Alex is about to get his Chosen One Stripes – facing a
huge influx of 8 Balls and dwindling ammunition, he strides forwards with bared
arms and chants the exorcism – as his marks glow he explodes with energy and
drops all the 8 Balls, though doing so exhausts him. The former 8 Balls stand
up – all free from possession. He orders the newly released confused 8 Balls to
get to safety
Claire states the obvious – special chosen one ness
But Vega is under attack by the 8 balls who got through
the open gates because of William Wheele. Claire tells them all that she left David
Wheele in the control room and gets the surprised look she so richly deserves.
Luckily for her, her dad arrives in a chain of armoured cars so now Alex has to
explain that her dad is now a Diad angel controlled by Duma who is loyal to
Gabriel rather than questioning her decision making on trusting David
This also means that Gabriel’s forces know everything
David does – he then goes on city-wide TV to demand that Alex be delivered to
him.
In the control room Arika joins David and he tells her
what William did. They discuss guilt and killing and Arika’s creepy yet quite
deep belief that everyone you kill is now a part of you that you have to carry
with you, to both comfort David and encourage him to move. Arika also wants to
save Claire.
They meet with Alex and Claire (who are arguing over who
is more important and who should be sacrificed for who). After the brief
snarling, Alex tells Claire to run with Arika to safety in Helena; after protests
she agrees while he describes how much she means to him (with Noma right there,
gaaaah).
So when Alex and Noma go on, they have a discussion about
how much Alex loves Claire – but he also says how much he loves Noma. Good, can
we please have more showing of this? Alex goes on while Noma holds off the
people following them.
Claire decides to give herself up so she can be taken to
her father to save oh-so-special Alex. She is taken to Duma who uses her father’s
memories to promptly disarm her and destroy her plan of stabbing him. Oops.
Claire appeals to her dad to fight against Duma, bringing
him to the fore so they can have a tearful reunion (now would be a great time
to do the stabbing thing though wouldn’t that need Empyrean steel?). When Alex
finally confronts Duma, he is back in control and holding Claire hostage,
forcing Alex to disarm.
For some reason Duma credits Alex for how humanity manage
to hold out for 25 years (How? Why?). There’s a fight and David manages to push
Duma down long enough to beg Claire to shoot him she foes… but not to kill
because Claire and David shoots her back. She falls and Noma comes in and
shoots David/Duma properly. Leave it to Noma to do it right
Which means Claire and Alex now have a tearful death scene. I think Noma’s supposed to look sad as Claire dies but she looks like she’s bored. Frankly, so am I. Claire has annoyed me for far too long. Noma chivies Alex back into the fight
Alex continues to angst but Noma has another swift angry
wake up call for him to get him back into action. A huge swarm attacks – but it’s
not 8 Balls, it’s the humans that Alex has saved. They’ve all found weapons
(from somewhere) and recovered from their possession and are out fighting. Yes
he’s now a super-inspiring leader of the people of Vega because he’s just so
damn special. Alex decides to have an epic speech about how special Claire is
and he totally isn’t special, honest (hah). Led by Noma everyone kneels to him
I have to fight the urge to vomit.
Meanwhile Gabriel has dragged Michael to Mallory and its
ever burning fire. Gabriel rants and yells – the whole town is deserted.
Gabriel has an ultimatum, either Michael prove Lucifer is alive or he kills him.
He rants on about how Lucifer made everything terrible by empowering humans
with knowledge which, in turn, drove god away. He blames Lucifer for everything
more than everyone else. Michael also confesses that he didn’t burn Lucifer’s
body – he buried him at Sea. Bad bad Michael. Baaaad Michael. Gabriel still isn’t
convinced – but then Lucifer’s prophet intervenes.
He’s evacuated Mallory for their own good but Gabriel is
all twisted by the darkness inside him from the amphora. Gabriel begs the
prophet to speak to Lucifer since he had the gift of healing. Well the bargain
comes with threats and invoking Lucifer’s debt. The Prophet sets Gabriel on
fire. Apparently the fire is healy fire – and now Gabriel is back to himself
and all repentant and loving his brother
And Michael realises that Lucifer is rebuilding his body
through faith – the people of Mallory are sacrificing someone to him every 5
years (along with keeping the fire lit et al) they’re giving him lots of power
to put himself back together again. And Alex would be a super duper sacrifice
because he’s the “last pure heart.”
They demand to know where Lucifer’s body is, but the
prophet is just one of many. He taunts them that Lucifer is already after Alex –
and Michael is suddenly horrified that Alex is in Vega with Noma and he and
Gabriel fly off.
Arika and David make it to the Helena evacuation
helicopter – but David refuses to leave the city because he has a sense of
responsibility. They part with David’s clear “we were good together.” Actually
they kind of were. David is overcome by 8 Balls as
Through this we also get a 25 year old flashback to
Gabriel’s plan to kill Alex in the hope that it will extinguish Michael’s
affection for humans (somehow). He’s accompanied by Noma who supports Gabriel
despite obvious conflict. Gabriel and Noma kill Alex’s mother. Noma flies off
with baby Alex but when Michael finds her she hasn’t kill the baby because she
couldn’t bring herself to do so because Alex is all full of godly power.
Michael hides what Noma did and gives baby Alex to Jeep to raise who apparently
isn’t Alex’s biological father) and passes on the markings to Jeep to give to
Alex (the markings are currently on Michael). When Jeep’s gone, Michael tells
Noma he expects her to sacrifice herself for Alex if/when it comes to it.
Noma swears to protect the Chosen one and Gabriel lands
all pissed that Noma has given up on him and that Michael has giving the
markings to a human. He warns Michael that Noma clearly can’t be trusted.
And now we have a brief Julian cameo. Do we really care
about this guy? He rambles on about the lower angels needing hope because they’re
all oppressed by the higher angels. He rants on about it just being the
beginning where we have a montage:
Noma kisses Michael
David (who is alive) is dragged before Riesen (who is
also alive, apparently?)
The prophet goes into the basement of his church where
Lucifer’s body is. Damn it Michael, 5 minute’s search is all it would have
taken! He ominously says “it is time.”
Which is when Noma stops and turns – she tells him she
gave up too much with her wings and needed to be healed. She has been – she has
white wings now. Looks like she made a deal with Satan
And so concludes the season finale of Dominion and I find myself…. Frustrated.
There’s a lot about this show and its potential I like, and there’s a lot of
good stuff here. We have some good acting, some good conflict, some really well
written scenes, excellent emotion and excellent battle scenes. It has all of
the tools for a really good series and there are so many stories that have
excellent potential here (and I really like the introduction of Lucifer into
the mix).
And then I’m frustrated because none of this potential is
really realised. In failing to live up to this potential it has pretty much
ruined a lot of characters
Primarily, I just can’t stand Alex. This man is a classic
Gary Stu. The one special, notable or vaguely interesting feature about this
man is that he has some gnarly tattoos that give him the specialist magic. His
personality is bland and bordering on the petulant. He doesn’t actually do or
achieve anything to be hailed as so special (what has he actually done all
season? Seriously? Because I can’t remember. He left with Gabriel then wandered
to New Delphi then wandered to Vega. Along the way he achieved… nothing. He is
boring. There is absolutely nothing noteworthy or meaningful about him. But
because he is the Gary Stu, everyone hails him as super special. Michael, Noma,
Claire, Gates (all of whom are willing to/have sacrificed absolutely everything
for this damn man) all hail him as the Chosen One but he has done NOTHING to
earn this accolade. Worse, we now have this damn “pure heart” label being
thrown around but nothing Alex does suggests his heart is any purer than anyone
else (unlike several members of the cast)
This man doesn’t deserve to be protagonist. He is dull, he is empty, he is a vessel for deus ex powers and the whole cast fawns on him.
Gabriel is another whiny character who gets on my very
last nerve. His constant daddy and brother issues, his endless angst completely
destroys his portrayal as a villain because everything is just covered in petulance.
I don’t even want him to be defeated any more, I want someone to slap him and
tell him to grow up and get over himself. Everything about him screams tantrum
and the flashbacks (to humanise him? To give him Manpain?) just seem to
emphasise this.
Claire is dead and I can’t even be upset by it because
she has driven me to distraction. She has been an utterly terrible ruler form
the very first (with her ill thought out destruction of Gabriel’s eerie). She
didn’t even take down David, that was on Arika. She achieved nothing as ruler
except to sabotage her own civil war – and that whole civil war was a disaster.
This was supposed to be about the whole class divide that Vega has and the
terrible injustice it caused – that lasted about 5 minutes before that whole
fascinating storyline was ditched (along with Zoe, another potentially
interesting character) to have a proxy war between Claire and David. Other than
inept leader Claire has been love interest and mourned the loss of her baby –
before finally sacrificing herself for Alex.
And Noma… arrrgh Noma. They finally introduced some back
story to tell us why Noma constantly sacrifices herself or Alex, puts up with
being the forgotten extra in a love triangle and generally doesn’t get even the
tiniest fraction of respect or regard she deserves – but this is terrible. They
belatedly slapped a whole load of guilt on her to justify her whole purpose on
the show being one of service and sacrifice. It’s clumsy and prevents any
further development and devalues the sacrifices she’s made. She’s not the
noble, honourable one giving up everything for the greater good – now she gives
up everything for the greater good because she OWES it.
Of course, she now serves Lucifer. Which between her and
the Prophet means two of the three recurring POC on the show are on the side of
the devil. Yeah… that’s not great. Other than Arika, the other POC on the show
have appeared only very very briefly as side characters
The third is, of course, Arika who is also the shows only
LGBT character we have left after the departure of Ethan and Uriel (we briefly
had Arika’s lover who was also a WOC, but she rapidly disappeared) and is
gloriously evil and conniving for… reasons. See, we still have no damn clue why
Arika does all the evil things she does – she just does it. She’s planning
something – but at the moment she’s just sinister and conniving which is not
exactly a positive portrayal. Even if she and David’s growth, development and
acting remained the only compelling elements of the show
On top of this we seem to have a few storylines that…
well.. it’s not that they didn’t go anywhere, so much as they aren’t finished
so we’ve had a whole season with few conclusions. So the Julian storyline is still… there (and
there could have been some nice development of how lower angels were treated in
Heaven and the rigid hierarchy – but like the class divide of Vega it just wasn’t
developed). The Luficer story is going to be the key storyline next season –
but there’s still Gabriel and his war which is, again, kind of in limbo as he
works through issue after issue after issue. There was William Wheele dragged
back, again, to really take up screen time he didn’t need. But that also leaves
us with David’s and Arika’s storylines to develop as well.
There’s a lot going on and nothing was really resolved by
the finale. I’m still really interested where this show is going but kind of
annoyed because I don’t think anything will go nearly as well as it should. And
Alex will still be there.
