Legend of the Seeker: Baneling

It’s the second episode, let’s go! Follow-up episodes are always a hard nut to crack; you’re still laying the groundwork and setting up for future episodes, while concurrently refamiliarizing the audience with the characters and the next phase of their arcs.

And of course, trying to tell a reasonably self-contained story. In this case, Legend of the Seeker takes its inspiration from Night of the Living Dead and manages a genuinely suspenseful whodunnit that explores the traumatic aftermath of a bloody war, advances the overarching narrative and provides a surprising take on how Cara is coping with her new situation.

Plus it ended on a stinger that I did not see coming.

It opens on Richard, Kahlan, Zed and Cara tidying up their campsite, with some basic catchup exposition: Richard’s brand, the Stone of Tears, the Abbott of Ulrich where they hope to get more information – you know all this.

Of more interest is that Kahlan and Zed are on edge regarding the presence of Cara in their midst, with the latter surreptitiously returning Kahlan’s dagger to her and confiding that he slept with it under his pillow.

They reach the monastery only to find it burned to the ground, and Cara justifies her presence among them for the first time by providing important intel: any prisoners would be taken to the death camp in Tothrayne.

We cut to Tothrayne, where monks and other civilians are being marshalled towards the gallows, being methodically executed despite their shouts of horror that the war has ended. The proceedings are presided over by General Dormander, who on being told by another D’Haran that now might be a good time to exercise clemency – not necessarily for its own sake, but because there are reports of reprisals being carried out against D’Harans – responds that the best way to prevent any retribution is to simply kill everyone.

That’s the cue for our heroes to burst through the fortress’s gates, and oh how I’ve missed these ludicrous slow-motion, quick-cut fight scenes. Kahlan in particular has mastered the art of fighting with long loose hair and billowy sleeves by spinning constantly while throwing daggers. It’s amazing.

They seize control of the fort, and since the rest of the episode is going to unfold as a murder mystery, we’re introduced to a wide range of characters as potential suspects. It gets a little hard to tell them all apart, so here’s the rundown: Eleanor, a young woman who is reunited with her son William; Brother Bertrand, a monk who has information about what happened at Ulrich; Commander Craden, the D’Haran who spoke out against the executions; Gerald, a member of the Resistance who provides information to Kahlan; and Flynn, a youth who was helping the D’Harans with manual labour before being double-crossed and taken to the gallows (though he extracts himself when Richard arrives).

Also worth noting is that the D’Harans were hoarding treasure, including valuables taken from the monastery, which Flynn was helping to stash in a trunk. On seeing the malnourished state of the freed prisoners, the heroes decide to stick around for a while to get them resettled, much to Cara’s confusion.

Unsurprisingly, she’s the most interesting character in this episode, and the writers didn’t do what I was expecting with her. The most obvious option would have been to show her butting heads with Kahlan, with each woman vying for Richard’s attention and validation (urgh) but instead we get a Cara that’s genuinely – albeit tentatively – trying.

Her insensitivity in responding to the distressed people is in-character, as is her assumption they’ll be moving on quickly when it becomes apparent that Abbot Henry isn’t there. In response, Kahlan tells her to demonstrate some compassion.

And Cara, instead of doubling down or even just rolling her eyes... takes her advice. It’s obviously completely foreign to her, but when Flynn approaches her with a dead body in his arms, claiming it’s his brother and that he needs a horse to transport him to a nearby village so that he might be laid to rest with the rest of his family, Cara acquiesces.

It's actually a really great scene, as you can tell Cara doesn’t really give a shit about this guy’s grief, but on briefly exchanging looks with Kahlan as the latter goes by on other business, she gives him permission to take one of the horses. She even says: “sorry for your loss” – not something she means, but which is clearly what she thinks Kahlan might say.

And the twist? Turns out that Flynn doesn’t have a brother at all, but is just looking for an opportunity to get away with a horse and cart and all the treasure that the D’Harans have been hoarding. I honestly didn’t see it coming.

But this poses a problem for our heroes since the treasure contains a locket once owned by the Abbot Henry. On discussing their situation with Brother Bertrand, who tells them at the Abbot was killed in the attack on Ulrich, he divulges that the potential location of the Stone of Tears is found within the locket that’s been passed down through the generations from Abbott to Abbott.

Commander Craden leads them to the trunk in the storeroom, but the only thing inside is a dead body – one that Cara recognizes as Flynn’s “brother”. Her first attempt at compassion has gone utterly wrong. And the situation is only going to get worse: they’re interrupted by the sounds of horrified screams, and run back to Bertrand to find him surrounded by murdered corpses of various civilians.

According to him, it was General Dormander, a.k.a. the Butcher, and our heroes respond by ushering everyone into the fortress dungeons and locking the doors behind them, with guard duty assigned to Gerald. Kahlan gives him her dagger for further protection.

As for Flynn, he’s managed to transport the treasure to a cave, and cracks it open to look over his new fortune. Of course, the first thing he grabs is the locket, prying it open and watching as black sand spills from its interior and soaks into his hand, forming a strange tattoo on his palm.

(Just to wrap up this particular subplot, Cara is sent after Flynn and finds him spending his ill-gotten gains at the nearest brothel. Instead of resorting to violence she opts to seduce him, promising all sorts of whispered favours (inaudible to the audience) in exchange for his cooperation. Apparently it’s enough to get him racing out the front door. It’s all considerably sillier than Cara’s previous experiment with mercy over brute force, but I suppose it sheds some degree of insight into the duality of her being).

***

Despite Bertrand pointing the finger at the Butcher, and the gang discovering that the mass D’Haran graves have been collectively emptied, it’s still a point of contention as to who exactly is killing these people. As Zed points out, the Mord Sith are capable of resurrecting the dead by administering the Breath of Life...

But as it turns out, the Butcher is back. He woke up – just as Darken Rahl did at the start of the previous episode – in that weird green hell filled with writhing naked bodies, greeted by the spirit of Rahl who makes him an offer: to return to the realm of the living and continue his slaughter. But is he behind the deaths at Tothrayne? Zed draws a distinction between Rahl (who appeared to Richard as nothing more than a spirit) and whatever is happening here, which requires a corporeal assailant.  

They get their answer when Abbot Henry makes himself known: quite dead – as confirmed in Bertrand’s account of the assault on the monastery – but having been granted a second life.

Turns out that after his execution, Abbot Henry also woke up in the underworld (yikes, does everyone end up there, regardless of how good or bad they were in life?) and was offered the same deal by Darken Rahl. Unlike the Butcher, the Abbot accepts the chance to return to life in order to find his stolen locket... but there’s a price. He’s now what’s known as a baneling, a resurrected dead person who can only sustain their existence by killing others.

After an attempt to place some limitations on this staggering level of power (according to Zed, the dead will only be able to rise in places of “great death” – like say, a massacre) the Abbot reveals that his time is nearly up... unless he finds someone to kill.

Taking another step toward moral compromise, Richard comes up with the idea of killing one of the D’Haran prisoners, his justification being that it will ultimately be in the service of saving many more lives with the knowledge the Abbot has to impart... but on descending down into the dungeons, they discover all the D’Harans are already dead – including Commander Craden.

The Abbot has only enough time to give them the basics: there’s a rune concealed in the locket, opening it will lead to said rune being imprinted on a person’s palm, which must then be taken to the province of Pamorah to unlock... they never find out what, as the Abbot dissolves into ash mid-sentence.

***

Their problems are mounting: the Butcher and his men are still out there somewhere, the pile of dead D’Harans could take the Keeper’s deal and return as banelings, Flynn is brought back with Cara but the rune on his palm is immoveable (they can’t have Kahlan confess him as that might interfere with the magic), and they still have no idea who is killing people in the encampment.  

Kahlan suspects Gerald, who had the keys to the dungeons and an available weapon, but as Richard and Zed burn the D’Haran bodies, he swears he had nothing to do with it and returns Kahlan’s dagger.

But in the second twist of the episode that I honestly didn’t see coming, Flynn sits alone in his cell, hearing the sound of the door being unlocked. He gets up, agreeing to go with Richard to Pamorah... only for Eleanor, the mother of young William, to burst in and immediately stab him to death.

Turns out she’s been Dead All Along, having taken up the Keeper’s offer of a second life before Richard and Kahlan even reached Tothrayne so that she could find and care for her son. Slow clap, show. Nicely done. The reveal even weaves together a few little details that have been strewn across the episode as clues: Eleanor mentioned at one point that her father was a blacksmith (which accounts for how she’s able to access the cells without a key) and when she was informed by Cara that her family’s village was razed to the ground it’s obvious in hindsight she’s not only upset at their presumed deaths, but that there’s nowhere for her to take her son.

Following the Rule of Three, we see Flynn in the underworld waking up and being approached by Darken Rahl, just as the Butcher and the Abbot were. Though he’s there long enough for Rahl to see the rune on his palm, he’s called back to life not through the Keeper’s deal, but by Cara using the Breath of Life on him. NICE use of her specific abilities, and Zed’s mention of it earlier in the episode was clearly set up for this circumvention of the Keeper’s power.

Rahl sends the Butcher and his men to Tothrayne in order to kill Flynn all over again, but in the fight scene that commences, Richard fills the fortress with explosions and blows everything sky-high. It goes a little overboard, but hey – the Butcher is well and truly dead this time.

So it was a solid and surprising episode that covers a lot of ground. Its two major twists caught me off-guard, Cara’s initiation into the gang occurred in a way I wasn’t expecting, and as ever, some interesting ethical questions are raised. Should they feed the D’Haran prisoners when the food stores are already so low? Should they allow the Abbot to kill someone in order to buy enough time for him to share valuable intel? And should they kill their enemies to save others, knowing that it only strengths the potential power of the Keeper?

The writers aren’t shying away from the fallout of the D’Harans being defeated; they may be on the backfoot but they’re still extremely dangerous, and the pain and suffering that their war inflicted isn’t just going to go away now that Rahl is dead. Those little character portraits that the episode created of its guest stars, from poor Eleanor killing others in order to protect her son, to Commander Craden who knew what the D'Harans were doing was wrong but only made the slightest effort to push back, to Flynn’s opportunism in taking off with the stolen treasure, all contribute to the portrayal of a world that’s not going to heal or fix itself overnight.

That we saw three different people take up the Keeper’s offer of resurrection for three very different reasons: to continue the slaughter, to protect their child, or to impart necessary information to their allies, was a great way of adding to the show’s larger theme of free choice and hard decisions, and it makes for great connective tissue between the two seasons – this could only happen in the aftermath of a war, and it heralds more resurrections to come now that the Keeper has a barter system in place.

And then, the stinger. William is given to the care of Brother Bertrand, who promises to take him to a good foster family in a nearby village. Only as they approach their destination, Betrand senses something is wrong... moments before William cuts his throat. It’s revealed that William is a baneling too, and the episode ends with him leaving behind Bertrand’s body as he heads into the village by himself.

Yikes, that was super-dark, and perhaps an indication of season two’s tone as it moves further into its story arc.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Richard tells Craden that judgment passed on the D’Harans is down to the Mother Confessor. Is that really in Kahlan’s job description? Not arguing, just wondering.

The last episode featured reasonably-recognizable kiwi actor Shane Cortese as the Resistance fighter; this one has Todd Rippon, who popped up a couple of times on Xena Warrior Princess, most notably as Goliath.

Why’d they bury the D’Harans in their armour? Take it off first, if not just to give the villagers something to sell or trade!

A nice detail throughout is that even though Cara exchanges words with Kahlan, she only really talks to Richard. She’s not cold-shouldering the others, but she’s here for him and obviously feels most comfortable in taking his orders. Like I said, it’s an interesting way of handling her induction into this team dynamic, as she’s surprisingly open to changing her behaviour and following Richard’s suggestions (without losing her cold veneer). In other words, she’s trying and that’s not something I necessarily expected.

At one stage Richard talks of people being “hung” and my pendant self cringes. Pictures are hung. People are hanged.

It was unexpectedly funny when Flynn is interrupted by Cara during a medieval variation of Suck and Blow with a coin... and immediately swallows it in terror.

On that note, it looks as though he’s going to be sticking around for a little while – at least until the gang gets to Pamorah. It was a fairly interesting take on a character: someone who is initially presented as a victim, what with the D’Haran soldier forcing him to stack away the treasure in exchange for a “reward”, only for that reward to end up being a place on the gallows. We’re primed to pity him when he appears with his dead brother, and so the twist that he’s taking off with the treasure comes as an effective twist. And honestly, why shouldn’t he take it? Aside from the selfishness in not sharing with others who clearly needed it, he’s not really committing a crime here, especially as the D’Harans stole it from other people. Amoral rather than immoral, I’m interested in what the writers plan to do with him going forward...

After Kahlan talking up the virtues of compassion to Cara, her final scene with Eleanor is pretty baffling, leaving the poor woman to die alone in an empty cell. She can’t even stay with her until the end? Or give a verbal assurance that William will be taken care of? (Sure it was implied, but only very vaguely).

As of this week, Legend of the Seeker is my scheduled Saturday night viewing, and it’s definitely something to look forward to after a stressful week (okay, it’s not that bad, but you can feel the tension in the air when it comes to the community and the ever-lingering threat of Covid). But this is straightforward good-versus-evil, even as it starts dipping into some moral ambiguity, and that’s what I need right now. As long as things don’t get too dark – and that stinger certainly gives one pause, though perhaps it was just a nod to the episode’s undead subject matter – I’m looking forward to what’s next.