After a brief interlude with Rahim and Leo, the new
battle is on. Leo, Laura, Nico and Dracula intend to lead their teeny tiny
forces against the Turks (who lost all their tanks episode) and rely on the
Book of Leaves-inspired lightening device to fry all the Turks who are conveniently
wearing lightening attracting armour.
Of course all this may fall apart because Zoroaster and
Sophia were captured last episode. Thankfully Lucrezia has also being captured.
Lucrezia doesn’t stay captive for long – and when Bayezid goes to question her
he finds that chaining her up only gives her new weapons to throttle him with.
He’s duly strangled to death before Lucrezia happily goes on a little rampage
(finding a convenient crossbow from somewhere) to free Sophia and Zoroaster.
They then head to set up the machine – with Zoroaster
failing and badly injuring himself (and seeming to be dead – this episode does
a series of “zomg this character is dead!” moment most of which don’t come to
pass. I actually think it would have been much more dramatic, especially as it’s
the last season, if a huge number of the cast were duly slaughtered. This
probably says how little I’m actually invested in these people).
While the battle begins (Laura is kind of awesome) and we
have several near-death moments (including Vlad being stabbed by his brother
Gedik – who is probably Radu – who is not all that happy that Bayezid is dead)
Leo finally declares surrender and orders his men to take off their (highly
conductive) armour
Just in time for Lucrezia to finish putting together the
lightening machine (albeit taking an arrow in the process) and then we have
lots of zappy zappy zappy – the entire Ottoman army is slaughtered. The remains
surrender and the city is free.
Except for Lucrezia who, of course, dies in the name of
Maximum Manpain for Leo. We always knew that she was heading for the nearest
walk-in fridge and she’s finally settled herself in among the ice trays.
That’s a very quick summation but there weren’t a whole
lot of twists there – and we kind of expected everything to go the way it did.
It’s not a bad ending, it’s a quite satisfactory conclusion to the whole
Ottoman storyline, but it’s a bit… predictable? Safe? Lacking in twists or
intrigue or interests? Leo geniused the enemy and everyone is now dead?
It also didn’t really touch on so much that has been
brewing these last few seasons – exactly what is the book of leaves? What did
the Sons of Mithras actually want to achieve? Where did all this woo-woo come
from? And what about Leo’s conflicts? He spends several episodes moping around
because his genius is being used to kill people (because he keeps designing
weapons… funny how that works) and then in the last episode quite literally
develops a weapon a mass destruction and slaughters and army and doesn’t seem
to be overly concerned about it? In between his hallucinations his actual moral
quandary was one of the few elements of Leo that actually had a chance of being
interesting.
We also have the rather orphaned side plot – with Vanessa
awesomely and excellently managing Lorenzo’s eternal Manpain.
They also establish a nicely genuine and meaningful connection that could
probably grow into something interesting and pointful if it had a lot more
time. I like her a lot
Sadly we don’t get to focus on her because it’s Riario’s
hanging day after him confessing to be a serial killer. He is led out, utterly
loathed by the crowd who really want him dead, but then the Architect turns up
and yells about how he’s the Holy Serial Killer and Lorenzo is totally
naughty!bad!wrong!. Lorenzo and Vanessa flee to the palace while Riario is
freed by the crowd who, in such a turnaround that they’ve probably all got whiplash,
really love their holy serial killer now.
He then toddles off to Rome and murders the pope, as you
do. At least we can agree with this murder.
While Lorenzo decides that the baby is his son and he’s
going to rule Florence and be the Pope
I think it’s fairly clear that the writers expected a fourth
season because there are a lot of threads left unfinished that would lead to
next seasons story: especially Riario and Lorenzo. Riario is now god’s serial
killer and happily killing the pope and being manipulated by the Architect. And
Lorenzo is now in control of Florence and being so very ambitious. These are
next season’s storylines – and they always have been – which means they’ve been
kind of out of place all season. Lorenzo, Vanessa and Nico, the whole serial
killer storyline – they’re not inherently bad storylines but they’re taped on
the back of the show with little real relevance to anything else. I’ve loved
Vanessa’s cunning, her brains, her development and her rise – as one of the few
female characters in this show who have actually managed to forge themselves a
powerful future – but it seems so outside the actual main storyline of the
series
This whole season has felt distracted and kind of lost.
We have a pretty linear Ottomans vs Leo storyline with odd occasional diversions
from the Sons of Mithras and the Labyrinth but what does it actually amount to
beyond a whole new set of hallucinations every week? You could actually remove
these elements entirely and not change the actual storyline in any meaningful
way. But if you don’t have all these many many many pointless hallucinations
then this season would be incredibly short. Which leaves me concluding that
there was very little of actual meaning in the season. Once you parse away the
hallucinations and the foreshadowing for a new season that probably won’t
happen what do you actually have?
On top of that, the show continues to have a terrible
habit when it comes to minorities. With no disabled, with POC largely being
confined to the Turks (who are, of course, naughty bad evil. Now, equally, the
Christians have also largely being terribad things –but the Turks have been relatively
characterless ominous threats while even the Christian villains like Sixtus
have been actual characters). We have Madame Singh but she’s a pretty minor character
to say the least – she has potential but she never really has the chance to
realise that. Which is a pattern with the women on this show
With regards to women we have a series of interesting
characters who have their potential well and truly wasted. Sophia – excellent character,
would love to see more of her, but she’s only pulled in at the very end of the
season with zero chance of development. Or Clarice, excellent potential character
looking to avenge her city and protect it – and then she’s dead. And this
episode we have Lucrezia also being rammed into said fridge – it better be a
walk in because we’re ramming those interesting female characters in there.
Which leaves us with Vanessa, clinging on to life still
and managing to forge an interesting and skilled storyline… but again, no real
time to develop it, no attention to develop it. The same with Laura – we have
several women who manage moments of awesomeness in small doses – but only small
doses because they’re not often allowed centre stage
We have no LGBT characters – after
all this show has dismissed LGBT characters as “gratuitous”, but we have a
whole lot of heterosexuality this show has never considered to be gratuitous or
unnecessary – Lucrezia and Leo, Laura and Riario, Vanessa and Lorenzo:
gratuitousness is only for same-sex couples by Goyer’s homophobic logic.
