Oh, this show! So far we've had crazy spitting zombie vectors, a CDC love triangle, a field of frozen monkeys, people's eyes turning silver, secret tumors, hallucinations, abducted children, Futurama-style heads in jars, and secret twins. What bonkers plot development will this week reveal? Please let it be the one where Alan and Sarah are permanently eliminated.
So we start off on Day 9, with Sarah being used as bait to draw out a vector. Sure enough, the bald one comes a-running for her, and he's finally snared by Alan and Daniel. Sarah's all, “Yeah, time one of you can troll for shrieking goo-spewers.”
There may not be a time: The vectors have all disappeared since Peter was taken. Alan is all, “Where did they go?” and that leads us to the discovery: Level R is not the bottom floor of the base. There is a level below that called Level X. Moreover, Level X is “the virus vault … it's where we keep all of our original core samples.” Alan, upon hearing that a lunatic has stockpiled strains of Narvik A & B – and that said lunatic actually created them both, can only gape.
Upstairs in Hatake's office, Alan sputters, “You engineered an apocalypse virus?” and Hatake shrugs all, “I was never going to deliver it,” which is pretty much the most bad-assed thing you can say in reply to an accusation like that. Hatake goes on to point out that he did this because if he didn't, Ilaria would have found some other stooge lab to do so, and then everyone on planet Earth would be sorry. Alan's brain takes a moment to register the prospect of Hatake playing the hero, then shuts down before it can explode in righteous indignation.
Hatake then tells everyone that Sutton is no longer a problem (without adding “Because her head is floating in a bowl about fifty yards away”) and says, “What's coming is much worse … Sutton was just a messenger. , they will send an army. They will not stop until they have the virus.” And nobody in this room of trained investigators thinks to ask, “Exactly who are the 'they' you are on about?”
So this episode's aim, as dictated by Alan, is to get down to Level X and destroy any viral samples before Ilaria can get their hands on it. He seems to be forgetting that Ilaria could always pack up a vector or two and get the virus that way too, but what the hell, why not pretend that the caper for this episode would be the be-all-end-all solution to this problem? Hatake orders Daniel to show Alan footage of something, and while that's going on in the background, Julia corners Hatake so she can berate him for drugging her and then move on to ask about the torn-up photo of Hatake with her as a little girl. Hatake spins this story about Julia's late mother being one of his best friends, and apparently they used to socialize in Montana frequently. Julia asks how that photo's possible since Hatake looks the same as he does now and Hatake interrupts, “I was a very young man.” Or Julia was grown in a vat and released into the wild ten minutes before she married Alan. At this point, I'd totally believe that.
Oh, wow, this is embarrassing – I TOTALLY biffed my summary in last episode's weecap: I thought Sutton's stooge Klein had managed to shoot himself before Daniel's men could take him down. I was wrong. So wrong. So very wrong. Klein's thrown into a cell with Ilaria's other military genius, Balleseros. Naturally, he takes the opportunity to gloat: In two days, Ilaria will be dropping in and burning this base to the ground. Balleseros would normally break them out so they could roast marshmallows at this particular campfire, but Daniel's since installed a giant electromagnetic whangdoodle in his cell so that even if Balleseros could pick the locks in his cell, he can't open the door. And honestly, Balleseros has no motivation to leave … until Klein mentions that one of Sutton's final acts was to send a death squad out to Anana's village to kill everyone in it. Now Sergio has motivation!
So here's the thing about Level X: It is filled with vectors and they're all swarmed around the vault because it's warm and vectors like warmth. The CDC team, Daniel and Hatake all watch the security footage – it honestly looks like the TSA lines at San Francisco International Airport – and squabble over who's going to go down there, and Hatake tries not to say, “I will go down there because my crazy silver eyes will stop all the vectors in their tracks.”
Speaking of the vectors, they have freed Peter from his chilly suit. Then a bunch of them spit the goo into a “Keep Calm and Carry On” mug, then pour the black goo down Peter's throat. He's soon revived as a screaming, black-eyed ubervector of some sort. The vectors promptly begin worshipping him as like unto a god.
Dr. Adrian and Alan watch the sole vector they've captured, and quickly conclude that the only way to slow his crazy ass down is to freeze him, which they do with CFC. But since there's not enough gas to do the entire vector swarm down in Level X, they'll have to do the best thing, which is to let the outside in. At last, the Arctic setting works for them!
(This also explains why the monkeys were shrieking when Balleseros set that fire way back in the first third of the season. They didn't die, they merely went into cold-induced suspended animation. Poor things. Also, I miss Doreen STILL.)
For some reason, Alan gets to be the boss of everyone – even the people who have been sitting on Level X and probably have a few more surprises up their sleeve – and he outlines the plan: Daniel will prep everyone on the base for the whole “We are letting the outside in” gambit; Hatake and Jordan will be taking the power grid offline so as to let the outside in; Alan and Julia will be going down to Level X.
Sarah's tumor picks now to start acting up again. I am sure that will in no way affect the rest of the episode!
So the plan goes into action. Alan and Julia have 28 minutes to get in, find the viruses in the viral bank, and get out again.
As Sarah and Hatake plunge the base into darkness, Sarah goes into some kind of fugue stage where she confesses that she's going to die soon, and mewls, “Nothing I did will ever matter. I accomplished nothing. I left nothing behind. It will be like I never even existed.” Hatake's all, “You there, Sarah?” but she's not responding to him. She just keeps having the kind of crisis that usually sets in when the mental goblins come out to play during a bout of insomnia at 3 a.m.
Julia and Alan have a truly hair-raising sequence wherein they thread their way through a crowd of immobilized vectors, horribly conscious of how the vectors are alive but frozen. It reminds one of the field of terrified bald monkeys all over again.
(Also, if I were Alan or Julia, I'd have a hard time not rearranging the vectors, stacking them up like cordwood, or otherwise inconveniencing them so if time DOES run out, at least I get some comedy out of it before being turned into one of them.)
Meanwhile, Balleseros realizes that with the power down, the giant magnet keeping him contained no longer has power. He quickly opens the door, then just as quickly kills Klein – for real and for true this time, I'm 80% sure – and runs off to rescue Anana. Or, more likely, to be rescued by her.
Once inside the virus vault, Alan and Julia are horrified to discover that Hatake's got a copy of ever hideous pandemic-type virus ever to hit mankind. Julia's all, “We need to take these or else Ilaria will!” and Alan is all, “ … You have a point.”
Sarah continues monologuing and Hatake's all, “I … did not expect this and I do not like it. Cease emoting!” She does, because then the seizures start. Hatake's all, “Shit! I needed another set of hands to flip switches!” but somehow manages to flip switches, then sit around and hold Sarah's hand rather than act like a competent medical professional or even someone who's ever taken first aid and would think, “Okay, seizures, let's make sure she doesn't swallow her own tongue.”
Daniel has now found Klein's body, and he knows that means Balleseros is on the loose again.
So! Twenty-eight minutes are up and the vectors have awoken with surprising alacrity. Alan begins to freak out.
Balleseros tries to start up a snowmobile, but is swatted off by Daniel. He points out, “If you shoot me, you kill your sister and your brother. Sutton sent a squad to track down Anana and burn the village.” “Why do you care?” Daniel asks. Balleseros slumps down, but rather than admit, “Because your sister makes me feel funny in my swimsuit place,” he sighs, “Because at some point, it just has to stop.” And thus Balleseros's redemption plotline carries on. If he is this show's Han Solo, then Daniel is the giant wookiee who just got on the snowmobile and is all, “Well, let's do this.”
Alan and Julia escape by dint of Julia giving them a lot of glares. So even if her silver eyes aren't visible, they're effective? As they get free of the vectors, Julia notices another set of her childish initials scratched to a grate and is all, “I am going to drop everything and investigate.” Alan's all, “FINE. Let's do this.”
And now, the second-creepiest sequence of the night: Julia and Alan drop through the grate and into what appears to be a replica of her childhood cabin in Montana.
Meanwhile, Daniel and Balleseros are squabbling over which way Anana could have gone when she sneaks up on Balleseros and wallops him for old times' sake. Having found Anana, the two move on to the objective: Keeping her village from being annihilated.
Julia and Alan are looking around the set and Julia asks, “Why would Hatake build an exact replica of my mother's cabin?” “Seems like something you would have told me by the third date,” Alan deadpans. I like it when he's snarky. More snark, please. Oh, wait, we've veered to sincerity again: “Why bring a six-year-old girl here? Why build a fake cabin and make her think it was home?” Good questions. I'm sure the answer will in no way be eye-rollingly stupid.
The third chilling sequence of the night: As Daniel, Anana and Balleseros watch her village being herded into a trailer, she asks why, and Balleseros says, “My guess is they're going to set it on fire. Less to clean up that way.” And what makes it so chilling is how his very delivery – stripped of nouns like “dead bodies” or “people” and very matter-of-fact – seems to suggest that he's set a few packed trailers on fire in his time.
Anyway, Balleseros manages to keep Anana from charging right down there, and he smiles with malice aforethought as he thinks of what comes …
… Which is his faking like he's part of the mission. He has Anana as his “captive” and Daniel as his henchman, and there's a hilariously blocked scene where everyone is trying hard to pretend that Tulok and Daniel are not, in fact, played by the same person. And so the twins are reuinited – in a manner of speaking – as Balleseros is all, “Stooge! Shoot that man who looks like you!” and that's the big fake-out that leads to the three series regulars shooting everyone with an Ilaria jacket.
Hatake is still staring at Sarah as she babbles in delirium, and the first thing she babbles is an excruciatingly detailed medical diagnosis (“Grave IV metastatic”). Hatake checks for the surgical scar, THEN decides it's finally time to take Sarah to a clinic.
Meanwhile, Alan and Julia have to escape from Peter and his army of vectors AGAIN, and she flashes her special eyes AGAIN.
Once Alan and Julia are back in the office, he's all, “What the HELL, Julia?” and she replies along the lines of, “I would like to know myself. I came out of that infection feeling like a whole new person and it is weird.” They agree it's time to talk to Hatake.
However, Hatake ambushes them with his own righteous indignation, asking Alan, “How could you not know she has a grade IV spinal tumor?” I should add they're all having this HIPAA-violating conversation on the floor of an elevator because Hatake has STILL not gotten Sarah to the clinic. I guess he was waiting for an audience? Or someone else to do the heavy lifting? Anyway, Alan hefts Sarah and stomps off to the clinic after snottily informing Hatake that the Narvik virii were not in the vault. Hatake gapes, “That's impossible.” Alan snipes, “Given the last nine days, you may want to remove that word from your vocabulary.”
Once they're all in the clinic, Sarah makes things awkward for everyone by raving in delirium and informing everyone she's slept with Alan and she wants to do it again. Julia raises her eyebrows at this, and Alan's entire demeanor says, “I regret EVERYTHING.” He especially regrets being the kind of person who would have picked her even knowing she was sick, because he needed her talents more than he valued her chance for a graceful finish to her days.
Fresh off being smacked in the face with the knowledge that her ex has moved on to younger and sweeter things, Julia decides to confront Hatake on what the hell is going on – he knew her mother, he's got a replica of her childhood home, what's the deal? Hatake pulls out the pieces of the photograph he's been keeping, and that is how we learn that the lady Jaye whom Julia had been hallucinating? Jaye was Julia's mother. (Her real name was Jane. The child Julia mispronounced it.) There is something very poignant about hallucinating a mother figure who will keep you safe, find you food and fight off monsters for you.
In any event, Hatake breaks the news that Julia never lived in Montana, the cabin was basically a stage set for a child, and he's Julia's father. She does not take any of this well.
On the other hand, the family reunion between Miksa and Tulok is going swimmingly. You can thank Balleseros for that, for he has united the twin brothers in the shared opinion that their sister has terrible taste in men.
The episode closes with a surprising shift from the Bacharach-influenced mellow Top 40 to the edgier Gary Jules tune “Mad World,” and as the song unfolds, we see a guilt-stricken Alan tending to an unconscious Sarah; Julia sobbing; the twins rolling their eyes at their sister fluttering around over Balleseros; and finally, Dr. Adrian loading up the Narvik samples and leaving the base. I suppose we'll find out soon who he was working for and why – or whether he's another shaggy dog plotline in this bafflingly obtuse series.
Lisa Schmeiser is an Oakland-adjacent reporter, editor and blogger. She regularly tweets here, blathers about comics here, and posts the oddball personal piece of writing here.