So Marcos now has a Roci warhead on his ship, one that we’ve seen can be remotely controlled by Holden. Wonder if that will come back.
It looks like near the episode Marco was looking at schematics of it.
The newest vignette revealed one thing:
Jules-Pierre Mao died and official story is that Clarissa is dead.
One little detail I really liked this episode is when Roci goes from zero-G to under thrust and Naomi effortless grabs her floating cup before it drops.
Two more episodes.
I’ve been wracking my brain and can’t remember: did we saw how the brother was killed?
No, but the parents or someone said something about him running in front of a car.
Ok; thanks. I thought I remembered that he was hit by a car but I didn’t remember seeing it. I have no recollection of it being said at all tho.
I just watched again. At the start of ep 4, two people are chatting in the background:
“Apparently the car came around the curve too fast and just tipped over.”
“What’s going to happen to the driver?”
“What do you think?”
You totally fucking rock, dude; thank you.
You mean Chekov’s nuke? Surely the writers wouldn’t clumsily telegraph its usage in the denouement. As triggered not by Holden but Naomi, making the ultimate sacrifice (as it’s all she has left.)
Nah, couldn’t happen.
Episode 5 was a good one. And somehow despite not a lot of action in it, I feel better about their ability to wrap it up in one more. I do anticipate some fudging of transit times to get everyone to Medina and the Ring around the same time, but that’s par for the course.
I’ll start with my quibbles about the episode first. On a minor note, I didn’t like that they had Elvie discover the “mass-energy threshold” for Ring transits, instead of it being all Naomi like in the book. Give poor Naomi more credit!
I’m also confused by Fillip’s character arc. I think a slow wearing down of his trust and confidence in his father and their mission would have been more powerful. Instead he seems to swing wildly between support and being horrified. Maybe it’s realistic behavior for a teenager, but narratively it doesn’t work as well.
But on to the good stuff - Drummer! She dominated this episode with three awesome scenes. Naomi totally deserved that “fuck you” for her smiley puppy dog act after Drummer has lost her entire family.
Yeah, they purposefully left it vague as to where Marco actually is right now, but implied they could catch him before he got to the Ring.
Make sure you check out the bonus clip this episode. While it adds absolutely nothing to the story, it’s still a fun little trip.
Yeah, that was strange. At first you are thinking, Filip is losing faith in his dad and then comes wildly to his defense. I think he ends up in a different ending than he was in the book.
I’m trying to figure out how they cram everything in the last episode. I’m going to imagine that since they already found out about the mass the rings can take before it swallows things, they either swallow Inaros before they take the rail guns offline or they immediately overload the rings right after they take the railguns offline. Either way, Medina gets taken after Inaros is dealt with.
I disliked this episode. One of the worst of the series IMHO, and clearly just a setup to try to pull the bits of the story together before the end.
I’m just not into this story on the planet. I don’t have any emotional investment in the girl or her brother or family, and the whole thing has felt so on the rails in order to just get to some big reveal. It’s been a waste of time.
Remember an episode or two ago when Naomi’s big crisis was grappling with whether she could even continue working against her people? I guess we’ve thrown away that emotionally tortured Naomi in favor of oblivious smiley “OMG let’s get together and catch up about old times” Naomi. It was a strong moment when Drummer broke down, for sure, but it didn’t need to get set up in such a way that just felt unbelievable for Naomi.
It’s all just felt rushed this season, understandably, and knowing this was the penultimate episode just made me sad for the storytelling and character development that could have been if they weren’t trying to wrap it all up in some fashion. Almost nothing interesting has happened all season, and the things that did happen happened quickly, without real context or connection to the broader themes/stories that things have gotten in the past.
Maybe I’m being overly harsh, but I feel like this season is coasting on fumes from a writing standpoint.
I am looking forward to picking up the books after next week- I’ve been waiting for the series to wrap up before reading them as I didn’t want to spoil what has mostly been an amazing ride with this show.
I do agree with you here. I think the Laconia story line was the biggest misstep this season. Chronologically it makes sense to include because it is happening at the same time, but (very minor spoiler ahead about its relation to the rest of the story) it has nothing to do with Marco Inaros, the Belter/Inner battle, or anything else in book 6. It isn’t touched on until book 7, and isn’t too important until book 8. Maybe the showrunners are trying to leave open threads to create support for a season 7.
Excellent post, eh.
The Laconia story is terrible, the dialogue is terrible and the acting is terrible. A waste of how many screen-minutes to get to the reveal we all know is coming. It could have been done as a quick message, the way that the humanity-saving food source was done.
I agree that everything feels rushed.
I think the actor is trying but Filip is just written as having too many emotional/moral/intellectual swings in too short a time span. Unless he’s ultimately psychotic and kills himself and dad so they can ascend to be a part of the ring, or some such nonsense. At least then his personality as written would sort of make sense.
This is in the running to out-suck Season 4.
I absolutely loved this episode. Brought together a bunch of storylines, to a great conclusion.
And… Amos with stripper glitter on his face and neck 
fantastic attention to details.
But the let’s get together and catch up was in service of bringing Drummer into the fold and fighting with her instead of against her.
Yes, I think that’s exactly what they are trying to do.
Speaking of which, I finally started to read the books. I finished Cibola Burn last night, and it was so much better than the show. Especially compared to book 3 which I found the TV season better.
IIRC, most book readers consider Cibola Burn to be the worst of the series. I wasn’t a huge fan myself. I like Nemesis Games (Book 5) far better. And tbh, I found Babylon’s Ashes (Book 6) to be pretty meh overall.
Season 3 is kind of strange as it combines the second half of Book 2 with the entirety of Book 3. I really enjoyed Abbadon’s Gate (Book 3). Anna is one of my favorite characters in the books. And book Bull is awesome.
I thought Nemesis Games was the worst of the series. I didn’t really care at all for a petty little skirmish and wanted to go straight to humanity vs. the Big Boys.
I think that was problem with it. I couldn’t get myself interested in her and her chapters always seemed to drag along.