We have a brief flashback into Kate and her slaughtering
her way through a mental institution, painting the word “Amaru” (an Incan
dragon) in blood on the wall before joining Brasa. She declares, most
ominously, “today is my awakening” and has a nifty ability to kill with a
touch. She’s super duper creepy.
In the present, Freddie the Peacekeeper and Ximena are
working together with a few clashes (they are so going to have sex by the end
of this season). He is outraged by the Culebras running around killing people
and breaking the rules while Ximena has rogue Culebras not even appearing on
her priority list since her entire species is being annihilated and the rogues
have absolutely no choice, no safety or security now all the leaders are dead.
And now Brasa, the fiery handed demon, has a new target –
the faith of the Culebras. The worship of La Diosa, the worship of Santanico.
Brasa is raiding any safe house, any culebra place of worship where Santanico
is revered is hit and burned down by his fiery magic. Freddie and Ximena follow
in his wake as Brasa hones in on the meeting of the Apostles – who we assume
are the head priests of Santanico’s religion (a religion, it has to be said,
she is not even remotely interested in taking part in).
They don’t arrive in time – and the apostles are
massacred leaving Ximena and Freddie to try and get some revenge on Brasa. It
doesn’t work well – but at least Freddie saves her. She also has a nice time
out moment to call him out on his bitterness and loathing of culebras. It’s a
really nice call out – she wants him on side but isn’t willing to put up with
the attitude to have him there.
Now to Seth and Richie who are trying to put together a
force of Culebras without the lords (Richie playing softly softly while Seth
trying to give hard truths). The speeches are good – but ultimately they don’t
have the pull to bring the Culebras together. Unlike Santanico…
Yes, despite Richie really bitterly not wanting to work
with his ex again, they do track down Santanico
She’s set up her own little not-kingdom-how-dare-you. She has a group of vampires and humans living together in relative harmony with occasional cage fights. She bans weapons, everyone must fight for themselves in the cage… unfortunately this also means that rapists go unpunished unless someone is willing and able to fight them in the cage. Ok, this just seems so very dubious from Santanico – Kissa’s history is as a woman who has been sexually exploited for centuries… I think she’d have more rules than this. I think anyone in her little kingdom who committed a rape would face some… stringent opposition.
Santanico is not interested in joining their team. She
doesn’t care about her religion. She is not interested in being a leader. Also,
she is Kissa, not Santanico. She’s really not going to work with the Geckos
again. Seth tries to get round this via a cage fight (which he wins) which is
interrupted by another demon from Xilbaba.
This is the demon of Really Needs CGI. It looks like an
old school Doctor Who villain.
The demon is super dangerous and carves a hole through
Santanicos followers. At the same time Kate arrives being uber spooky and
letting everyone know that she’s back and dangerous. Richie tries to use his
mind control powers on her and it really doesn’t work. She is definitely
established as the power around here
With many dead, Santanico steps up and decides to show
everyone that she is the head monster and brings down the big bad demon by
stabbing it in the head while Kate leaves. Santanico has stepped up and is on
side – because she can’t claim these people and this new society she’s tried to
create without, as Seth points out in his usual harsh way, being willing to
fight for them
Oh but there’s some shit to address here. What inspired
Santanico to stand and fight? It was the death of a woman, a human woman. A
human woman Santanico cares for, who Santanico feeds on and who Richie and Seth
have both made snide comments about being Santanico’s girlfriend. This sounds
like it could be a relationship – yes we could have had the shows first LGBTQ
characters. But we will not see this relationship, because she is dead. This
highly likely lesbian/bisexual woman appeared and is now dead. AGAIN.
Stop. This. This is not inclusion. This has to stop.
