Helix - Season Finale “O Brave New World” (Recap & Review)
(SPOILERS BELOW!!!)
The episode begins on day 13 of the outbreak at St. Germain. We were left with an unknown gunshot ringing out last week when Alan and Julia were arguing over the Mother Tree. Julia wanted to give it to Ilaria to use to cause mass infertility so they wouldn't release NARVIK-C. Alan disagreed with this as he has been working against Ilaria all along. We see that it was Julia who shot Alan. He says, “you shot me” to which she responds, “you were going to shoot me.” She is stitching him up and telling him to think of his son because that will help him get through it. Meanwhile Sarah is giving her baby more fluids to keep him alive while Soren and Kyle are talking about the cure that Alan made. They are trying to get the helicopter to come back to rescue them. Cut to Amy looking at herself in the mirror with her brother Landry standing behind her. They are both now badly disfigured. He is glad he saved her, but she is not. She says, rather comically and proficiently, that she's not beautiful anymore but that she is free, free to do whatever she wants to whoever she wants. She wants to thank her immortal sisters for her new face.
Eli, once known as Peter, is pushing Sister Anne and the baby into the council hall. They see that it has been desecrated. They now realize, as Alan and Julia did last week, that this is the Mother Tree. They come up with the plan that Eli will give the root to Ilaria so they can gain power and influence. Eli is drunk with power already (and rather maniacally, I think). He tells Anne that rather than 200 followers they could gain 2 million followers. She agrees with this, which surprised me somewhat because it always seemed that she wanted to keep the island shut off. It seemed that she wouldn’t want anyone to interfere.
Kyle is telling Soren his plans for them once they get home. He wants to order pizzas, sleep, and play PlayStation. Of course all of this seems foreign to Soren. I wonder how he would make it in the 'real world'. Soren is still upset that Eli killed his mother. Kyle tells him, “Peter is never gonna hurt you or anybody else again.” Then the lights go out. (Head smack! What's going on now?) I questioned Soren's mental resolve more as he grabbed a weapon and ran away in the dark. He finds Eli, charges him, and stabs him.
Julia is still sitting with Alan when we flash 30 years later to where Julia finds herself sitting in the same location as Alan. Caleb is sitting with her after he found her injured in the forest. She says, “I was here 30 years ago. The tables have turned. It was Alan.” Caleb surprises her, but not so much me, when he says, “I haven't been completely honest. 30 years ago, I was here too.” She is confused about this and asks why he took her father's sword from her. He unsheathes it and surprises her again by recognizing some of the lettering. Dr. Hatake told Julia that the sword was his legacy. She asks Caleb what made Hatake want to kill the immortals when he originally wanted to spread it. Caleb doesn't answer her, but instead asks her the question he asked at the beginning of the season. “Do you know the way to San Jose?”
Amy and Landry find Anne and the baby. Anne is surprised by Amy's appearance and seems concerned for her. It's not believable to the audience or to Amy. It seems Amy wants to punish her mother for Michael and for everything else that has happened to her. Anne says she is sorry that she didn't try to stop him and she thinks she couldn't admit it then because it would mean that her whole life was a lie. This makes me think back to two points of Anne's development. One was when I thought she actually had a chance to change and might leave the island with Peter before his strange transformation. The second was when she told Peter 'her truth' in the basement with the women. She didn't want to admit her life was a lie, but she still believed that this was her truth. Crazy, yes. Amy tells her that although she doesn't look like it on the outside, that she is just as much of a monster as she is. They take the baby.
Meanwhile Alan is resting in the bed and still trying to convince Julia to not give the root to Ilaria. She says she doesn't have a choice and that in less than twelve hours they will release NARVIK-C. Sarah joins them to “make a deal with the devil” as she told Kyle she would earlier. They step outside the room so Sarah can tell her that she will join Ilaria if Julia can get her, the baby, and her team off the island. Julia quickly agrees. Alan flees with the root while they are gone.
Amy is planning to get back at her immortal sisters while Landry is holding the baby. He is ignoring her because he likes the baby. She takes him away and shows him that the baby will cry once he sees his face. She says, “you have no friends.” She places the crying baby on the top bunk and leaves it for the others to find. Sarah and Julia hear the baby while searching for Alan. They find it, but are quickly surrounded by the mothers who were tortured and held as prisoners in the basement. Amy has this all planned, but it doesn't go as she expected. One of the women see Sarah's baby in the tank and Sarah explains it is her baby and that Amy took it from her. The women remember (thankfully, I was like 'hey, this is the woman who released you') and allow Sarah and Julia to leave.
Kyle finds Soren. He doesn't tell him that he stabbed Eli and creepily says, “I was just following my path” when asked about his disappearance. (Can Soren be saved or is he hiding some of his own creepy?) Meanwhile the injured Alan returns to the tree and starts pouring gasoline on it. However, Eli finds him. He holds him at gunpoint, which Alan mocks him about. Eli says he doesn't need it and chooses to punch Alan instead. What an epic scene for the brothers to finally face off. They clearly have a lot of history with each other. They seem to care about each other, but they never agree. Eli tells him that he thought it was the end when he left him in the hole, but he realized it was really the beginning. He hit rock bottom and realized that “family stands by you no matter what. You are not my family”. He pours more gasoline and lights a fire around his injured brother. I was annoyed at him here. Alan did stand by him. Alan came to save him in the arctic station even after he cheated with Julia. He didn't give up on him even though everyone else did. Of course it's a power struggle, but perhaps Peter hasn't been right since he was changed back.
Kyle and Soren are discussing what to name the cure when they smell smoke. They get a radio message that says they are sending another chopper. Julia sees the fire as well and suspects that Alan is trying to destroy the tree. Amy is unaware of what's going on as she is eager to see what has happened in her trap. She can't wait to see what they did to Sarah. However, she was not expecting the mothers to be waiting for her. They hold her down and start to remove her teeth. I suppose this is a fitting end for Amy, but I feel a little sorry for her. Let's be honest; she came from a crazy, messed up situation. This scene seemed a little cheesy because of the way the women moved. It seemed awkward and noisy. Although I understand these women have gone through a lot, it seems they are moving and acting more like robotic zombies than regular women. Landry sees what is happening. He takes the baby, but chooses to leave his sister behind.
Julia finds Alan and he tells her that Eli has the root. Meanwhile Eli meets Anne outside the abbey, but goes back in to find the baby. He runs into Kyle and Soren. He tells Kyle that Soren stabbed him and Kyle acts appalled by it, but he punches Eli just as Sarah shows up. Landry brings the baby outside to Anne and turns to go back inside. Anne asks her son where he is going and he sadly says, “home.” He plans to let himself burn inside. Will he die? Isn't he still immortal?
Flash forward thirty years where Caleb asks Julia once again if she knows the way to San Jose. Finally she says, “Yes, I do.” Then she tells the story of how Alan and she was traveling and blew a tire. They took the car to be repaired and got married at the city hall in the time it took to fix it. She said at the time he said, “Your love is gonna kill me,” which he is also saying in real time as she pulls him out of the fire at the abbey. Everyone is watching the abbey burn, including the young Soren. The window is in his eye and then the camera zooms out to the adult Caleb with the window in his eye. It's revealed that he is actually Soren. I have been wondering who Caleb would actually be. I was suspicious that he might have been Sarah and Alan's son, but it makes sense that it is Soren.
We move to day 14 where the group is rushing into a hospital. One thing about this show that has always surprised and amazed me is the song choice. It was that way with the happy elevator-sounding music last season that always led into eerie scenes. As they are wheeling Alan in on a gurney we hear “the moment I wake up, I say a little prayer for you...”. It's a neat song to choose for this serious moment. Kyle gives them the cure and Soren gets to name it. We see everyone is there including Eli, Anne, and the baby. And they look smug. Eli has given the woman from Ilaria the root. Julia asks if this means they will not release NARVIK-C, but the woman pretends to be surprised and says we know nothing of another strain of it. The law officials are there to arrest Dr. Farragut as Kyle has threatened all along. He tells them about the bank location that Alan told him about and they leave taking Dr. Farragut with them. But wait...it's Peter (Eli) Farragut they are taking. This was a big surprise to me. He turns smiling so creepily back at them. I liked Peter and kind of wish that his story didn't take this turn. What will happen to him now?
Sarah is waiting for news about Alan. The music is neat again with an almost slow, pendulum sounding beat playing as she paces. The doctor comes and shakes his head no. It seems like bad news for Alan. Then we are back thirty years into the future with Julia asking Caleb if Alan was the one who helped Hatake create the virus that is killing immortals. Alan and Hatake found common ground and engineered this virus together. However, they also found a cure. Caleb is the cure. Alan said his blood was special, which is why Caleb has been hiding on the island. He will stay there until the virus wipes out the immortal population. He offers her his blood to save her, but she isn't sure if she should take it. She says, “if the plague is immortality then there's only one cure”. Of course she means death. The viewer knows Alan must have survived if he helped Hatake create a virus in the future. We are thrust back to the present day where Alan is waking up in the hospital bed. He goes to the sink and washes his face. We hear “the moment I wake up, I say a little prayer for you...” again and then Alan looks up. It wasn't hard to guess that when he looked into the mirror that his eyes were now silver.
I'm not sure what to expect from next season (and I'm still waiting for renewal news) because the second season really changed the storyline, the characters, and the location. My only qualm with this was the fast and unremarkable death of Major Sergio Balleseros in the bell tower. I liked his character from the first season and would have liked to have seen more of him. I would have thought his death would have been more important. We might have some indication to where the story is heading. The episode ends in the year 2029. A young woman is at a facility nervously talking to the nurse about wanting a child. It's clear that she is here because Ilaria must have released the infertility virus. The nurse takes her back to an expansive room full of Matrix-like pods where one woman is resting with some machinery covering her pregnant stomach. (Side note: does anyone think this is similar to what they were doing with the women in the basement, except with their permission and maybe not as violently?) A doctor is watching the movement of the pods above her. She turns and introduces herself. It's Sarah wearing an Ilaria lab coat.
We are left with so many questions. Why is Sarah working for Ilaria? Did she save her baby? Is Alan alive and working with Hatake now? Did Julia take the cure? Is 2029 in between the occurrences at the abbey and when they release the immortal virus? Will we see the same main cast next season? What will the central focus be? One thing is for sure. I'm excited to see where the story goes next.
Review By: LBurden
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