#If this gets one (1) note I will draw rachel with a strap on going to town on Salim

[ultrabananapudding]

Roommate AU [Salim x Rachel] // NSFW talk

In which Salim rents out a room in his apartment and Rachel becomes his new, official flatmate.

These are super indulgent doodles of mine featuring an extreme rare pair bc I need the set-up of Salim getting dominated by Rachel

Mad ramblings below to maybe convince you to jump on board this ship [hear me out]:

Rachel being able to speak Arabic would make Salim very excited to befriend her as he finally gets the chance to speak in his native tongue (something he doesn't get to do often on American soil).

Salim has an easy time reading people, so he wouldn't get too offended by Rachel's often "cold" expression and replies which have earned her the title of "Queen Bitch".

Salim likes to talk and Rachel likes to listen, at first it was a bit overwhelming but over time she starts to find his voice relaxing.

Rachel goes to the gym on a regular basis and Salim has a thing for well-defined muscles.

[metawitches]

The OA takes a break from…the OA in this episode, in order to revisit the home dimension and check in with Betty and the boys. Rachel leads the way on a transformative road trip whose purpose hasn’t become fully clear yet, but with this show, it’s best not to rush things.

Distorted images of the OA’s drawings of Betty and the boys decorate the opening credits. They fade to show Prairie’s body in her coffin, ready for her funeral. When OA jumped to another dimension, the body she left behind, now without its soul and gravely wounded, died.

Steve drives Jesse down a country road, as fast as he can manage without losing control, way over the speed limit. A cop pulls them over, but lets them go when he realizes that they’re the kids who stopped the school shooting and that they’re coming from Prairie’s funeral. He even tells them they’re brave and to get home safely. They don’t know what to do with authority figures who are nice to them.

Buck’s parents didn’t let him go to the funeral. They are moving the family out of the neighborhood to a safer place for their kids. His mom tells him that the movers are coming the next day, so he should tag anything he wants to keep. Buck does some combination of ignoring her and giving her the silent treatment, which is probably 80% ignoring.

This is a continuation of the scene that ended episode 2. Buck is sitting on his bed and hears a hum from his mirror. He goes to check it, but is interrupted when Steve texts him to come to Angie’s house and bring French. Steve says he has a plan.

Once everyone is at the house, Steve tells them that he’s taught Angie the movements. He thinks they’re in a bad dimension, but they can leave. They can all do the movements and get out, right now.

Everyone else is a bit blindsided by this sudden development. French tries to convince Steve that Prairie is dead, but Steve insists she traveled. They argue over whether Prairie’s story was true or she was mentally ill, and whether there was any meaning to the whole adventure.

Steve believes, absolutely, in the literal truth. Buck has been thinking about the coincidences involved and the metaphysical meanings. Angie defends Steve. Jesse silently observes. French hasn’t changed his mind since finding the books convinced him that her whole story was a lie. No evidence can sway him.

Steve and French get into an argument, as is typical for the two alphas. The insults fly, until French jumps on Steve. After that, everyone leaves. Without Prairie and Betty, they’re missing important elements of the group dynamic.

Steve decides to make a recruitment video similar to the one OA made in Part 1, but Angie doesn’t think it’s safe. Some people think the shooter should have shot the boys and Betty the minute they stood up to do the movements, and want an opportunity to finish the job. Angie doesn’t want to recruit strangers unless they go through a metal detector. Steve understands her fear.

Betty is asleep in a hotel room, having a dream while Wheel of Fortune plays on the TV. In the dream, she’s looking at a diner menu when her brother Theo appears behind her and asks for help. Betty wakes up with a nosebleed, which means it was a prophetic dream.

Back at Buck’s house, he’s woken up by more humming in the mirror and gets up to investigate. This time, he catches a glimpse of Rachel in the mirror. He turns to look behind him, but she’s not there. When he looks back at the mirror, she’s gone, but his own face is reflected multiple times, and one reflection looks a lot like Jessie to me.

Buck kept Prairie’s book about angels from the box under her bed, and statues of angels can be seen in his bedroom. Besides the kinship he and Rachel share in their life stories, Buck is probably the most open to supernatural phenomenon.

These look a little odd because I lightened the exposure to make Rachel more visible.

She’s definitely there.

Buck rushes to Angie’s house to tell Steve what he saw. He bursts in on Angie and Steve in bed. Steve is angry until he hears why Buck is there. Buck tells Steve that Rachel sang a little. (I didn’t notice it.)

Steve stares at the mirror, but Rachel doesn’t reappear. He asks for every detail of her appearance and wonders why she didn’t choose him. The bottom line is, Buck’s door was open, so Rachel came in.

French works on a social media profile picture while he waits to met with Abel Johnson, in the public library, which is surrounded by beautiful trees. When Abel arrives, they discuss the funeral and French’s attempts to prove that Prairie’s story is true.

He tells Abel about the box of books. Abel chuckles, and says that he wondered where those books had gone. Prairie’s counselor suggested them for her. The counselor thought that it might help Prairie for the family to accept her story and discuss it with her openly.

French thinks that means that the counselor thought that Prairie lied, because either the story is true or it’s not. There’s no room for gray in Alfonso’s world. Abel becomes indignant, because he doesn’t think she lied. He tells French that Prairie had begun telling the boys the story before the Johnsons ordered the books.

French’s world is turned upside down. Before he can recover, Buck calls him to come over.

Jesse walks home from school while listening to a meditation tape.

“It does not matter what you have experienced over the course of the last 18 hours or so. This meditation is a place for you to release everything that weighs you down. Chance occurrences…”

He unplugs as he reaches Buck’s house and joins the others on mirror watch.

Except Buck didn’t tag the mirror, so his mom sent it to Goodwill. Once they’re done being upset that they’ve inadvertently lost Rachel already, they organize a trip to the thrift store to find the mirror.

But first, French has to compare Buck’s Rachel sighting to his stress hallucination of Homer in Prairie’s mirror in Part 1. Buck doesn’t let him get away with it. He tells French, “You thought that she’d made up Homer’s head wound because she’d been staring at yours all night. So you saw him. It was a trick of the brain. That was different. I was��� visited. I’m not asking you to believe in OA. I’m asking you to believe in me. Something happened through that mirror.”

We should all be as wise as Buck.

Mrs Vu isn’t going looking for the mirror when she CLEARLY told Buck to tag it. French offers to drive Angie’s parents’ station wagon so they can check for the mirror before the store closes for the day. They get there just in time, but their local store passed on the mirror and sent it to the Goodwill in Gary, Indiana.

Gary is a two hour drive from Crestwood. The grumbling starts up again, then Jesse asks what Rachel sang to Buck. She sang tones, rather than words. Buck hasn’t thought about what they were: the notes B,B,A. Everyone is back on board to visit Betty Broderick Allen.

BBA is a little overwhelmed, since she lost her job the last time she got involved with the gang. She’s preparing for a trip out west to visit her Uncle Carl, who’s dying. She already has her train tickets. Steve convinces her that they can all drive to Gary together, then drop her off in Chicago so she can catch the train from there.

They find the mirror in the Gary Goodwill. Rachel doesn’t appear immediately, so they assume they’ll have to wait until dark. BBA will have to change her train tickets again. They wonder if they can stay in the Goodwill all day, and have what sounds like one of their first whole group conversations about what happened that day in the cafeteria.

Steve: “When the sun goes down, Rachel will be back. I know it.”

Buck: “She might even say something.”

Betty: “Hmmm. I guess I can wait. I’ll have to call Amtrak about getting the next train. And you’ll have to call your parents, all of you.”

Steve: “Yeah. No problem. Whatever.”

Betty: “Don’t whatever me, Steven. I won’t go through all that with your parents again.”

Angie: “Just screw his parents. We almost died. Everything’s different now.”

Betty: “Well, I’m not sure everyone sees it that way, Angie.”

Angie: “Well, who cares how everyone sees it? We were there. When Steve stood up, or when you all did, and then the gun went off… I thought…”

Alfonso: “It is weird. That she was right there in that exact spot.”

Betty: “Almost like she drew the bullet into herself.”

Buck: “And away from us.”

Silent pause.

Steve: “Look, we call our parents, and we wait for dark. It’s that simple.”

They are approached by one of the Goodwill workers, so Buck asks if they can stay in the store until dark. The worker, Sonja, offers to let the whole gang stay with her and her dad in the church where her dad is youth pastor. She recognizes them, and would be honored to host them. They buy the vanity, and remove the mirror for transport, strapping it to the top of BBA’s car.

On the drive, Angie proves that Steve has great taste in women, and that she’s every bit the truth teller that the OA is.

Angie, looking at a church: “Do you see all of those little, like, peaks, over the windows and doorways? Early churches stole that sh– from the pagans, but they didn’t realize that stuff was to remind you of a vag. So every church in the f–king country, like every church door, is just, like, open vages, just like welcoming folks home.”

Betty: “That’s blasphemous, Angie.”

Angie: “Well, only if you think God didn’t create vaginas.”

Sonja says they can sleep in the sanctuary and eat whatever they want from the kitchen. Sonja’s dad says the sanctuary is for any pilgrims of faith who might be passing through. She asks if they’re pilgrims of faith and they don’t know what to say.

They may not be pilgrims of the Christian faith, but they are certainly pursuing the great mysteries which transcend religion, based on their faith.

Steve and Buck set the mirror up near the altar and light some candles, then wait for dark. They all stare at the mirror for hours, but nothing happens.

Alfonso gets tired of waiting, and goes outside to scroll through his Grindr account. He chooses a guy in his 40s, who picks Alfonso up within a few minutes. They go to the guy’s apartment and get into the hook up without much ado. I doubt it was Alfonso’s first time doing this, but it didn’t seem like he’d done it many times, either.

Meanwhile, Jesse breaks into the church’s collection box and steals the cash, then uses it to buy oxycontin from a local dealer. He tells the dealer that he can’t sleep because he has too much on his mind and has nightmares all the time. Jesse asks the dealer what Oxycontin will do. The dealer says he’ll just float, but to start with only one pill. He dry swallows the pill as the dealer leaves.

Jesse is always quiet, but he’s been exceptionally quiet during this episode. He was the only one who didn’t add anything to the conversation about the shooting. It sounds like he’s still dealing with trauma from the incident, and he’s dealing with it alone.

Handley, Alfonso’s hook up, makes milkshakes for them when they’re done in bed, because why wouldn’t you make milkshakes while naked? Alfonso starts to get dressed, feeling nervous now that the sex is over, but Handley encourages him to stay for a while.

They chat over the shakes, and French ends up telling a condensed version of OA, the shooting and the mirror. I think Handley is the first nonthreatening, impartial person that French has been able to talk to about this, and it helps him clear his head. He still doesn’t know what the truth of the situation was, but he doesn’t seem as stressed about it.

“I don’t know if she was an angel or a liar or a schizophrenic. And now she’s dead. She’s dead, and we almost died with her. My friends, they think that she’s trying to send us some sort of sign. Through a mirror. A message.”

Handley is open to the idea of a message from the beyond, and suggests they visit his Aunt Lily, a famous medium who just moved from Gary to Nebraska. He promises she’ll be worth the 500 mile drive.

When French returns to the church and gets ready to bed down in the sanctuary, the mirror is humming again. One of the church’s stained glass windows is reflecting in the mirror. It looks like a man and a blonde woman are hugging. Is Rachel sending a message about OA and Homer? This reflection is only there for certain characters’ points of view, which makes sense, but it’s framed too perfectly to be an accident.

Can anyone tell me what these windows depict? Is it Easter through the Ascension?

French gets up for a minute, but the mirror acts normal. When he sits down again, the meaningful reflection is back, plus gasping, heavy breathing and sobbing can be heard. Rachel doesn’t want to talk to the skeptic.

Maybe she’s waiting for some time alone with Buck again, or with some preferred combination of the group.

In the morning, French shows Aunt Lily’s website to Steve, suggesting they give her a try. He figures if they exhaust every possibility for communicating with Rachel, Buck will be satisfied and let it go. French tells Steve she comes highly recommended. Steve is impressed, if amused, by her 4 stars on Yelp.

Steve looks at French and tries to figure out what changed his mood so drastically overnight. He jokingly asks if French got laid, then realizes he’s right. Steve guesses it was Sonja, and is jealous French managed to have sex in the church, because he’s suffering.

French says, “It wasn’t Sonja. It, um…it wasn’t a girl.”

Dramatic pause while Steve processes this new information and follows the implications until the end of the line…

“You’re totally into me.”

Yup. All of those arguments were just sexual tension. If you haven’t written the fan fiction yet, you were just given permission. Personally, I’m sticking with shipping Buck and French, although French does need to relax and learn to accept the angels. And, after watching him with Handley, I think he might have a thing for older guys.

They laugh and tease each other. French looks up the route to Nebraska and realizes it’s 500 more miles away. They confess that neither has called their moms.

The organ plays the BBA pattern by itself, over and over.

They get on the road again, settling in for a long drive. It’s uneventful until it’s not. When it’s his turn to drive, Steve hits an animal in the road, and slams on the brakes. The mirror to slides forward off the car, onto the pavement, and shatters. Buck is beside himself and thinks they’ve lost Rachel, but the others think they should still wrap up the broken mirror and take it to Aunt Lily.

Jesse is the only one who pays attention to the injured armadillo behind the car. He picks up a heavy rock, and, steeling himself, hurls it down on the animal to kill it quickly and end its suffering. Angie watches him from a distance. No one else notices or thinks about how hard that must have been for Jessie.

Since none of the kids have called home and they’ve been gone overnight, the parents report them missing. Buck/Michelle is now a missing child in two dimensions. His mother blames the “cult” he’s part of for kidnapping him.

The gang makes it to Aunt Lily’s house. There’s a momentary stand-off, as they try to make sense of each other, since this is such an unusual situation. Lily thinks it’s especially odd that someone who has passed, and came from another dimension, would make contact with someone they don’t know. She suggests one of them might be a medium, and not know it yet.

I suspect both Buck and Betty are.

Steve pulls out the broken mirror to show Lily how Rachel made contact. Turns out broken mirrors are bad luck in the world of mediums, and not just in popular superstition. She tells them to cover the broken mirror and every mirror in her house, quickly. Rachel’s spirit will be looking for a new home, and if she chooses one of Lily’s mirrors she’ll be trapped in the house. Lily doesn’t want that.

After a few minutes of drama, with Lily insisting they leave after the mirrors are covered and the gang begging her to help them, Lily relents and agrees to help, but she’ll have to charge for the deluxe package. Lily is a shrewd business woman.

The deluxe package includes a séance and a blank photographic plate. The spirit can write on the plate, then Lily will interpret the markings. They sit around a table, holding hands, in the light of a lamp with a red bulb. Lily warns them that it could take hours, but they can all feel something happening.

Buck, who is most sensitive to Rachel, gets up from the table and follows her pull into the TV room. Rachel turns the TV on and skims through channels, looking for what she needs to create her message. This will be more elaborate than a scratch on a plate.

Images repeat and forms patterns. They figure out that Rachel is showing them a blind woman coming out of a bunker, then going into another dimension. The meaning is clear: OA survived the jump.

Next Rachel trims the clips into words and letters, until it says “Only safe for BBA to go.” Rachel repeats the message on the TV a few times. The kids read it each time, until it becomes a chant. BBA stares at the TV, wondering what it means. The last word on Lily’s TV screen is “mystery”. Then the image changes to the rose stained glass window from the green puzzle house.

This moment is the reason for this episode’s existence.

BBA is drawn, slowly, to the image of the rose window that Rachel has sent for her. In the other dimension, this window was one of the three essential elements that all of the dreamers saw. There is something profound about it.

Betty approaches the screen as if in a trance. Her nose is bleeding, universal scifi sign for a woman using immense power. Everyone else in the room is also transfixed, but Steve asks, “What’s happening?” He senses that there’s something powerful going on, beyond Rachel’s simple message.

In the background, Lily yells, “Betty, look away! Stop! Betty! Betty!” She tries to get Betty to turn back, right up until the moment when Betty touches the screen. It shatters in a spider web pattern and turns black.”

Did Betty just undergo a transformation?

Commentary

This is the most detailed look we’ve had yet of the rose window. It can be seen to be a garden of red flowers in these images. Plant imagery has already told us that flowers are important. Liam came out of the house with the rose window with a plant growing out of his ear and rants about having 47 selves. The Garden of Forking Paths?

And the window garden is red, signaling spiritual development.The entire sequence was lit in red, which means that everyone present made spiritual progress. Betty touched the symbolic window, so her change was the deepest.

This dimension’s arc has fairy tale qualities to it, just like Karim’s. The Twelve Wild Swans is what’s coming to my mind the most, with a dash of Hansel and Gretel for the dangerous enemies and distracting indulgences, such as sex, drugs and fighting. Both have a sister who rescues her brother(s). This is definitely a story about siblings who need to save each other, and, as in The Twelve Wild Swans in particular, the burden seems to be on Betty, the lone sister.

[I should have mentioned it earlier, but Nina Azarova (not OA) is quite clearly Rapunzel in her locked, guarded penthouse.]

[In episode 2, Hap tries to frame himself and Prairie as Hansel and Gretel, alone in the dark and dangerous woods, seeking a way to navigate and find food/the best dimension. He says to her that when he traveled, he jumped into the darkness, where he could have landed in a version of himself who was brain-damaged or worse. He begs for her to save him from whatever terrible dangers may be out there in the forest/spaces between and within dimensions.

Though Hap is a liar, everything he says here is truthful. But she’s not his sister, and owes him no loyalty, unless we’re doing a different fairy tale which includes jealous step sisters. It does make me wonder. What if it were Hap who lost his memory, and he became the apparently charismatic and lovable Dr Percy? Could the captives be friends with him?]

With Buck’s mom reporting them to the police, Betty and the boys are on the run again. At the end of the episode, Betty was given power. The dream she had early in the episode gave her the task of saving the boys. Rachel wants her to go to the other dimension, to stop Hap, but I don’t think Betty will leave anyone behind in D1, after the loss of her brother, Theo.

The TV is the Magic Mirror, a metaphor for the show and real life. Rachel either knew about or was responsible for Betty’s prophetic dream in the hotel, early in the episode, and added to the Wheel of Fortune motif to her message accordingly. Or Betty has already begun having true prophetic dreams, and Rachel was tapping into symbols she knew would mean something to Betty.

It could be that the movements don’t just open up the mind for interdimensional travel, which is, after all, a psychic ability. They could open up the mind to whatever latent psychic talents the individual has. Maybe extensive practice of the movements acts to develop psychic abilities, as well.

Taken as a whole, this episode had many ritualistic elements. There was an animal sacrifice, chanting, the singing of the BBA note sequence, Betty meditating while listening to the organ plays her notes, some sex magic, candles, food and drink. Betty swam as her ritual bath, various activities with mirrors, and then the séance.

After she’d been prepared for a day or so, Betty accepted that she was the chosen one and walked toward the rose window. She had no idea what it meant. But Rachel has the power to travel through dimensions at will and the TV had its own power. The life and power of the TV was the final sacrifice of the episode. The screen cracked the same way the cafeteria window did, when OA was shot.

The energy from the séance, the movement on the TV and the death of the TV may have been enough to send Betty to the other dimension, with a nudge from Rachel, but she didn’t want to go, or at least wasn’t ready to go alone. So she’ll stay here in D1 for now, with whatever new power she just acquired.

I’m certain she took some form of power into herself, and since she didn’t use it to travel, it will open her mind to the other dimensions. I think this season OA’s tribesman need to reach the state of angel and be able to travel with her. BBA fulfilled that portion, through her suffering, bravery, empathy and wisdom.

This episode continues the quest motif begun in the previous two episodes. The boys and Betty are on their own journey, with their own spirit guide (Rachel) and helpers who arrive at the right time to provide them with what they need, whatever form that may take.

Circumstances conspire to get them on the road, with nudges from Buck’s mom and the Crestwood Goodwill guy; then Sonja offers them a place to stay, in a spiritual haven, no less; Handley acts as a personal guide for French and points the group toward Aunt Lily the medium; and Aunt Lily helps them open up to Rachel’s message.

Rachel is a spirit guide, but she seems like an unsanctioned ghost, rather than a strong presence like Khatoun. Maybe it’s that she’s newly dead, and hasn’t gathered much power in the new realm, or maybe Hap has grown that much stronger. Either way, she’s attempting to give Betty a mission, but hasn’t been able to fully explain it with her limited abilities. It seems like she carried D2 Rachel’s aphasia into the afterlife, which is unexpected.

Aunt Lily is obviously a real medium, and is probably right that at least one, and maybe more, of the gang are also mediums. They all have some sense of other dimensions from doing the movements that probably made it easier for Rachel to come to them, and there’s been a link between Buck and Rachel since he saw her accident in Part 1. But what Rachel did with the TV signal took strength far beyond what she’d been able to do so far or the psychic expected. Betty and Buck seem to have a sensitivity to Rachel. Steve is very sensitive too, but he has a hard time focusing.

How did I never realize how much Betty and Homer have in common? Betty is never going to be to the boys what OA was to the captives. She’s closer to Homer, the heart and moral compass who doesn’t have the authority of an enforcer.They’re both almost too nice for this world and get taken advantage of because of it, but they’re so warm and lovable that you have to forgive them when they dither and backtrack. I think that heart and sensitivity will eventually lead to something important for both of them.

The other dimension added Karim as a major character, and this dimension added Angie as a regular. Does that mean that Angie and Karim are a matched pair? They are both independent and empathic but blunt and truthful, but otherwise we still hardly know Angie.

Where will Rachel’s spirit go, now that she’s delivered her message and transformed Betty? Will she continue to guide them, find a body in this or another dimension, or move on to another plane of existence? Do spirits of the dead have the ability to be reborn as infants/reincarnated, I wonder?

It was poignant to see the late Scott Wilson one more time. I didn’t think he’d be in this season. He’ll be missed.

Between the humming, OA’s ears ringing, and the dimension hopping, this is starting to feel like Castle Rock.

The cracks are getting more complex. More people involved, more dimensions and layers to the mystery.

  Images courtesy of Netflix.

The OA Part 2 Episode 3: Magic Mirror Recap The OA takes a break from...the OA in this episode, in order to revisit the home dimension and check in with Betty and the boys.

[metawitches]

Things are starting to get real at Project NOAH. The fourth episode of The Passage, Whose Blood Is That?, shows us the transition from human to viral vampire, as Carter flips to his new form. It also shows the insidiousness, and brilliance, of the virals’ psychological invasion of the humans stationed at the Project NOAH facility.

The humans are scientists and members of the military, who don’t believe that dreams can hurt them or that vampires are real. It’s important that they each appear to be in control of themselves to their colleagues. Scientific and military cultures dictate that they maintain those facades until the very end, no matter what’s actually going on inside them. They are the perfect group of people on which to use internal psychological warfare.

We often think of murderers as rough, violent thugs, but the reality is that many appear to be normal people in their day to day lives. Serial killers, in particular, can be narcissistic chameleons with a talent for manipulation, which they use to lure in their victims. Eleven of the thirteen recipients of Fanning’s blood are the perpetrators of multiple murders, predators in their human lives. Prior to developing their viral predatory instincts, they’d already developed the human version of those instincts and learned the ways of their prey, us.

Now, they have moved beyond being merely narcissistic, ruthless psychopaths, to become ruthless, efficient predators of humans and mammals. They are a telepathic tribe of killers who are bent on revenge and domination and who crave the blood of their prey and enemies. They are led by an evil genius with an axe to grind, and they can convert people to their cause through dreams and visions, without ever speaking directly to them.

The end of the world as we know it is almost upon us.

In this episode, Carter struggles with the final stages of the process the serum has created within him. As he’s overcome by his illness, he relives the important moments of his life. Fanning is able to interfere with the process, pushing Carter toward accepting that he must become a viral or die. Wolgast and Amy continue to use their spy skills to learn about Project NOAH and look for opportunities to escape. Amy begins receiving telepathic visitors. And discipline begins to crumble, as the virals’ telepathic influence is felt by all levels of the Project NOAH staff.

Recap

Whose Blood Is That Begins with Carter dreaming about his girlfriend, Rachel Wilson, while the Tom Rhodes song Streetlights plays. First they are in bed together, then she’s drowned in a pool. Fanning interrupts and tells Carter that it’s time. He’s going to have to make a choice. Carter wakes up and discovers the sun streaming in the windows, which irritates his skin and eyes. He shrinks away from it and uses a remote to close the blinds.

Carter glances over at the sign on his wall which lists viral symptoms to watch for: Fever, vomiting, sensitivity to sunlight, disorientation, and seizure. Next door, Amy can tell that Carter had a rough night. She has the same sign with the list of symptoms that he does, but hers includes the symptom of lack of appetite.

She begins to panic a little, worrying that Carter is showing symptoms and that she will soon, as well. Brad stops her, reminding her that they agreed not to panic. Instead he’s going to get them out of there. He tells their guard that he needs to see Lear, because he has all of the symptoms on the sign.

  Lear is busy analyzing the virals’ most recent brain scans and explaining how things work to Dr Pet. He tells Pet that he thinks they’re witnessing an evolution, and they need to understand it, so they can defend themselves from attack. Pet mocks him, scoffing at the idea that anyone would need to defend themselves from bad dreams. He says that Jonas is like his mom, who thinks that cell phones cause brain cancer. Jonas tells him that cell phones do cause brain cancer.

Jonas shows him that the brain activity peaks overnight, at the same time that the nightmares do. He doesn’t think it can be a coincidence. Pet notices that the intensity of the EM field on Fanning’s scan is exponentially higher than the others.

Lear is called out to speak to Wolgast, along with Sykes. He tells them that Amy is becoming anxious and he thinks she needs to get outside so that she has a diversion. They agree, as long as there’s a security detail assigned to him.

Shauna appears in Richards head, to thank him for stopping the execution and to warn him that one of his men is about to lose it. Richards doesn’t believe her, so she says he’ll just have to wait and see, then vanishes. As soon as she’s gone, he’s notified that there’s an issue with one of the men, Paulson.

Richards finds Paulson in front of viral David Winston. Paulson tells Richards Winston’s story: He drove trucks long distance for 20 years. One time, he raped a girl, then strapped her underneath his rig and finished his route from Seattle to Bozeman. That was the beginning of a five year killing spree.

Richards stops Paulson, telling him he doesn’t have to learn the virals’ crime stories. Paulson says that he didn’t have a choice, just like when Babcock told Richards her story. Winston even tells Paulson he loves him. The virals can do whatever they want, and no one can stop them. Paulson says that Richards is the only one who could stop them, but Babcock won’t let him.

Richards has heard enough, and lectures Paulson that they’ve been together for three tours of duty now. He brought Paulson with him on this assignment because he trusts Paulson, but he needs to wake up. He orders Paulson to the medic for a full psych eval.

Paulson tells him that Babcock is playing him. Richards says that their job is to protect the lab rats in the facility until they get the cure they’re looking for. They’ve just been cooped up there too long, and it’s getting to them.

Paulson: “How do you know that we’re not the lab rats?”

Amy and Carter pass notes under the door, with Amy asking questions about Carter’s progress, like how fast he can run and when it gets scary. He tries to keep his answers vague and cheerful, for her sake, but she doesn’t buy it. She knows there’s scary stuff happening.

The trip outside includes having the security detail build Amy a treehouse, while she sits on a blanket and draws. Brad is extremely enthusiastic about the treehouse. Amy is afraid of heights. Once he coaxes her up the ladder, he explains that now they have a bird’s eye view of the compound, and, for the first time, they can see what’s beyond the Project NOAH gates. Once Amy realizes the treehouse is actually a spy mission, she’s much more enthusiastic about it.

Lear examines Carter and finds his physical readings all look good. Carter complains to Lear about his nightmares and asks who Fanning is. All Lear will tell him is that Tim Fanning was the most brilliant man he ever knew and the most manipulative. He won’t tell Carter what happened to Fanning, which seems a bit unfair.

Carter tells Lear that Fanning is coming for him and wants him to make a choice. Lear asks what kind of choice, but Carter doesn’t know yet. Still, Lear thinks that Carter has a good chance of coming through the trial without any “side effects”, because he’s young, strong, and hasn’t tried to convince Lear that he’s innocent.

Lear has read Carter’s case file, and he knows that Carter’s lawyer fell asleep during the trial, and that Project Innocence offered to take his case, but he refused. Lear doesn’t know what happened to the victim, Rachel Wilson, but he thinks that her death is clearly a burden on Carter.

Sykes pulls Richards aside to share some good news. They’ve gotten tater tots back in the kitchen! She asks him to meet her in the cafeteria later. She’ll be the one with the ketchup.

I haven’t seen anyone get this excited about tater tots since season 1 of Glee.

Richards doesn’t want to talk about work during their tater date, so Sykes asks him her question now- Why did he change his mind about executing Babcock? He says that he called the DoD at the last minute, to let them know that they were going to use deadly force on one of the virals. The DoD overruled him and told him to stand down. He assumes it’s because they’ve got $36 million invested in each viral, and they don’t want to waste the money.

Carter is losing his appetite, in addition to being sensitive to sunlight. He goes into a dream state, remembering his life. When he met Rachel Wilson, he had just finished refurbishing a home and was trying to flip it. She was a realtor who came to his open house. She had a lot of tips for him to improve his presentation, including that he should open his heart to love and ask her out.

Suddenly, Fanning is in the middle of his memory, telling him he did a great job asking Rachel out, because she was a catch. Anthony startles back to full consciousness. Amy sends a note under the door, asking if he’s ok. He goes to pick it up, and as he does, blood splatters out of his mouth. He’s losing his first tooth, in order to make room for his fangs to come in.

Amy and Brad spend another session in the treehouse, while the security detail finishes the shelter part of it. When they’re done, Amy talks one of them into letting her borrow her binoculars for a while. She stands up and starts calling out everything she sees. Brad tells her she can call him Brad, instead of The Agent, but she thinks of him as The Agent, and that’s that.

Sierra Thompson, the TV news journalist,  has finished her in depth report on the twelve missing death row inmates and gives Lacey and Lila a sneak peek at the story. She intends to air her report the next day at 5:00 PM and tells them to be careful. Lacey is Lila’s security.

Sykes calls the DoD to check in about the overruled execution order, and discovers that the phone call Richards described never happened.

Lear and Fanning notice that Fanning’s EM surge is 400% higher than it was the day before.

Carter is curled up in a ball on the floor, whimpering. When a nurse and his guards find him, the nurse orders them to move him down to the science levels, immediately. Whatever Fanning is using all of that extra energy for, it has something to do with Carter.

Amy uses the guard’s binoculars to point out helpful scenery, like birds and trees, until she spots a guy on the roof with a big gun. Roof snipers must not be a normal part of the scenery, because Brad pulls her onto the treehouse floor, just as the sniper starts firing.

Carter has a high fever and the shivers, but Lear still assures him that they won’t lose him to the virus. For those of you keeping count, Carter now has every symptom listed on the signs, other than seizures. (I’m counting the blood from his mouth as vomit.) Some of the shivering might be supposed to be brief seizures. He’s also lost quite a few teeth.

Poor guy. He had a nice smile.

Sykes is examining test results on the monitors and calls Lear over. She shows him a snapshot of Carter’s viral genome from a few days ago, and then one from today. Every time they attenuate the formula, it eventually mutates back. Lear suggests they synthesize a new serum by excising the bad nucleotides. It shouldn’t take long.

They hear gunshots outside, signaling that Paulson has started firing. Richards and his men are already in place. Paulson demands a helicopter to get him out of the compound, and he threatens to take out the power for the entire compound if he doesn’t get it. He has a clear shot at the electric substation, where the backups are also housed.

Who thought it was a good idea to put the backups next to the main power supply?

  Amy and Brad are hiding behind a large tree, but Paulson’s still shooting up the place. Richards sees them, and makes hand signals to Brad to tell him the plan to get them to safety. Brad tells Amy they’re going to run over to Richards on the count of three. Richards’ men provide cover fire to keep Paulson busy. As they’re running, Amy easily sprints ahead of Brad. The serum is kicking in and giving her powers. Both Brad and Amy make it safely to Richards.

Paulson shoots out the substation, so the compound loses power. Sykes can’t send in a repair team until Paulson stops shooting, and Carter’s serum can’t be processed until the power is back on. Brad offers to talk to Paulson, since he’s a hostage negotiator. Richards and Sykes decide to send Brad in, while sending Amy back inside.

Carter is quickly getting worse, despite being in an ice bath in a big, metal tub. He returns to his memories of Rachel Wilson. On the night of their 3 month anniversary, she took him to an abandoned house and told him that she wanted them to fix it up together, then sell it. He thought it was too much for just the two of them, since he was just starting out and didn’t have established crews and suppliers. Rachel was upset that he wasn’t as enthusiastic as she was, because she’d already bought the house to surprise him. He gave in, and said he’d figure it out. She was ecstatic when he said yes.

In real life, Carter’s fever rises to 106. Lear figures out that Fanning is drawing energy from the other virals and using it to make Carter become a viral faster. In the fever dream, Carter becomes feverish, and doesn’t understand what’s happening. Fanning appears, and Rachel disappears.

Shouldn’t they try something like gassing the other virals into unconsciousness? Or hitting them over the head? Feeding them blood laced with a knockout drug?

Richards leads Brad up to Paulson, but refuses to give him any information about Paulson to work with. Brad tells Paulson that there’s a medical emergency, so he needs to let them restore the power systems. Paulson refuses, and says that he smuggled a vial of Fanning’s blood out of the compound as an insurance policy. They won’t be able to find it without his help.

Sierra Thompson is murdered and her exposé of Project Noah doesn’t air. Lacey and Lila go back on the run, figuring that they’re the next targets.

In Carter’s next memory, the house is finished being remodeled, and he’s living there. Rachel comes over, with bruises on her face. It’s clear that someone hit her. Carter wants to know what happened. She tells him she’s married. Carter is angry that she lied to him, but not at all violent.

Amy sends notes under Carter’s door, but he doesn’t answer, since he’s not there. Instead, Babcock appears in her room. She tells Amy that Carter isn’t gone forever. Amy asks who Babcock is. Babcock tells Amy to concentrate and figure it out. Amy does, and Shauna’s name comes into her mind. Shauna already knows all about Amy.

Amy asks where Shauna’s body is. Shauna says she’s down in the basement, locked up. Then Amy asks to see what Shauna really looks like. Shauna hesitates, because she doesn’t want to scare Amy. Amy insists she can take it. Shauna gives in, but says she’ll only show Amy for a moment. She shows Amy her teeth, veins and eyes, but doesn’t show how dead-eyed she normally looks. Maybe the virals will be more lively once they’re out of their cells.

Amy says that she’s nothing like Shauna. Shauna points out that Amy is, and Shauna knows that Amy can feel herself changing. She tells Amy that after she changes, she won’t need anyone to protect her, and she’ll finally have a family who’ll watch out for her. She just has to give in to it. Fighting only makes it worse.

Amy turns Shauna down. She has The Agent to be her family. Shauna says that Brad will have a hard time with all of this. She wants Amy to make sure she keeps thinking for herself, because Amy knows what’s best. Amy tells her to leave. To her credit, Shauna does.

Back in the pilot, Amy questioned why Agents Wolgast and Doyle came to pick her up from the foster home without a woman being with them, because agencies always send a woman. Now, the virals have sent a woman to manipulate her into joining them. Maybe Amy trusted Brad because she knew he wasn’t a woman sent to put her at ease.

Richards tells Brad that he’s having the vials in the blood locker checked to figure out if one is missing. If so, he needs Brad to get the location of the missing vial. Brad tells both Paulson and Richards that if the blood sample gets out to the public, it’s a disaster. Paulson says that they should listen to him, then.

Brad notices that Paulson is standing up and in the line of fire, so he makes hand signals to tell Paulson to crouch down again. He tries to convince Paulson that they’re on the same side. He’s been on Level 4B, where they keep the virals, and he’s had Fanning get into his head. He admits to Paulson that they weren’t prepared for what this turned out to be, and they won’t accept that it’s gone wrong. Paulson says that they don’t have much more time. Brad offers to work together.

Richards has been listening the whole time. Now, he sneaks up behind Brad, as Paulson is sharing vital information that might implicate him and his involvement with Babcock.

Paulson: “Two’s not enough to stop them… Winston told me everything. The virals aren’t going to break out. We’re gonna let them out.”

Brad: “They can’t control us. Not to do something like that.”

Paulson: “Ask Richards. Ask him about Babcock. He saved her life, and you wanna know why? Because Fanning needs all of them alive. And when he gets one more, that’s when-”

Richards shoots Paulson in the forehead, killing him instantly.

Brad yells at Richards, because he was successfully talking Paulson down. He wants to know who the “one more” is, and what will happen. Richards radios down to his men to send the repair teams into the power substation. He tells Brad that the negotiation took too long.

Brad starts asking questions about the things Paulson said about Richards, and about the vial of blood. Richards says that Paulson was a lunatic and the blood is all accounted for. He turns the arguments away from himself and asks when Brad was down on 4B, since they just had a security incident.

Brad says it was a bluff. They shouldn’t be at each other’s throats when there’s trouble coming. Richards tells him that if trouble comes, he’ll handle it. Guards take Brad away.

Lear tells Carter to push Fanning out of his mind. The power comes back, so Lear and Sykes finish the new serum. Carter’s memories continue to unwind. Sometime during this sequence, he’s given the new serum.

He and Rachel sit by the pool at the new house, drinking wine. She takes some pills. Her husband calls and Carter tells him that Rachel will call him back when she’s ready. She tells Carter that she thought she could end her marriage and he would never know about it. Carter says that he loves her, but he needs time to think.

Later on, both Carter and Rachel are in bed, but he won’t let her touch him. When he wakes up in the morning, she’s drowned herself in the pool. He pulls her out and tries to revive her, but it’s too late.

Fanning walks up to Carter as he’s giving Rachel CPR, and says that he can understand how this incident ended with Carter on death row. Her rich husband hated both Rachel and Carter, so he claimed that Carter was the one who hit Rachel and that he drowned her on purpose.

Fanning tells Carter that he’s dying. he’s been replaying these memories on a loop every day for two years, and it always ends the same way, with him getting framed for Rachel’s murder. So why didn’t he put up a better defense in court?

Carter is distraught. He cries that he should have helped her or just said he forgave her. Fanning laughs. He tells Carter that Rachel was a mentally ill, selfish, drug addict. Carter tries to disagree, but Fanning has been inside Carter’s mind since he got to Project Noah. He knows the truth.

Carter says that he doesn’t want to die. Fanning tells him that he doesn’t have to. He can choose to be part of Fanning’s family, instead. Wanting human connection is understandable, but in the end it just brings pain. He was poor and black, so his love for Rachel got him blamed for Rachel’s death. That should make him angry.

Fanning: “I’m offering you a new life. One without pain, one without suffering. Power is what you’ve been missing. Love without power is misery. Choose, Carter. Do it. Now. You can curl up and die or you can be at the top of the food chain. You can cash in or you can run the table. You can be the victim, or you can be the perpetrator. Either way, you’re heart is going to stop beating in eight seconds. What’s it gonna be?”

During this speech, Brad returns to Amy. They hug and comfort each other. Richards watches as Paulson’s body is removed from the roof. It hits him that he’s murdered a friend to protect the virals and himself. He doubles over with the emotion of the realization. Shauna comforts him.

Carter’s eyes turn orange, he rips out his IV and stands up, roaring like a lion. Blood pours out of his mouth as the rest of his fanged teeth come in. He leaps out of the metal tub and pounces on the nearest unnamed extra, dragging her to the floor and biting her neck.

Everyone else in the room screams and runs away, except Lear, who runs toward him. The veins have darkened and become prominent on Carter’s face. His transformation is complete. When Lear gets to him, Carter grabs at his face, pulling his mask off while pushing him away. Pet and Sykes drag Lear into the airlock and safety.

Carter sucks the blood from the med tech while Lear, Sykes and Pet watch. Sykes notices that Lear has lost his mask, and has blood streaked down his face, including in the corner of his left eye and on his lip. She asks, “Whose blood is that?”

Commentary

It looks to me like the blood on Jonas’ face belongs to the med tech, for the most part. The IV was in Carter’s left arm and he bit the med tech on the right side of her neck, which he was holding with his right arm. Carter grabbed Lear’s mask with his right hand. He was also bleeding from his mouth, so while it’s possible some of that blood is Carter’s own, most or all of it should be from the med tech’s neck.

Lear should be rushed into a decon shower, after having his face wiped very carefully with alcohol.

If Lear was exposed, he might need to start working on another form of cure, either using Amy’s blood, or the final one given to Carter, without the bad nucleotides. And maybe try to get far enough away from Fanning to avoid his telepathic control.

Apparently killing the obviously evil, murderous virals, before things get any further out of control, isn’t an option. I would say this is unrealistic, but I’ve watched too many people in real life deny ridiculously obvious danger and mental illness, or be sure that they could handle it. Unfortunately, it’s very realistic for the doctors and military to ignore the danger and tell anyone who takes it seriously that they’re overreacting.

Will the show ever answer the important question of whose bright idea it was to test the viral vampire serum on death row murderers? My guess goes to Richards, but it could have come from higher up the food chain or from Dr Pet, who’s always full of idiotic ideas.

Paulson was the guard who helped with Shauna’s execution last episode. Did Shauna slip something extra into his head, to help Winston push him over the edge? Of the Twelve, she seems to have the strongest telepathic abilities with humans.

Did Paulson actually steal Fanning’s blood, and did Richards actually check to see if any was missing? As far as we know, everything Paulson said was the truth, so we have no reason to doubt that he stole some blood for insurance. The virals would want their blood to get out and infect more people, so they’d help him with distractions.

On the other hand, Richards is telling frequent lies these days, and he wouldn’t want anyone to know that there might be blood missing, after his other issues lately. It would be like him to gamble that the missing blood is somewhere safe and will never surface, or that he’ll be able to find it before it causes trouble. So there’s probably a vial of Fanning’s blood in the wind, somewhere.

The virals aren’t just telepathic, they also have a hypnotic ability, that’s the equivalent of a vampire’s glamour. They’re able to make their targets see things the way they want them to look, whether that’s literally or figuratively. Paulson and Richards both almost seemed to have had spells cast on them, that they then briefly came out of. Fanning has the strongest glamour, since he’s the alpha and can draw power from the others. Anyone who’s seen a vision or had a nightmare is vulnerable.

Between what Paulson and Grey have said, and what we’ve seen with Shauna and Richards, it looks like the virals are making their version of thralls, what the books call familiars. A vampire’s thrall is bound to the vampire, usually with a blood bond, and is a servant who is basically a fervently devoted slave. The familiars in the books have a psychological and sometimes a viral bond with one of the 12 death row inmates (known as the Twelve). The familiars act as assistants and liaisons between the Twelve (and Fanning) and humans.

As Richards succumbs to Babcock’s influence, he’s becoming more like the ruthless character Richards was in the book. They’ve already changed his story arc and character, and I have a feeling he’ll end up as a composite character, if the show lasts long enough.

(For book readers: I’m thinking Richards will be combined with Horace Guilder and/or Jude Cripp, if the show lasts a few seasons and gets past Year Zero, to the point of setting up new communities.)

  Images courtesy of FOX.

The Passage Season 1 Episode 4: Whose Blood Is That? Recap Things are starting to get real at Project NOAH. The fourth episode of The Passage, Whose Blood Is That?, shows us the transition from human to viral vampire, as Carter flips to his new form.