We wanted to see how far he could go.
From Serial Productions and the New York Times, I'm Daniel Alarcon, and this is The Good Whale, coming November 14th, wherever you get your podcasts.