[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Sympathizer.]

The Sympathizer has a lot going for it. For starters, it’s based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, plus it has a coveted Sunday 9/8c time slot on HBO.

Perhaps the most obvious appeal is that Robert Downey Jr. plays four different characters, all vastly different in appearance. But they have one thing in common: they are all projections of the protagonist, the Captain, played by Hoa Xuande.

No, they’re not ghosts (though Vietnamese folklore about ghosts is incorporated into this seven-episode limited series). Instead, these men all represent the same thing to the captain. That idea, from beloved director Park Chan-wook and his co-showrunner, series writer Don McKellar, was key to Downey’s inclusion in The Sympathizer , an espionage thriller and cross-culture satire about the struggles of a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy during the final days of the Vietnam War and his new life as a refugee in Los Angeles, where he learns his spying days aren’t over yet.