Earth Republic shows up to threaten Yewll immediately, so she lets us in on what happened in the tail-end last week: Both Knots are inside Irisa's body now, and therefore "active." What do they do? Activate a 3000 year old Votan vessel -- yes, the Kaziri -- with an onboard weapon capable of eliminating all human or all Votan life on the planet. (Which is why Nicky, seemingly human, ended up talking about preserving "our" life with the weapon, which was confusing the entire time.) So the cult that put the silver one in Irisa wasn't kidding around about the "Devouring Mother," angel of death stuff: She literally is a messiah who destroys. Nolan brings her this info at the Spirit Rider camp, where Rynn has dressed her wounds but is still not buying the actual truth, which is that Sukar's coma is no fault of Nolan's. (No sign of Ziggy, sadly.)
Stahma forgets herself in a stress-relieving moment, treating nervous Datak to a special trick she learned from Kenya Rosewater. He doesn't figure it out at the time, but once he does he pronounces a death sentence on them both, and Stahma rushes to her lover so they can run away together. But it's Stahma, so like... She's not lying, exactly, but she does seemingly kill Kenya for Datak's forgiveness. Sad and creepy and oh so Stahma.
For fear of serious torture, Yewll offers to help the E-Rep mercs, led by the intriguingly awful (and fanfic-ready) young torturer Black Jonah, find the ship -- but first, they need to shake down the Spirit Riders. So it is that while Datak is winning the election (and thus ceding the mines to the E-Rep), a last-minute threat to Tommy puts Irisa in their custody nearby. After no small amount of military-type shenanigans, Nolan and Tommy are able to rejoin Doc Yewll, who has managed to activate the Thingies just enough to knock everybody else out. Irisa and Nolan make a last stand, but thanks to a well-timed volley from Black Jonah, Jeb Nolan dies coughing up blood.
Datak figures out the E-Rep doesn't care about gulanite about five minutes after everybody else on the show, and embarrassedly goads mean Colonel Marsh into unleashing a ton of racist invective on him with the general tenor of, Datak is stupid for thinking that he could possibly benefit or look like a hero for selling out Defiance this way. Snapping once again, Datak murders the Colonel, which means that as E-Rep descends to fully take over, the Tarrs are looking pretty double-suicidey up in the Mayor's office.
Irisa, mourning Nolan's death, is joined by first Sukar and then the little girl phantasm who, on closer inspection, isn't actually Irisa right now but in fact Irzu. A bunch of CGI later, Irzu has walked her through the startup procedures of the Kaziri/becoming God, and Irisa tosses herself into the volcano of Votan technology with one final wish: To raise Nolan from the dead, and apparently trading her life for his.
The creator/destroyer Alekta/Devouring Mother stuff kind of devolved into a free-for-all there at the end, but then I imagine that's probably what it would be like if you suddenly turned into Spaceship God: A little confusing, with a lot of visuals. All in all, I'm seein' a lot of "seemingly" and "apparently" in this recaplet, and I guess that's a little less than totally satisfying. But after a hell of a season -- in which, often, some fairly well-worn plots were just an excuse to tell the real story underneath -- I don't know what really would have satisfied me. I love the show and I'm happy with what I got, I'm a simple guy.
What do you think? What are your theories? I think Irisa is capable of maybe fine-tuning the weapon to just take out the shitty E-Rep mercs and not all human life, maybe, which would solve the E-Rep occupation; either way, she is obviously not dead and won't be that different next season. I don't really think Kenya is dead either, although that was some rough stuff watching Stahma hold her while she "died." I predict that Black Jonah will be the Boba Fett of the hiatus, and I personally hope he's okay. And actually I take it back: Watching Amanda lead a New Caprica-style revolt next year could be a pretty bracing way to go. Especially for a show actually called Defiance.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
PREVIOUSLY
While his wife and her lover Kenya struggled in the grip of deadly miscommunications, Datak formed a conspiracy to wrest control of Defiance and hand it over to the Earth Republic. This included a media campaign against Nolan that left one Casti child dead, and the town without a Lawkeeper. But before they could leave, Doc Yewll's experiments on the Golden Knot dropped Irisa cold, revealing a second Kelevar inside her body. Wandering the forest outside town, bleeding out, Irisa was discovered by Rynn, who came back from the video game after Sukar's death, resurrection, death and subsequent coma. Today, Election Day, puts Defiance at greater risk than anyone realizes -- and with its two most ardent protectors taken off the board entirely.
THE WOODS
Nolan tracks Irisa through the woods, Irzu's foggy path growing grim as the blood flowed more quickly. Eventually she laid down, he says, and the blood began to pool... When somebody else showed up, coming from the direction of the San Francisco Bay, and they dragged her away. Tommy can barely focus.
Tommy: "That's two fucked-up things. Firstly, where the hell is she, and second of all I can't believe you quit. I can't believe I'm the ranking policeman now."
Nolan: "Son, I didn't quit. I got fired. Remember that. Amanda made that call for the whole town."
Tommy: "I hate propaganda. Are you guys really just going to leave?"
Nolan: "Help me find her, first."
Tommy starts crying, and Nolan puts his arm around him. They head out.
THE ARCH
Alak Tarr reminds everybody -- over some rap-rock/Casti fusion that Datak would hate -- to vote for his dad. The camera hovers over a wanted poster on the wall: Zachary Prast, wanted for hilarious video game activities, was a player who won a contest. That's fun, I like that. While I was digging around for info on Jonah Keller, I also learned a little backstory: Nicky Riordan was originally a sleeper clerk in the E-Rep who believed the Kaziri was buried under St. Louis based on the survival of the Arch, which led to an expedition, which found not the ship but the gulanite mines, which is how we all ended up here.
But she was working under Colonel Marsh at the time, so there's a further irony about all this: She was trying to find it as an Indogene terrorist, but alerted the people she was planning to massacre so she could get the resources to track it down. Nearly a decade of trying to find it before they did, can you imagine? The Volge attack, all the horrors of the Riordan conspiracy, will never be okay, but her desperation makes more and more sense when you look at the timeline, and how they were closing in the whole time.
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