The group is still all spread out everywhere but at least we’re finally coming together.
In Portland, the monster zone, the bomber has left, dropping something in her escape, abandoning her car and leaving a little bug on a rock.
Jackson is feeling all the guilt about this for some reason. He’s also checking out the internet where people are trying to find… him. Apparently he’s largely blamed by everyone - including his girlfriend, Tessa, for setting off the sterility plague and everything else. This is possibly accurate, but that would require me remembering the last season and trying to find some kind of thread of coherence among that mess.
He’s now going by the name Dylan. And “Dylan” and Tessa try to follow the bomber, failing to find her, but do find a weird little Shepherd-symbol thing that she left behind.
Also investigating the bombing is Detective-police-don’t-have-background-checks-anymore Logan who discovers his bomb and Jackson’s bomb is linked and decides to fly to Portland and risk breaking poor Jackson’s cover to Tessa and Logan has a lot of experience lying to girlfriends. The pair of them snark back and forth being passive aggressive and making Tessa suspicious while trying to track this bomber - who calls Jackson just to taunt him a bit
A DNA test reveal she is Abigail Westbrook. Apparently Jackson’s sister
Because a battle for the world and whether humanity becomes extinct really needs completely unnecessary sibling family drama storylines.
Over to Abe and Dariela and there’s some regret for not going with Clementine (which is a little odd because she didn’t exactly give them a chance) and Dariela is frustrated about being “benched” which Abe rejects - they’re raising a child! It’s an interesting subversion of tropes to have the woman push to go out and have action while the man focuses on and values domestic life and family.
At the same time, later on Dariela criticises Abe’s “save the world” card. So he’s also frustrated at the narrow focus - but perhaps his crusades are less action packed so don’t appeal to Dariela’s action-orientated mindset while her charge in and fix it style lacks of the planning and caution Abraham has always favoured (he has always been doomed to be the big sensible, calm mountain while around him people charge around making terrible decisions).
The blood sample that Abe was sent by Jackson is now growing into a foetus - which is more than a little bizarre. It’s also a telepathic foetus that is summoning razorback hyena mutants to its rescue (apparently they were nearby?) resulting in a siege and the hybrids eventually escapes with what Abe calls “the egg”. Which is a shame because he thought it could cure human sterility.
Honestly it says all you need to know when telepathic foetus from blood samples actually doesn’t seem weird.
That sterility cure which Abe is working on has also ended up in the hands of Leanne, a woman working for - yes, Reiden Global. A company which exists entirely to do evil things. It looks like Dariela’s sharing his discoveries has got into their hands and they’re doing what they always of - evil. In this case kidapping lots of kids for the sake of experimenting on them
Really, this company gives the Umbrella Corporation a run for its money.
And one of the children they’re taking is Isaac. Dariela and Abraham are not standing for that (and you have to kind of laugh at the solder trying to stop Abraham just flying across the room). Expect all the wrath from them in future episodes.
Time to join Jamie and Clem #1 heading off to save Mitch from the Shepherds in Siberia.
Can we take a moment to comment on this private jet with no flight plan, no authorisation et al happily flying from New York to Siberia, violating several countries’ air space and not being shot down once? No? Air travel ain’t this easy guys!
Jamie conveniently has a Shepherd locked in her basement for information and torture fun. No, really, Jamie just likes to make him hurt, this is clearly a sign of her leaping off into the deep end and just wallowing there.
Her fighting skills also get them into the facility causing lots of random alarms
Which is where Mitch and Clem #2 are trying to escape. The Shepherds (revealed to him as Shepherds and not IADG by Clem #2 to try and gain his trust) have been trying to get Mitch on side to tell them all about something called “blue diaspora.” He’s either ignorant or playing it so plan b is to have Clem#2 be almost killed if he doesn’t answer - he still doesn’t know what it is.
She tries to arrange their escape from the Shepherds and runs into Clem#1 and Jamie. Lots of shouting, lots of suspicion and Mitch ends up shooting Clem#1 - only to find she has proof she’s the real Clem and Clem #2 is a plant to try and earn his trust. Luckily everyone just completely ignored Jamie who shoots Clem#2 well and truly dead.
Back to the plane with, thankfully, minimal angst considering he just shot his daughter (albeit it’s a TVlandia flesh wound - i.e. it did nothing). Jamie assures Mitch that she’ll add the people who captured him and put him in a lab for 10 years to her big list of Vengeance Torture and Death.
While Clem goes to check a heartbeat in her womb - looks like she’s pregnant. In a world where humans are sterile…. So there’s that as well
I’m glad the characters are coming together relatively quickly but there seems to be a lot going on already: I’m not sure with apocalyptic shows like this how much every story HAS to be personal. You don’t need family drama, kidnapped kids, long lost children etc to motivate your characters to get involved - isn’t saving the world reason enough
