It’s jarring interposed images time – at, what I assume
is an Ilaria boardroom, some guy tells his fellows that Hitake is all bad bad
wrong but they have a new strain of Narvik which is awesome (with a video of
zombies reminding us that zombies are actually the goal of Narvik – with the nice
words of “making the planet sustainable) intercut with Julia and Sergio having
sex before she decides to stop. They get a call finally learning about the
board meeting that they weren’t told about
Julia arrives to the meeting and is snarked at for being
late, she throws side-eye at the guy giving the speech for not telling her it
had been moved and snarky lady joins her in giving the evil eye to the guy.
This would be easier with names. The guy continues his speech basically about
culling humanity because we’re ruining the planet; he plans to use Narvik to
destroy 75% of humanity within 3 months. Julia isn’t a fan of genocide as she’d
been assured she would have chance to find a non-lethal way of stopping people
destroying everything. Julia openly calls it genocide which everyone considers
so very uncouth and she’s demeaned for being so very young among that room full
of silver-eyed immortals with added lectures about the persecution the
immortals have faced in the past.
The board votes in favour of genocide, Julia being the
only dissenting voice.
Flashback over, it’s time for Day 6
Michael sadly tells his little fiction of how Agnes died
to Anne who confirms Agnes was her mother (why do I think Michael is the biological
father not just metaphorical father of Agnes, Anne and Amy?). He also calls
Anne his favourite daughter which is exactly what he called Agnes.
Anne tells Amy and she doesn’t believe their father that Agnes died of a stroke, especially since she saw Agnes go to accuse Michael of lying about being the only Silver Eyed in the world. Anne won’t question, she’s a loyal servant and demands Amy do something on her upcoming 20th birthday; something that Anne and Agnes and her mother did before. Amy confirms that all of the women over the generations are his daughters and his lovers (Julia’s only half-silver-eye and she became immortal – I would have thought over the generations of nasty incestuous inbreeding Amy would be an immortal herself). Anne thinks it’s all wonderful and really wants Amy to have a daughter by her father/grandfather/great-grandfather/great-great grandfather. Amy wants no part of it.
Alone she tearfully tells Landrey what’s going to happen
to her and he’s all confused with his hero worship of Michael and devotion to
Amy. He refuses to even let her talk of her father raping her. She reveals how
desperate she was for everything to get worse since it would give her a chance
to escape – and resorts to seducing Landrey to help her
Alan has been handcuffed by Kyle after his attack last week,
which is when Sarah returns and it’s revealed that Kyle was here undercover to
hunt Alan. But he is a doctor and while everyone distrusts everyone else, he
tries to get them focused on the source of the plague – where the bees picked
up the new zombie plague. That would involve matching the pollen to every plant
on the island but Alan already knows the truth because Special (and it gives him
more chance to snarl at Kyle) and points out it is an apple tree (they use the
latin name so they can further snark at Kyle).
Peter is still stuck in the Oubliette and Michael has
questions – is Peter an Immortal, is he part of Ilaria etc. Peter plays
ignorant so Michael dumps in a crate of rats to encourage Peter to talk. Who
even has a crate of rats? It’s not like he even dispatched his followers to
hunt them down because he says they haven’t eaten in 2 days. He just keeps a
box of hungry rats around in case they’re useful.
At Agnes’s funeral (the other dead people didn’t get
funerals it seems), Michael leads the eulogy talking about a blackberry Agnes
had created as testament to her skills. That blackberry is handed out in bowls
to everyone attending, but before the service Landrey covered them in infected
honey.
Kyle comes back from collecting apple pollen to find a
huge outbreak of fungus-zombies running amok. Kyle quickly tells Anne to round
up all the new zombies and lock them up, by force if necessary.
Faced with the huge outbreak and Sarah still injured,
Kyle is forced to release Alan. As an added problem, Anne won’t let them use
western medicine until Michael intervenes. They also put two and two together
and realise the berries were the probably source of the infection. And since
only some of the berries were infected, it points to deliberate tampering
Meanwhile Amy continues with her plan – she goes to where
Olivia is being held for stabbing Sarah, winds her up a bit more and lets her
go. She gathers some followers and they all arm themselves. She has quite a following
considering her babbling
Peter climbs to the top of the oubliette only to find a
deeply creepy fungus zombie at the top who pushes him back down. Michael comes
to ask more questions and Peter cracks – and tells Michael that Sarah was
pregnant when she was made immortal.
Landrey was there paying attendance and he tells everything
to Amy – but adds a somewhat stretch that the baby may hold the key to making
them all immortal. Amy also expositions on her lack of silver eyes – Michael is
trying to breed an immortal which is why he keeps having a child with his own
daughter until a child is born with so little mortal in them that they have
silver eyes. Landrey is getting shaky in his loyalty though and is unsure about
delivering Sarah to Amy rather than Michael.
Later many cultists are gathered as Michael searches a
locker and finds infected honey in a coat – in Anne’s coat. Amy, of course,
defends her mother (nice touch their Amy) while Michael orders Landrey to bring
Anne into custody.
Olivia leads her forces to free all of the quarantined
infected – Alan and Kyle try to talk sense into her but it doesn’t work. They
take the sedated infected away. And, later, Landrey makes Alan breathe the same
mind-altering plant that caused the kids to attack Kyle.
In the lab Kyle and Sarah discuss their findings – the fungus
is in the apple pollen but isn’t Mycotic like the honey. Drugged Alan arrives
and convinces Kyle to leave before strangling Sarah.
Time to run over to Ilaria where Julia tells Sergio about
the upcoming apocalypse and her plan to tell all to the CDC in the hope they
can stop it. She also gives him the single dose of the Narvik cure she has.
Julia goes home to find chief snarky woman waiting for
her (hey she cooked dinner at least). She has used her considerable
intelligence and experience to realise exactly what Julia’s doing – and how
much it’s going to fail. However, she’s not exactly on board with her
colleagues’ genocide plans either. She gives Julia a name and a meeting place
and time.
Her contact is a silver-eyed child; the immortals do come
in all apparent ages. She is not part of Ilaria (saying you can’t change the
system from within). She tells Julia about another renegade immortal – neither
part of Ilaria nor one of her group who has a project that may stop Ilaria’s
Narvik. She’s also immensely cryptic because that’s a rule and she gives Julia
a pendant with a tree on it. The same tree symbol used in Michael’s cult.
I am feeling very teased now, by Helix. Because what Julia is doing? That is the plot line I wanted after season 1 ended. This is what I wanted to see; Narvik being put to use, the machinations of the immortals, trying to save the world – everything the finale of season 1 promised
I’m far more interested in that than I’m a CDC Doctor, Get me out of here! on the island with incest
cults thrown in.
I am torn over the incest storyline. On the one hand, it’s
very much true to life – a huge number of cults had their leaders sexually
exploiting the women within their flock. It’s such a common aspect of cults
that not including it would have been something of a wash of the reality of
close, insular cults. Equally, even with Landrey and Anne supporting it, it’s
very clearly presented as revolting and repellent and the cult’s support of it
is just more aspects of how abusive it is rather than excusing it
It also serves a lot of add motive and humanity to Amy.
So far we have seen her as the ambitious, sexually manipulative, devious and
heartless conniver - which is an incredibly damaging and sexist trope –
demonising female sexuality, casting women as manipulative and contrasting her
with the passive followers of Agnes and Amy. Now we have a very humanising motive;
is she manipulative, willing to kill, use her sexuality as a weapon and
generally devastate the whole community? Yes. But the alternative is being
raped by her own father and I’m having a hard time not just saying “burn it all
down if you have to!” and cheering her on if that’s her path to escape.
The flip side is that we are introducing rape into a
storyline that really doesn’t need it. And we’ve turned one of the more active
and cunning women on the show, albeit an apparently evil one, into a victim. I
don’t like that when juxtaposed, again, with the passive Agnes and Anne and the
fact Julia has spent 4 out of 6 episodes tied to the furniture and Sarah’s
spent the last two dealing with a stab
wound.
