Medea is still tied down under the sun with a corpse on
top of her when she is visited by the ghosts/hallucinations of her murdered
children, the children she killed to hurt her husband Jason. The ghosts/visions
argue over rescuing her or watching her die. Vision Lykos also shows up to take
the kids away
But a vision kid does seem to have untied her. Handy that.
She makes her way to Pandora’s tomb and finds Ariadne’s cloth. Inside the tomb
she sees Hero curled up. She manages to get him out of the tomb and rise him
with a potion. Hero desperately wants to leap in after Ariadne but Medea stops
him- the only reason he survived was the ring of the magi (floating on the
surface of the water filled tomb and now on Heros’ finger. A ring that floats?
Damn that’s some cheap tat right there!).
The water is the river Styx and Hero angsts mightily about
poor beloved Ariadne who he hated 2 days ago – until white smoke emerges from
the tomb because Hero is too busy crying to close it. They run (because Medea
does have the sense she was born with). He still angsts massively about how
much he loved Ariadne with all his heart (really?!)
But Medea is super happy about this convoluted and ludicrous revelation – because Hero has sacrificed love! One sacrifice down! Second sacrifice is his heritage – which means going back to Athens (kill his dad). And bonus, if he becomes a god he may be able to bring Ariadne back from the dead which, still bemusingly, he now wants to do.
In Athens Oracle tells Minos how the Lexicon is terrible
and how Hero will destroy everything. And she finally has a useful vision – to find
Medea
Ok, for a given level of useful. The spy Minos set on
Medea has been thoroughly drugged. Oracle is surprisingly violent in her
questioning (while also a bit wet) and learns that Daedalus is involved in
Medea’s escape.
Off they go for Minos to be all menacing to Medea – with Oracle
looking especially hard and vicious at him. He tells her how he sent Hero to
the gates of hell while he remarks on how she’s changed. Daedalus tells them of
the weapon and it turns out Medea’s priests already know all about Pandora’s
tomb. Well that could have saved a lot of time but while they’ve been talking
white fog approaches the city. They assume “evil monster fog” rather than “weather.”
Medea and Hero arrive at a deserted Athens, all the
people having run from fog. This allows them to go uninterrupted to the prison
caves and find Aegeus, barely alive, and Lykos who is dead. Aegeus’s clues and
some woo-woo from Medea points to the second sacrifice needing the sword of the
first king of Athens.
With some nifty mythology interpretation they go to wear
they think the sword is hidden – under some unmelting snow (what the people of
Athens lose their shit over some fog but they’ve got SNOW THAT NEVER MELTS and
don’t bat an eye or have awesome summer snowball fights?). Except Medea got her
chronology wrong – and the fog closes in around them. They’re separated and
Aegeus also vanishes
Among the fog Hero runs into Ariadne – and Medea is again
confronted by her accusing murdered children. Again we see that her whole
purpose behind seeking the Lexicon was to restore her children.
Both their loved ones try to lure them into the next
life, offering kisses that will trap. They resist – and both come to the same
conclusion – the sword I buried under the throne. Hero succeeds in moving the
throne and grabbing the sword – only to be confronted by Aegeus who decides to
attack him for daring to steal his sword. They fight and Hero stabs his father
with the heritage sword – which also allows them to appear in front of Medea.
Now Medea can have yet another tragic goodbye scene.
Killing Aegeus also makes the fog retreat – to be replaced by ice. The second sacrifice has been completed.
Outside of the city Minos & co brainstorm what to do
while Daedalus points out that they have no idea that the fog is actually dangerous.
He goes to investigate – and runs into the fog when he hears his dead son
Icharus calling. They have a little heart to heart which includes some
admission that Daedalus had such huge expectations for his son, which he could
never live up to before he adds how little Daedalus’s genius had actually
gained him anything – just captivity and exploitation. Following his advice to “follow
his heart and not his mind” he allows Icharus to lead him to the tomb of
Pandora.
At Minos’s camp, half of his men are revolting the other
half deserting and all are fighting among themselves. Oracle also ratchets up
the creepy. When ice and snow falls Minos seems to grow even more despairing.
Fog. The Athenians abandoned the city because of fog.
Someone should have told Minos that the true key to besieging Athens was
inclement weather. The Greeks just can’t take it seems. Beware Greeks bringing
cold fronts. Legend has it that 10 years ago Athens was struck by a bit of
light drizzle and the residents responded with mass suicide.
Hero’s desperate love for Ariadne, who tried to rape him,
sexually abused him, threatened him with torture and he couldn’t tolerate her
until the last episode for REASONS. I have reviewed a book where a woman saw a
guy on the other side of a university quad and she declared herself hopelessly
in love. That book made more sense. Even E.L James would call this romance ridiculous.
Worse, we have the juxtaposition of Hero and Ariadne with
Medea and her children – which just feels like such a broken comparison. Medea’s
grief and regret I can understand, Hero and Ariadne? Not so much.
Medea needs so much more analysis – her comments like
accusing Aegeus of not being half the king Jason was points to a lot of history
and complexity between the murder of her children and her arrival in Athens. At
the same time I think I preferred Medea being the cunning seeker of power – unabashedly,
unashamedly – than this desperately-seeking-redemption mother. I think there
always needs to be an EXCUSE in media for a woman to want power, especially if
she’s not to be seen as irredeemably evil.
I also think Medea, Minos and Daedalus, having a modicum
of talent, need to not be on this show since they contrast… sharply with the
other cast
