It’s pretty clear the switch was before the wedding. She had to move on her double and kill her because she had just broken off the engagement, and they didn’t want to lose the opportunity. They’ve only recently had the baby, so it’s probably no more than a few years.
But did you catch that she named the baby after the boy she had a crush on when she first started at The School? It’s a pretty big hint that she’s been harboring a grudge over being split up from him for most of her life.
Good call!
Fantastic episode…and I’m super glad that Viserys still has a chance to make huge, huge mistakes… just seemed obvious he might want to keep that under wraps for at least a few days.
There is no such thing as brainwashing. She has been indoctrinated, but after living on the other, other side she had ample opportunity to figure things out herself. But I’m not going to nitpick the writers on that.
I agree this was a really good episode, but I was also a bit unhappy with the whole “I’m drunk and I’m going to totally put myself in a lot of danger by telling my uber-spy wife that I know she’s a spy”. Also, this is a bit too much like Lost. We’ve got “the Others” and now we’re getting back-stories on who people really are…
Actually, I don’t feel it’s like Lost all that much. In Lost, the Others were just regular(-ish) people who had to rely on traditional subterfuge to infiltrate the Losties.
But here, they have a significant cadre of spies who are literally genetically identical to the people they’re switching places with, and who have been surgically altered and trained to copy any other differences. It would be incredibly hard to ever catch one of them, as we’ve already seen.
What I do find interesting is that this cadre of Perfect Spies is inherently time-limited. They can only really use people who were born before the split, and those people are gradually aging out of being useful. The longer they go before switching, the harder it gets. What happens when they start running out of useful operatives?
This is probably why things are coming to a head just now. They know they’re at the Use It Or Lose It stage.
It will be harder the more timelines diverge, but they showed Claire training the next generation of students, who were all born after the split.
Oh, my God, I didn’t realize it was the same actor until you pointed it out!
I don’t think Claire stood a chance. She’s been indoctrinated since she was a child, and she’s been on this side what, maybe two-three years? We don’t know how long between she got married and she had the baby, but it seems like having the baby (something that’s truly hers, as she said) may have started to switch her.
The other side keeps track of the spies, so I guess if Pope sends someone over for deep undercover work no one on “this” side is going to keep track if they overstay their visa, especially if they kill their counterpart and take their place. How would they know?
So what happens to a child at the School if their counterpart on “this” side dies? I guess they just expel them and they can live a normal life? But what if they’re far enough along in their training that they know about both worlds? Maybe they stay and teach?
I kept thinking Claire’s contact was going to turn out to be Spencer. Maybe in a later episode.
Wouldn’t “this” side keep track of who came through, and realize that they never went back? The only way it would work is if someone on our border is dirty (either paid off or from the school).
I’ve only seen the other side getting visas for six hours (BadAss Emily) or a few days (BadAss Howard.) BA Howard couldn’t go back when his visa expired because he knew Pope was out to get him, so he sent Mild Howard back.
It seems like a one way street, with the other side coming to this side a lot more often than the other way around.
Well, they are the fanatics with a chip on their shoulder. We’re just in it for the new science and technology.
In a way, it’s kind of like the US relationship with Saudi Arabia: The US just wants oil, the Saudi Government is in it for the money, and meanwhile, people like Osama Bin Laden were sneaking around the shadows planning to blow things up.
Well, it looks like I was wrong; she is a True Believer. And we now know that Quayle is stupider than Viserys. Viserys only screwed himself over with his stupidity, it’s starting to look like Quayle will screw over just about everybody.
And how good was The Two Howards argument? A brilliant piece of writing, where they both came off as being both right and wrong.
UNLESS
Howard is the real mole. After all, Bad Ass Howard is now on this side, where the counterparts are trying to get to. :eek:
I still don’t get who Baldwin is working for. Now she’s knocking off members of the sleeper cell team. I could see Clare trying to become a double agent, or pretending to be a double agent.
Very sad to see the school destroyed. I was hoping they would get the kids to safety because they are their biggest asset, but apparently it was scorched earth all the way around.
Was it supposed to be implied that they killed ALL of the kids? I know we saw some, but it was had to tell if all of the kids were there. The woman as she was leaving told the other guy they still had options, so I’m guessing they had some of the kids get away or they have another school.
I wonder how much information they were able to get from those fires. I doubt all the files were totally destroyed.
I don’t think that was the sleeper agent she killed, I think it was his Counterpart on this side.
I think Baldwin’s mission was to kill people the counterparts of the sleeper cell agents coming over from her side. The sleeper agents have the same mission as Clare, slip into a preexisting life on this side. There was a hint of that when Clare met the sleepers with their assignments and indicated there was a delay. Clare on the other hand was activated very early because of the advantages gained by being married to Quayle.
On this assassination Baldwin acted quickly and silently so a replacement is possible. I’m still confused about the first episode when she killed the guy Howard worked for in Interface who was promoted to Strategy instead of Howard. A public death doesn’t benefit a person who’s crossing intent on replacement, though it might send a message back to her side.
Someone said something about eighteen dead people in the house, “half of them kids”. So nine or so dead kids. That sounds about how many were in the classroom.
And we saw them just dumping piles of paper in the bonfires. In my experience, a bundle or stack of papers doesn’t burn well. It chars a bit on the edges but the middle should be intact. So if they’re careful (I think you don’t want to just drown the fire in water), they should be able to recover some info.
And as someone mentioned upthread, these kids were born well after the split. So they may not have an exact counterpart in the other world.
That makes much more sense.
And I expect his doppelganger to go into his Whiplash spiel!
I am always on the brink of losing the thread of this show while I’m watching it. Which, oddly enough, keeps me on my toes and thinking about characters and plot every minute of it. I’m counting on this thread to fill in the gaps where I can’t quite make the connection.
Maybe it was special paper that burned very quickly?
But the question now is who is Clare and Baldwin really working for?
To also answer Sam Stone’s question:
After Quayle confronts Clare she indicates her feelings have changed since the birth of her child. While it may just be a ploy to buy time, in her backstory, we also see that she was largely compelled to join the Indigo school and did not appear to be consumed with rage and vengeance over the death of her parents from the flu.
Baldwin is also being presented more as a sympathetic character. And there is clearly a conflict between her mission and the objectives of Clare’s superiors.
So IMHO, Clare may have, in fact, gone rogue.
Question though. We are told that scientists created an exact duplicate universe . We are first introduce to the Alpha universe (bureaucrat Howard) and then later the Prime universe (spy Howard). While we relate more to the Alpha universe because it was introduced first and appears to be just like ours (no superflu, etc), do both universes consider themselves to be the “original”? i.e. From the perspective of each universe, THEIR scientists opened the portal to the other?