As a baby, Malachi aged incredibly fast – he was born
after less than a month’s pregnancy, and he was a toddler mere weeks after
birth. This has continued – and now Malachi, at most a year old, is a strapping
young man in his late teens. And Azazeal, lord of the Nephilim, Fallen Angel,
Demon, master of infernal forces is faced with the challenge of a teenaged boy.
Particularly Malachi’s habit of leaving the church while Ella is still at large
and looking to kill him- something Azazeal laments about throughout the episode.
Azazeal has also brought his demonic fairy, Perie, home as well – it turns out
she’s one of the first women who tempted the angels to fall from heaven; and
Azazeal uses her to try and keep Malachi busy.
Ella is, of course, not in any shape to go Malachi
hunting, still in the mightily unpleasant throws of withdrawal, crashing at
Leon’s friend, Max’s, under the care of Leon. Leon’s also worried because Ella
seems to be getting worse – but they don’t trust anyone to get help.
Thelma’s worried that the hospital succeeded and Ella may
be permanently stripped of her powers. She wants to tell Leon the truth, let
him see Thelma and be brought into the mystical world so he knows what he’s risking
by helping them. Ella denies it – he’s just a normal guy and she accuses Thelma
of being lonely. I think this is meant to make Thelma look selfish – but doesn’t
she have a right to be lonely? Is it so wrong for her to want to speak to
someone? Even Leon? Ella urges Leon to leave but he refuses to abandon her,
especially in that state. If she’s well and doesn’t want him, fine, but he’s
not going to leave her sick and alone.
Leon has other worries – he has run out of money and, in
desperation, he calls Tom, his room-mate and friend for help (though Tom is
watched by Jez agent Roxeanne). Roxanne does her very best to fill Tom with her
passive aggressive little manipulations about the trouble Leon’s in and how he
needs help and how him delaying just makes everything worse. Worried, Tom
breaks and tells Roxanne he’s talked to Leon, that Leon needs cash and that he’s
staying with an ex-student of the school, Max. Of course Roxanne rushes of to
tell DemonPriestHeadmaster Jez.
He heads on over to strangle Ella while she’s weak and
helpless. And her powers don’t work – she can’t even hit him with a lamp with
them! She can pick up a pair of scissors and stab him though, which she does.
And it’s one of those rewind and watch again moments, deeply satisfying. It
doesn’t kill him – he starts to turn Nephilim and Ella runs from the building,
into the rain and collapses
Jez gets to go to Azazeal, Malachi and new demonfairy to explain the scissors in his neck and how Ella, with no powers, got away from him. Azazeal is not amused and quite scathing about it.
Ella is found by a passing good Samaritan and Thelma – but
Thelma can’t call Leon to the scene because, of course, he can’t see or hear
her. Which is frustrating to say the least. Leon arrives just in time to run
off with Ella to a motel before the ambulance arrives.
And then the next bombshell is dropped, without her powers Ella is mortal. And you don’t see many 500 year old mortals around. She’s dying slowly from the inside. In desperation, Thelma begs Ella to ask Leon to make tea so she can slip Ella’s spirit potion into it – and let Leon see the spirit world.
He drinks the tea and lo he can see and hear Thelma – to which
he runs and hides in the bathroom. I just love how impatient and irritated
Thelma is by everyone having hysterics and is determined just to wait out Leon’s
panic attack. Thelma fills him in on EVERYTHING for an entire season through
the bathroom door. Eventually Leon puts it all aside to focus on what is wrong
with Ella. They check on Ella – and find she has rapidly aged and is now an old
woman as her immortality frays.
Ella knows of one solution – anointed ones can pass
through the realm of the dead and be reborn. Her father did it once but it wasn’t
apparently something he wanted to make a habit of. But if she dies of old age,
she can’t be reborn – she has to die and harness the power of lightning. Time for Leon to try and enlist Max’s help –
who is, understandably, irritated about the state of his flat and the police
crawling all over it.
Max does get them the key to a mothballed ICU – all equipment available but dormant because of lack of funding to staff and run it which Leon and Thelma take the rapidly deteriorating Ella to. But Jez, following the police, finds Max who he brings to Azazeal for questioning. Involving lots of talk about Reservoir Dogs, knives and so much cool, calculated menace it deserves its own award. There is gore and slicing and nastiness as they torture him. He tells them that the last he saw of Leon he was asking for resuscitation machines. Malachi, moved by pity, offers Max a quick, painless death rather than suffer what Azazeal and crew intend to do to him – and Max agrees.
In the hospital ICU, Thelma and Leon hook Ella up to the
machines and Leon suffocates her with a pillow. But when they use the defibrillator
to bring her back, they have been tampered with by demonfairy Perie. Perie
mocks their failure – and Thelma hands Ella’s shocky stick to Leon to use to
shock Ella. It doesn’t appear to work and Perie walks away all smug.
Then Ella’s heart starts beating. Bye bye Perie. And Ella
and Leon have their awwww moment.
There was a lot of epic in this episode, a lot of
excitement and a lot of resolution. And some scenes that had just the amount of
horror needed to remind us that the bad guys are well and truly bad, nasty and
gory. They’ve also established Malachi as a more complicated character than
envisaged.
It was a good episode – fun and exciting with lots of
blood-fizzing moments.
I do wish that the female villains weren’t all sexual –
Perie is a seductress, Roxanne seductress. For that matter, Ella was late to
arrive on the scene and kill Cassie because she was seduced. Cassie, of course,
gave birth to the demon child because she was possessed and had sex. There seems to be a recurring theme of sex=bad
with only a few exceptions
