2017
A battered Cole limps through plague ravaged Chechnya. He
sees a broadcast from the American CDC (listing US casualties at 33 million)
made by Cassie. She’s asking for the Immune to go to Baltimore (the new site of
the CDC) to help with their research. She also talks about quarantine zones the
CDC has set up.
Cole sees one of these zones and a desperate crowd trying
to force themselves in – when a woman manages to push past the soldiers they
shoot her. Cole, as one of the immune, is allowed in. Well, dragged in by
guards. The Russian soldiers take him to where a soldier from the US army tells
him they’re taking him to the airport – and she knows Cole by name.
In the US, mobs rage in the street as panic has taken
over. In the crowd, Jennifer Goins rants away – it’s possible she’s gaining a
following.
The soldier escorting Cole is one of the immune and leads
him to Cassie. Hugging and Cassie’s broken recitation of trying to cure the
plague while knowing Cole told her it was impossible. She knew where he was
because she’s seen him since then (and he will splinter back to see her).
Cassie is also sick and passes out
As she comes round, she asks Cole if he’s found the “Red Forest.” Of course, he doesn’t know what that means yet. She can’t tell him anything about it – or anything else – without “changing the path he’s on.” She gives him a piece of paper with an address on it – telling him his life depends on it. She then dies tragically in his arms.
2043
After her foray to Colonel Foster’s enclave (Spearhead)
last week, Jones is now on rumour control as it’s been spreading that the
colonel has found a cure – he hasn’t. Col Foster is basing his research on the
original plague despite the fact it has mutated twice since then. She says the
colonel is only lying to give his people hope (which maaaaay be what others
would think of Jones) and they must get Spearhead’s core to power the time
machine.
Ramse tries to convince Elena to leave Foster’s “cult”.
She doesn’t buy it and wants to show him how awesome Foster is – but Ramse can’t
hang around for that while Cole is lost.
2041
Time for a flashback on what good friends Cole and Ramse
are. Wandering around in the freezing forest after leaving Deacon’s band,
sharing gloves to try and ward off frost bite and low on supplies. They resort
to trying to ambush a group of 6 men for the deer they’ve taken
They get captured by Whitley. It wasn’t a good plan.
Whitley beats them to try and get some answers – but Jones intervenes when she
hears Cole’s name. She plays him a recording of Cassie’s voice that mentions
Cole by name (along with talking about the architects of the plague and Leland
Frost). Cole does ask the pertinent question how Jones knows Cassie’s talking
about this particular Cole but Jones just says “I know” which is a very weak
response. She makes her time travel pitch
Which Cole didn’t buy – and he tries to escape with Ramse
– but it’s Ramse who convinces Cole to stay. Because Jones may be telling the
truth, maybe she can fix the world – and maybe she can erase the terrible
things they’ve done to survive. Cole doesn’t buy it and tries to run and Ramse
sabotages their escape, saying he is “saving Cole’s soul.”
2043
While Ramse tries to convince Elena – and she, in turn,
tries to convince him. During the convincing battle they’re found doing
something they shouldn’t by Foster. Whitley approaches his father with the hard
truth of Foster’s failure and lies. It’s difficult because of the 10 year rift
between the two (caused by Whitley’s father killing people for Foster)
Jones tries to convince Foster about her machine but he
calls it blasphemy – his rejection of Jones’s plan is more religious than
scientific. He also has a moving attempt tom convince her that all what she
thinks is lost – culture, art, civilisation – isn’t because they still remember
it. These losses have often been pointed out as meaning as much to Jones as the
people. Then she flips that script by saying that she was a mother – and
shooting Foster. “Goodbye Jonathon. For now.”
Whitley has convinced is father and they bring down
several guards and let in Jones’s men (and have big manly shoulder grasping of
reconciliation). They invade Spearhead, guns blazing and people dying. These
scenes are brutal and there’s blood everywhere and Whitley’s dad dies in the fighting
along with one of Jones’s chief minions.
Surrounded by the dead, Jones gets her core. Whitley and
Jones talk about his dad’s death and he now has a desperate need to cling to
her vision as well. Ramse, Elena and Sam escape during the fighting and Elena
is horrified by what Jones did, destroying her family. She still believes that
Foster cured the plague and she overtly says what is already clear – Jones is
as driven and ruthless as Foster was and maybe she was the one who lied and
Foster had found the cure
To emphasise this we see Foster burning papers that seem
to show that Foster had cured the 2033 mutation
She brings Cole back and he tells her what happened
Ramse returns to Cole and tells him about Jones murdering
half of Spearhead and it seems Elena has convinced him – they did have a cure.
But Cole is now invested in the mission (because that will bring Cassie back),
even though Ramse tells him about Elena and wants him to stop, Cole just saw
the world die in 2017, watched Cassie die. Ramse calls Cole blind and selfish,
because Elena and Sam will be erased if Cole changes the world. Cole says Sam is
already dead and Ramse hits him – but Cole stick to it “there is no future.”
I think this episode we saw a lot more of Jones, the
woman who killed people to test her machine. And it’s not a woman who is an
unfeeling scientist who will do anything to pursue her goal – she’s a woman
trying to get her daughter back and that seems, ultimately, to outweigh everything
else. There’s also a terrifying element to her faith in her machine working and
resetting time: she doesn’t care what happens now. It doesn’t matter who she
kills, who dies, who suffers because if she succeeds none of it will have
happened, it’s the big reset switch. This makes Jones a thoroughly terrifying
person.
I think this episode did a very good job of showing that.
The take over of Spearhead wasn’t shown as sanitised or clean – we saw the
bodies and the blood spatter and Jones walking among it face set. There was no
suggestion that this was a good, neat or simple thing – all emphasised by Jones’s
voice over that they would sacrifice this time to get their old time back. And
it is a sacrifice
Ultimately, Foster was presented as a cult leader who
killed innocents to force his own vision – and in this episode Jones is almost
presented as the leader of a rival cult. The only difference is that her
promise of salvation may be true. But then, that is because we see things from her
group’s viewpoint – she calls Foster a liar, but his cure wouldn’t have brought
her daughter back. Maybe he did find the cure – but it wasn’t her cure, wasn’t
her salvation. But then, how many are invested in her salvation? Not just
curing the plague but erasing it from history – erasing all the things they’ve
done or been turned into by the plague. Her salvation is as much about personal
redemption, a conscience reset as it is saving mankind. It is, as Ramse says, a
very selfish salvation
Of course, even with the cure there is the flip side that
this virus does keep mutating and Foster’s cure may have only been temporary
I’m disappointed that Whitley’s father died and not just
because it was another sacrificed POC. Whitley is, generally, a very underused character,
lurking in the background being all menacing. His father gave him a storyline
to pursue beyond that and now he doesn’t have it
The repairing watch – what what what is this? Does this
imply that the events of the first episode haven’t happened? And if so, why
haven’t they?
