Whew, that was one heck of an episode. Let's get the Big Reveal out of the way first, since I know that's what we're all most interested in discussing: that the Castor Original is finally found and...
...it's not only a woman who's the original for both Castor and Leda, but she's also Mrs S's mother. As a result, the fandom is currently divided on whether this is a great twist or whether the shark has just been jumped. Perhaps it might have been less divisive if there had been only one revelation regarding the original Castor, but this triple whammy is a lot to absorb.
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| Hmm, what other mother figure do we know who smokes? |
For now I can accept that Kendall Malone has two cell lines a lot more than the fact she's Mrs S's mother, as the whole twin-absorbing-a-twin-in-the-womb deal isn't as zany as it sounds. The term for individuals who have done so is a Chimera, and I recall watching a documentary years ago in which a young mother was put through the ringer because DNA tests "proved" she wasn't the mother of her own children. In fact, it was down to the fact her children had inherited the non-existent sister's genes.
It's confusing, but apparently not that uncommon. In any case, Kendall Malone's condition fits in very nicely with the established motifs of the show: she is a twin, just like Helena and Sarah, she had a brother, just as the Leda and Castor clones are male/female siblings, and she provides an explanation for the oft-used Leda and Castor terms. In the past I've wondered why the projects were named after a mother/son duo instead a brother/sister one (which would have been more apt considering the relationship between the two sets of clones), but now we know: the original Leda is the literal mother of Castor, just as in Greek mythology. The clues were there the whole time, so in this respect I say: well played, show.
Slightly harder to swallow is the seeming coincidence that Kendall is Mrs S's mother. However, I'm reserving judgement considering there's still one more episode to convince me that there's a reason why Mrs S of all people ended up fostering Sarah.
But in terms of outlandishness, is it really any different from Olivier's tail back in season one?
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Okay, so let's backtrack a little. Sarah, Felix and Mrs S arrive in London to search for the Castor Original and kill him – or at least that's Mrs S's plan. Her motivation for cold-blooded murder is pretty justifiable (so far as such a thing is justifiable): it's to remove a threat to her children and to stop the Castors from sterilizing women. Once the Original is dead, there's no potential cure for the boy-clones.
She gets her contacts together, and in less than twelve hours two of them are murdered – the first while Marie Doyle Kennedy is taking the chance to show off her singing voice at the pub. But before the ill-fated Terry dies at the end of a plug and cord, he manages to tell the others that the number in Duncan's riddle is a prisoner number, and has another contact track down said prisoner's address.
Unfortunately, he's also in the pay of Ferdinand. Yes – Ferdinand is back, which is a bad thing, but James Frain is back, which is a good thing. He's the guy who ends up killing the taxi driver who takes Sarah to Kendall Malone's house, though not before giving us another little glimpse into Sarah's past (the taxi driver apparently moved her around as a very young child, and may well have been the person to finally put her in Mrs S's care – in which case it's a pity he was killed off so soon).
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Over in the B plot, Cosima suspects Shay of being a military spy and goes to Delphine for help. The evidence is there: she knew about Cosima's illness, she asked about Sarah, she picked up The Island of Doctor Moreau – but it's all a little flimsy. One can't help but think Delphine would have taken the smallest of prefixes to head over to Shay's apartment with goons in tow to threaten her with razor blades and a bath full of hot water.
And that was pretty disturbing, right? Delphine was seriously scary in these scenes, all the more so because she looked genuinely disappointed when she was given reason not to go through with any torture. And Ksenia Solo did a great job in looking both incredulous and terrified at being menaced in the safety of her own home. I seriously doubt Shay/Cosima will be able to survive this hit to their relationship.
But worth noting is that in siccing Delphine on Shay, Cosima's motivation (as with Mrs S) was the protection of Sarah – her need to find out who gave away the location of the book so as to lessen the potential danger Sarah was walking into on going to London. And Sarah eventually returns the favour by telling Siobhan that they can't possibly kill Kendall as her genes hold the cure for Cosima's illness. How great is it that all these female characters are being spurred on by their concern for one another?
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Over in the Hendrix household, Donnie is having a really bad day. He wakes up covered in facial cuts and soon learns that Jason has withdrawn his support with Pouchy, which means that a hired thug turns up to trash Bubbles, demand the pills be returned, and take off with Helena's canister.
And wow, what an ass Jason turned out to be. He knows this will hurt Alison too, right? But whereas Jason is enough of a jerk to pull this crap because of a bruised ego, Donnie proves his good-man-at-heart credentials by being willing to humiliate himself to get Helena's canister back. Thankfully Helena has his back in THE funniest clone-impersonates-clone sequence this show has ever done.
It's funny because it's so terrible. She puts on a hat and that's it. She barely even tries to cover her accent.
And it's at this point that the show once more veers heavily into black comedy as Helena (presumably) slaughters the entire warehouse with a guillotine blade after Oscar and Gemma are threatened. And I find it fascinating how the writers chose to try and "justify" this event, even within the context of black comedy. Obviously the world isn't going to mourn too deeply for a bunch of drug-dealers, but at least one person in that warehouse was a very young woman. Therefore it must be Louisa that makes the verbal threat against the Hendrix children.
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| Bad idea... |
And having established at the start of the episode that Helena still has a violent streak (teaching Gemma how to eye-gouge) and being reminded by Gracie to try and take another path, the implied threat to children is the only understandable thing that could spur her to murder – reminding us at the same time that she's still a very dangerous individual.
So does all this bring the Alison/Donnie drug-dealing business to a close? They've got a refrigerator full of cash, so I almost hope Alison doesn't win this election. Can you imagine the scandal if all this came out?
***
And finally, we discover who the true mole at Leda was: little Gracie. I never seriously suspected Shay as she was almost too obvious, and instead put my money on Doctor Nealon – though this theory did have a plot-hole: he never actually saw the book.
In hindsight, Gracie did – or at least overheard Sarah discussing it with Mrs S and Felix. That very same scene gave us her motivation: fear that Mark was also a "mayfly" who would die without proper treatment, something that slipped right past me at the time. Again, well played show.
But just to clarify, can we be absolutely sure that Gracie is the mole that this guy –
– was talking about to Virginia? His appearance at the pickup certainly hints as such, but I still think Doctor Nealon might be up to something.
Miscellaneous Observations:
This episode also gives us a quick check-in with Rudy, who is glitching badly. Still, it can't be that hard to crack a code that was taught to an eight year old.
I can easily picture Ethan Duncan going about various jails specifically searching for a Chimera, just so he could have the neatness of a single donor behind all his little clones. But if not that, what made Kendall viable for the project? Was he looking for something in particular?
I loved the moment at the pub with Sarah and Felix that captured the feeling all kids get when they realize their parents had a life before they came along.
When she gets panicked, Sarah always reverts to calling Mrs S "mum." Aww.
In shows like this dead bodies are a dime a dozen, and so it's up to the actors to bring weight to the sight of violence and death. As such, Terry's death actually felt like a significant event thanks to Mrs S, Sarah and Felix's horror – unlike the death of the taxi driver, which went completely unremarked upon.
As open as I am to the idea of Kendall as the original donor, I'll admit I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get to see Tatiana Maslany in aging prosthetics, playing a sixty-something version of herself. I mean, if she's a clone of Kendall, shouldn't they be identical? Or at least have a very strong resemblance? The photograph at least, of Kendall holding Siobhan as a baby, should have been Tatiana.
It makes your mind boggle to think that Sarah and Mrs S are technically biological half-sisters, though the introduction of Kendall provides yet another example of a bad mother (or shitmother as Helena would say) who killed Siobhan's husband and went to jail for it. There's no way this is a coincidence – it's officially a theme.
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