Penny Dreadful: Memento Mori

Well, that was certainly a packed episode! Lots of interesting parallels between various characters and their situations, a clearer understanding as to who is pulling all the strings in these games, and most surprising of all – no Vanessa or Ethan. I wonder if perhaps this episode and the last were written especially so that both could be filmed at the same time in different locations.

It's an episode of mirrors, paintings, memories and fetish dolls, all reflecting the characters in various ways, their individual arcs moving in and out of each other like a dance, each scene echoing the last in regards to what characters say and do. And although a few of these scenes are given short-shrift (after keeping us in suspense for one and a half seasons, the reveal of Dorian's portrait almost inevitably comes as an anti-climax) you can tell that the pieces are being put into place for the season finale.

When I was a kid we had a Player of the Day Award for sporting events, and I think we're all in agreement when I say that this episode's Player of the Day Award goes to Billie Piper. The episode pretty much begins and ends with her, from quietly flirting with the body of the man she's just killed to verbally lashing Caliban to the floor.

From this:

To this:

Fuck yeah!

Perhaps I should left have this scene for last – but I can't, because it was great. When the terrible Irish accent came back, I fist-pumped. When she turned Caliban's physical strength against him, I cheered. When she started talking about how the two of them would destroy all mankind, I ... admittedly, got a little confused.

But that the whole thing starts with Caliban daring Lily to "stop pretending you're frightened" only for her to do JUST THAT, and with Caliban demanding to know "who are you?" only for her to turn around and tell him exactly who HE is, was the very best payoff I could have wished for. My faith in John Logan was vindicated.

Caliban has always been a character I've flip-flopped on: sometimes I feel genuinely sorry for him, other times I think he's a whiny man-child. It's a credit to the writing and the performance that this is probably the correct reaction we're meant to have toward him, but in regards to his treatment of Lily, he's always been in the "creep who demanded a mail-order bride and then got mad when she wasn't exactly to his specifications" category. He looked at her as little more than a tool, something that would validate and comfort him, something he could recite poetry to in exchange for mindless obedience. Unfortunately, that pesky little thing call free will got in the way.

The question is, how much does Brona/Lily know about her past? Caliban threateningly asking "who are you?" suggests that he's guessed she knows who she is, though it's difficult to separate where John Logan ends and Caliban begins with that question. That is, I get the feeling the line was designed to get the ball rolling on the scene rather than something Caliban had figured out for himself, though that he asks this after seeing Lily accepting a necklace from Dorian – and after his scene with Frankenstein in which he yells "she's mine" – suggests that he may have twigged to the fact that she's a former prostitute.  

Which means that when he tells her "you're unlike all other women", there's a chance he's comparing her to the kindness he received from Vanessa, Maude and Lavinia, but also that he now perceives her as spoiled goods.

This episode proved Lily fully aware she was once an Irish prostitute who was resurrected from the dead by Frankenstein, but how long has she known this? It would be fascinating to go back and watch the previous episodes under the assumption that she's known right from the beginning who and what she was, though there's still the possibility that her memories only gradually emerged, along with a newfound violent streak that's targeted at the men who forced her into this way of life. After all, isn't bringing her back to life for the sole purpose of being the designated mate of another man just another form of prostitution?

It this episode at least, it's clear that she's figured out her origins and is putting on an act: playing the innocent ingénue to Victor and the vengeful seductress to Caliban. After her awesome verbal and physical smackdown of Caliban, she switches gears and begins to plot death and destruction while simultaneously coming on to him. I can't imagine she's sincere about her newfound desire for Caliban; she's just reverting back to her training as a prostitute to control him, just as she did to Victor at the start of the episode.

These close-ups of her cold hands seem to denote the power she has over them, right?

The whole thing veers into another type of story at this point, with Lily coming out with the following monologue: "We were created to rule, my love. And the blood of mankind will water our garden. Us and our kin and our children and our generations. We are the conquerors." Lily apparently has plans to kill Victor (who she refers to as their "God") and procreate with Caliban, having already identified the two of them as demons, not angels, so that the two of them can take over the world as a new Adam and Eve.

Now is it just me, or does all this sound exactly like what's been going on over in the A-plot, with the devil planning to overthrow God by seducing Vanessa, the Mother of Evil? Lily and Caliban are like a little microcosmic play of the greater forces that surround Vanessa and the demon.

I don't think it can be an accident, which throws up a range of possibilities. That it's Lily, not Vanessa who is the true Mother of Evil, and that the devil is either using Vanessa as a diversion, or has got his pale-skinned beauties mixed up. That Brona obviously Came Back Wrong and now carries her own demon inside her, one that's instinctively starting to put in motion the plans of the devil. That even if it's just a coincidence and a trick of science that brought Lily/Caliban together, it's only a matter of time before darker forces begin to notice their power.

So although this was the best possible resolution to the love triangle, with Lily rising to a position in which she's wielding power over both Victor and Caliban, I'm now afraid that this subplot will end with the boys teaming up to bring her down. Urgh, can't you just see Caliban running and crying to Victor about how his bride-to-be was mean to him? And Victor deciding that Lily is so dangerous that she has to be put down? (You can't tell me that Malcolm's later line on the "erotic power that women hold over men" wasn't thematically written with Lily as well as Vanessa in mind).

I wait in trepidation.

***

But with all that in mind, this is as good a place as any to segue into this episode's second big revelation: Lyle finally translates the Verbis Diablo artefacts in their entirety. Amusingly enough, he's spent this entire season translating the first half, and now we get a lengthier second half which apparently only took him a few minutes. Here's the whole thing:

"In the great war for the heavenly throne, we were vanquished, so God looked down on his defeated angels and found us to be evil angels, so he cast us out. He took us by our winged backs and raised us over his head.

Thence did he fling us from his heavenly throne and cast us down to Earth and to Hell. So we were cleaved apart, two brothers, cast out to two realms, one brother to Earth and the other brother to Hell. And thus will be set in eternal enmity my brother on Earth to feed on the blood of the living by night and myself in Hell to feed on the souls of the dead.

Both in an eternal quest for the Mother of Evil who will release us from our bondage and allow one of us to reconquer Heaven and topple God from his bloody throne. And so will a darkness weigh in on Earth in Heaven everlasting. And so comes the Apocalypse."

FINALLY, some clarity! The key thing we've learned here is that Lucifer had a brother, and whilst he was sent to hell, the brother remained on earth. There's been a frustrating amount of speculation in fandom in whether or not Dorian Grey is this other brother, though the verse makes it very clear that they're talking about the Vampire Master that turned Mina and used her as a tool to lure in Vanessa.

Obviously, he's the as-yet unnamed and unseen Dracula. The book purist in me bristles a little, as Bram Stoker makes it pretty clear in his novel that Dracula was once a mortal man who made himself a vampire through forbidden scientific experiments (rather like Frankenstein in that respect) only for subsequent adaptations to obliterate this reading due to their myriad of different takes on his origins; identifying him as anyone from Vlad Țepeș to Judas of Iscariot to a fallen angel.

But hey, I can work with this. I'm just happy we've finally got some idea of the factions at work in this little drama, as before this moment there's been nothing to differentiate between Lucifer, the Vampire Master, Amon-Ra and Vanessa's demon. So here's what's going on: the devil and his brother are enemies, and both want to claim possession of Vanessa, the apparent Mother of Evil, so that one of them can conquer Heaven and bring about the Apocalypse. Lucifer has the witches working for him, and his brother commands the vampires. Got it. I'm still not entirely sure if Vanessa's demon is Lucifer or one of the Legion, but I suppose it hardly matters as it's clearly on the same team as the being that appeared to Vanessa as both Malcolm and Ethan while she was alone in her room.

Now I want to rewatch the first season with this in mind: that Lucifer is not the same entity as the Vampire Master, and that the myth of Amon-Ra/Amon-Net (as Lyle explains) is simply a "how-to guide" for taking over the world; a collection of cultural prophecies told throughout history and religions, describing deities and demigods that were destined to unleash destruction, of whom Vanessa is the embodiment.

It's Victor who points out that all these deities are women, leading to Malcolm's soon-to-be infamous comment on why this is because of the unholy erotic power women are said to hold over men – but I'm sure there'll be time enough in the last few episodes to deconstruct this to its full extent.

Until then, I'll be busy speculating on who's going to be the one to tell Vanessa that she's being chased by two creatures of darkness?

***

In the midst of all this, it's easy to overlook the third and final big reveal of the episode: the portrait of Dorian Grey. Despite the reflective imagery strewn throughout this episode, it's still a little odd that they chose this as the instalment in which it's finally shown to the audience, and since what we imagine in our heads is always more frightening than anything that could be depicted on-screen, it inevitably comes as something of a let-down.

Interestingly, this entire sequence was spliced with a disenchanted Malcolm leaving for the witches' house in secret. Perhaps the parallel is meant to keep us guessing about Dorian's intentions (after all, he's being contrasted to Malcolm, who intends to kill, but is also a quasi-hero), or perhaps it's to up the suspense by letting Malcolm's walk into danger bleed into Angelique's discovery – but either way, it sort of crowds out Dorian's big moment.

Surely they could have sat on the portrait reveal a little longer, if not simply to give Dorian the room he needs to finally connect properly to the overarching plot. For now he's only relevant due to his connection to other characters (last season it was Vanessa, this season it's Lily) and his thematic importance (he's after the same thing as Evelyn – perpetual youth and beauty), and I still don't know how he's going to be merged into the bigger picture. Enemy or ally? Or maybe just as a distant witness to it all.

Though this episode certainly put him in a villainous light. Poor Angelique. We all saw it coming, and not even the beautiful slow-motion topple in a red velvet dressing gown made me feel better.

***

So on that note: Ferdinand, please don't get yourself killed. He's starting to prod at Evelyn a little bit, but his veneer of confidence is effortlessly broken by that creepy non-consensual kiss.

Still, he's firmly on Vanessa's side, and his insistence on her not telling him where she was going paid off in the way he could truthfully tell Evelyn that he has no idea where she is.  

But will he end up making a deal with the daughter? She waylays him at the front door with a question about Mr Chandler, but we don't learn anything of how that conversation continued.

***

If anything in this season has been injected into the plot because Logan found himself with two extra episodes that he hadn't fully prepared for, then it's the ongoing thread of Inspector Rusk's investigation. It's all beautifully performed and staged, but I'm not sure it's actually going anywhere.

But hey, I can appreciate the verbal ping-pong game between him and Malcolm, and – more importantly – it gave some added context to Mina's original disappearance and the fallout of her death (that Malcolm managed to cover up the manner of her demise and the subsequent funeral). Logan didn't really need to fill in these blanks, as it's not crucial to the ongoing storyline, but now that he's done so we have a fuller understanding of the circumstances.

Along with the full translation of the Verbis Diablo, this was certainly an episode for filling in plot-points.

***

Finally, Malcolm manages to shrug off the bonds of Evelyn's enchantment thanks to Sembene and some very vivid memories. I doubt we'll ever get an answer as to whether his vision in the empty ballroom was somehow magically conjured or just in his head, but it doesn't matter. It's the effect it had on him that's important, and it's love that shakes him free of Evelyn's control.

The visuals for this sequence were beautiful, with the white figures against the red wallpaper, and it's a striking contrast to the cold empty room that Malcolm faces at the end of the episode, with the corpses of his family rising up to greet him.

Because he's such an ass, he goes alone to Evelyn's house to kill her and the other witches, as she suspected he would. Yet later she seems sincere in wanting Malcolm's companionship, with a level of vulnerability that I'm not sure the character warrants (seriously, the reason I've enjoyed Evelyn so much is because she's so utterly evil).

After he rejects her, she starts taunting him with his relationship with Vanessa, and I've honestly no idea if she confirmed that Vanessa is his biological daughter, or whether she was referencing their deep psychological bond. Seriously, what was the deal here? Because no, don't go there, show. It's literally just been done on Salem this very same week!

Either way, she dips into the ever-simmering incestuous vibe that exists between them and which has been rather missing in this season so far. With him now playing the part of the sacrificial lamb, hopefully there'll be some clarification on this for when Vanessa leaps to his rescue next week.

Miscellaneous Observations:

So many reflections:

Mr Lyle struggling to find his way to the front door in Evelyn's house was a great use of that marvellous set. I can easily see a person getting lost in there.

In the scene between Frankenstein and Malcolm, the latter likens love to a jungle "we have to thrash our way out of." And so he does, ironically through his sincere love for his wife and children. In the same scene he even self-diagnoses himself as "enchanted" without realizing it! Frankenstein remains trapped in the jungle for now, though it was nice to have a scene between these two – their relationship hasn't been touched on for quite a while.

"Apparently Lucifer isn't an only child and like most brothers they don't get along." Oh Lyle, I love you.

In the same episode that someone finally points out the strangeness of a giant house that has only one servant, we also learn that some of the rooms are closed off.

The actors playing Mina and Peter must get so excited when they're called in, only to learn they'll be playing corpses. Is it too much to hope for a flashback episode that deals with Mina's marriage to Jonathan Harker and her kidnapping/turn at the hands of Dracula? Where is Jonathan Harker anyway?

Interesting that Caliban is constantly threatening Victor's life, but when Lily embraces the idea that they kill him together he looks utterly terrified.

What to make of these chains on the painting? It suggests that somehow Dorian is trapped – metaphorically trapped, or is he somehow physically bound to the painting?

And what happened to the little scorpion (symbolism!) that Evelyn left on Malcolm's knee? He brushed it off pretty quickly, but it's still in the room somewhere. Chekhov's Scorpion?