It’s the “Cara reckons with the trauma of her past” episode, which we all knew was coming, and is unsurprisingly built around the typical tropes of a Courtroom Episode. We learn more about her past, she learns more about her past, Kahlan deals with her own feelings regarding a Mord Sith in their midst, and it’s all wrapped in the trappings of a legal procedural.
It starts on a completely different note though, with Kahlan having a dream about a child in the desert, a raven, and a bed of white flowers that bleed and die around her. It ends with the child telling her: “soon you will be the last of your kind.”
All four travellers gathered around the campfire wake up to notice a very-real raven sitting in a tree nearby, and on hearing the details of her dream, Zed tells them it was sent by a group of nomads known as the Dreamcasters. Okay, sure. I’m sure all this will be important in a later episode, but for now Kahlan is spooked enough to want to head straight to Valeria to check on her sister.
Cara argues against this, saying it goes against their stated mission, but anyone who recalls Kahlan and Shota’s conversation in the Bad Future episode knows what’s really going on. The Confessors who took refuge on Valeria, including Kahlan’s sister Dennee, were all killed by Mord Sith.
Not being much of a sentimentalist, Cara doesn’t bother hiding the truth for very long, and we get more details as to what exactly happened – Darken Rahl heard about the male Confessor born to Denee and sent his Mord Sith to the island to capture it. On hearing of their arrival, Denee killed her own child to prevent him from falling into Rahl’s hands, before Cara killed her in turn.
So... it’s still a bit of a Bus Crash considering an entire episode was devoted to rescuing Dennee and her baby before they (and the other Confessors) are all killed offscreen, but at least this is a mildly better coda to that particular storyline than what Reckoning provided. Though that poor baby never even got a name!
The real purpose of this scene is to showcase Cara’s mildly defensive but almost childlike confusion at why everyone’s making a big deal out of it. According to her she was “only following orders” and her killing of Denee was quick and merciful, so what’s the big deal? Kahlan doesn’t quite see it that way, and within seconds she’s in the Con Dar (or “blood rage”) with black pupils and terrifying game face. As Richard tries to hold her down, he yells at Cara to make a run for it, and in the ensuing chaos, Flynn also takes his chance to make an escape.
But Zed has been suspicious of Flynn for a while, and cast a tracking spell on his clothing just in case he decided to do a runner. Seeing him as their most important target, the trio start following the magical footprints he’s left behind him... only to discover that he’s smarter than he looks and has dressed up a straw dummy and left it leaning against a tree.
It's at this point a messenger catches up with them from a nearby village and asks Kahlan to dispense justice in her role as Mother Confessor in the execution of Cara, which splits the story up into two distinct plots. Just to wrap up the Flynn stuff, he ends up in a village and starts pickpocketing, only for a random stranger to recognize the mark on his palm and strongarm him into accompanying him to Tothrayne.
Just as I was left rolling my eyes at the sheer contrivance that Flynn would run into the one other person in the world who understood the purpose of the rune, it turns out that the stranger is Zed in disguise. And what do you know, he’s disguised himself with that magical mirror from season one’s Mirror! I have to admit I keep underestimating this show, as I didn’t foresee the twist or the return of that particular MacGuffin.
Having scared the crap out of Flynn by casting a spell on him and threatening to cut off his hand, “Zed” appears just in the nick of time to rescue him and ensure that he won’t be running off any time soon. (Honestly, please tell me they get to Tothrayne soon. Enough time has already been spent on this character).
***
Over in the more interesting storyline, a lone Cara finds herself a tavern, a meal and a bed for the night – and just for good measure she takes a good-looking guy with her. But the following morning, she heads downstairs and comes face-to-face with a gang of men looking for a fight (though I initially believed they were all lining up for their turn). Unsurprisingly, she takes them all out with ease.
From there, she goes to a simple cottage and stares at a woman hanging out washing – and there’s a nice little Bait and Switch here: I initially thought that the conflicted look on her face pertained to her decision to steal some civilian clothes... but then why would she care about doing something as relatively harmless as that?
Instead, it turns out that this woman is her sister Grace, and this was Cara’s childhood home. She goes to turn away, only to run into a little girl and her father, who naturally believes that Cara is there to kidnap his child, at which point Grace runs up and recognizes her.
Grace is eager to reconnect with her sister, inviting her in, sharing childhood memories and giving her a dress to wear, but her husband has secretly notified the authorities and Cara is hauled away before she can even take her first bite of dinner.
This is the point where Kahlan is recruited by the villager to return to Stowecroft and execute the Mord Sith they’ve found guilty of crimes against their people. There’s a brief but interesting conversation between Richard and Kahlan, in which he says Confessors aren’t executioners and Cara shouldn’t be held responsible for every bad thing the Mord Sith have ever done, while Kahlan rejoinder is that she killed her sister and what she’s doing isn’t vengeance, it’s following the will of the people.
To be blunt, I kind of think Kahlan is making the better points here, especially after we learn that little girls have been stolen from Stowecroft for years.
However, we also get an answer to my question from the premiere episode: are Mord Sith susceptible to being confessed? It turns out that YES, they are, big time. When Mord Sith are confessed the results are not only fatal, but incredibly painful. In asking Kahlan to execute Cara instead of doing it themselves, the people of Stowecroft are demanding that she suffer first.
Richard comes up with one of his trademark crazy plans that relies totally on the non-existent goodwill of other people: that Cara be tried for a second time with him as her lawyer. If he can convince everyone she’s not a monster, she’ll be spared. Good luck with that, Richard.
They arrive in Stowecroft to find Cara in the stocks, and a woman leaning down to offer her some water. Spoiler alert: these women are known to each other, but it’s unclear whether Cara recognizes her in this moment. I suppose it doesn’t matter either way, but a Genre Savvy viewer will know there’s more to this interaction than meets the eye.
Richard gets a chance to speak to Cara privately, and tells her that she’s a victim of the Mord Sith (he knows from experience what they do to break people). But Cara is equal parts in denial, proud, and perhaps even a bit suicidal. There’s a fascinating psychology at play here, as a few weeks on the road with Richard and Kahlan obviously hasn’t been enough to mend Cara of the years of brainwashing and torture she suffered at the hands of the Mord Sith. According to her, being chosen was an honour that made her strong and powerful. Yeah, you already know she’s not going to be a big help when it comes to Richard defending her in court.
Kahlan has laid down the rules of Cara’s trial: the hearing will be overseen by three fair-minded elders, and if they still deem her guilty, then she’ll go ahead with the execution.
Richard’s opening statement reveals that Cara helped him defeat Darken Rahl (which he really should have emphasized more) before veering into the sad backstory of all Mord Sith, that they’re “not born but broken.” Grace steps up to speak on Cara’s behalf, sharing details of the day her sister was dragged away by the Mord Sith, which was closely followed by the abduction of her father.
Now, if we all remember the details of Denna, we already know what happened to Cara’s father. It’s part of a Mord Sith’s training that she eventually kill her own father, something that Cara unrepentantly confesses to. It reminds me very much of this skit.
The court convenes to have an argument in a backroom: Kahlan says Richard is forcing the villagers to relive their trauma, Richard insists it’s just false pride on her part, and the Council of Old White Dudes is just appalled that she would call her father weak and pathetic and admit to killing him. Richard heads back into the courtroom to demonstrate the effects of the agiel and how they’re used to train little girls.
Cara argues that this only taught her strength and endurance, and we get a flashback to her as a child in a cold, dank cell. An adult Mord Sith gives her an agiel and tells her that the only way to deal with the rats is to kill them, and we get more of that insidious victim-blaming that we saw with Denna and Jennsen, with Cara being asked: “if you want to die the death of a thousand little nibbles, that is your decision to make. But if you consider your life more important than a rat’s, then you must kill them.”
Richard then turns to the subject of her father’s murder, something Cara says she wasn’t forced to do, but rather that “they gave me the honour.” In the flashback, her father is dragged into the cell and unable to speak as the Mord Sith accuses him of deliberately selling Cara to them for a handsome price, and that now he’s returned to do the same to her sister. On being given the opportunity to deny it, he can say nothing, and so the Start of Darkness for Cara begins.
This all happens rather too quickly for my liking, even taking into account Cara’s age and the conditions she’s in. It’s obvious that her father is trying to tell her something, and that she would never question the whereabouts of her mother or sister is a little odd, but it does segue into the most interesting part of the courtroom drama:
Richard tries to convince Cara that she and her father were manipulated; that the pain of the agiel would make a person say or do anything, that he himself almost killed Kahlan after being tortured with it... but Cara claps back with the fact that he didn’t. He found the strength to protect Kahlan instead of killing her, something that her father lacked. “Your love for her was strong enough to overcome everything they did to you. My father’s love for me wasn’t. He cracked.”
It disintegrates into little more than squabbling at this point: Cara says the Mord Sith welcomed her into their family, Richard says that “family” nearly beat her to death and left her at the bottom of a ravine, she says without the strength the Mord Sith gave her he’d be dead, Richard agrees and asks why she saved his life, she says because he’s the new Lord Rahl, he says she’s only recently come to accept that, and finally gets to the crux of it: he wants her to admit that she didn’t have a choice.
When she refuses, he harks back to the conversation they had earlier in their jail cell: that she’d rather die than grovel and beg for her life... unless it was an order from Lord Rahl. In this moment he gives her that order, but before we see whether Cara will obey it or not (seriously, would she have?) the women who tried to give her water earlier interrupts.
She was Cara’s old schoolteacher and speaks in her defense, but Kahlan senses something is wrong: she can’t read her. And as was laid out in the premiere, there’s only one type of woman she can’t read – a Mord Sith.
Cara is questioned on who this woman is to her, and she replies: her teacher, in every sense of the word. Turns out that “Mrs Crantan” was actually Mistress Nathair, who posed as a schoolteacher in the village in order to chose potential Mord Sith among the daughters of the community – twelve in all.
That’s pretty harrowing stuff, and Nathair is promptly arrested, with both her and Cara sentenced to death by confession.
Kahlan feels pressured to abide by the judgment of the elders, and in a courtyard outside, she dutifully confesses Nathair. It’s kind of shocking that Kahlan would go through with this knowing that it would make her suffer, though in truth she dies pretty quickly and without much writhing about in agony. She does however, have time for one last confession: she tells Cara that her father didn’t break after all; the Mord Sith poured burning liquid down his throat so that he was unable to speak.
To be honest, this revelation isn’t strictly necessary. As with the retcon of Rey’s parents between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, Cara learning that her father loved her after all is certainly nice for her to know, but it also denies her the challenge of accepting that even though some people are weak, it doesn’t make them bad people. It would have been a harder path for Cara to walk, knowing that her father couldn’t withstand the pain of the agiel, but understanding that they were both victims of the Mord Sith perhaps would have been a more realistic end.
(Perhaps Nathair could have revealed that her father’s hadn’t sold her out, but was unwilling to speak because he was desperate to save her sister).
Nathair promptly dies and Cara turns to Kahlan, asking her to confess her. But naturally Kahlan can’t go through with it and turns to the crowd, insisting that Cara is truly remorseful for her crimes. (Though at this point, Cara probably thinks she’s weak and stupid for not going through with it). The crowd becomes a mob, and they fight their way out.
It’s somewhat unclear how they manage to escape, but there’s less than five minutes left, so we gotta wrap this up. (Though there is time for Cara to save Kahlan’s life from a guy with a crossbow).
In discussion together, Richard tells Kahlan that he’s sent Cara away so she doesn’t have to see her sister’s killer every day – but on meeting up with her at her sister’s house, Kahlan invites Cara to continue travelling with them. According to her, she can’t forgive her for what happened to Denee, but if something should happen to her, then Richard will need Cara’s protection. (And yeah, it’s fun that two women are talking about the need to protect a man).
So Cara and Grace bid farewell, the latter asking that they meet again someday, and Cara has one last flashback of her father, musing about what she’ll grow up to be. And yeah, it got to me. What a sad story.
Miscellaneous Observations:
Kahlan is still flummoxed by Richard’s constant defense of Cara, but to Bridget Regan’s unending credit, it’s not playing as jealousy. And I get where she’s coming from! Cara murdered her sister, something I felt was actually downplayed a little in order to justify Cara still travelling with them. Kahlan’s grief isn’t dwelt on, and though I understand that Dennee comes back in some capacity later this season, she obviously doesn’t know that yet.
But on that note, does Kahlan know the whole story regarding the Bad Future? As far as I can recall, Richard has never clearly stated that: “Cara saved my life several times in a post-apocalyptic version of the future, and I feel like I owe her for that since we literally wouldn’t be here if not for her.” Which is something that Kahlan probably needs to hear.
Why didn’t the Mord Sith take both sisters? What quality did Cara have that Grace didn’t?
As noted, Cara says she’d rather die than grovel or beg for mercy... unless Lord Rahl specifically orders her to. At that moment in the jailcell, Richard refuses to do this, but later he does use this leverage to order her into telling the truth. I suspect that he’ll be moving more into this moral compromise as the season goes on, ironically as Cara starts to move away from her Mord Sith training.
I didn’t see the reveal concerning Nathair coming (I know I sound like an idiot the way this show keeps surprising me) but in hindsight the Mord Sith who was addressing Cara as a child is kept in so much shadow and her voice so obviously modulated that it wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure it out – just someone smarter than me, apparently.
But what exactly was Nathair trying to achieve? If we assume that she wanted to save Cara, then why did she interrupt Richard when he exercised his power as Lord Rahl to force Cara to tell the truth? Whatever she said under that level of duress possibly could have saved her. Or was she just trying to spare Cara that indignity? Or if she did want Cara to die, then why did she draw attention to herself, especially with a Confessor present? As a relatively minor character, her main purpose was simply to act as a plot-twist and someone who knew the truth of Cara’s father, but it would have been nice to get a better understanding of what she was really up to.
Kahlan literally executed someone in this episode. Is that... going to affect her psychologically in any way?
A good episode that provides disturbing insight into Cara’s childhood and mentality, though there is of course one glaring ethical problem that remains. As Richard proved in this episode, all the Mord Sith are victims: “every one of them starts out as an innocent little girl.” Every one of them. That includes Triana, and Nathair, and Denna, and all the Mord Sith we’ve seen so far. All of them went through the harrowing training that Cara did. All of them are victims. So logically, all of them should get the chance to redeem themselves.
That mercy certainly wasn’t extended to Nathair in this episode, who in her own turn was once a little girl torn from her family, and though I’ve no idea whether any other Mord Sith will be appearing this season, the reprieve that was shown to Cara should apply to them as well.
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