Recap
Ben returns with news from the rebel leader who used their spies within the Espheni ranks to determine where Anne and Lexi are. They were not able to get exact details on where they were located but should know soon. Tom isn’t going to wait and goes off half cocked to go and search for Lexi no matter what Weaver tries to say. As the voice of reason Ben asks Tom to just wait 24 hours so his spies can locate them before they go off looking for them.
Evil Hal immediately counters Ben and tells Tom they need to go now or Anne and Lexi might die. After a little more back and forth Tom agrees with Weaver to give his spies 24 hours to find them. Hal says that Anne and Lexi’s death is on them and he storms off. Marina and Tom talk about leaving to find Anne and the baby and how now is a bad time to do that. Hal rides up in a Humvee and pistol whips Marina and takes Tom hostage. Marina manages to get up and call out to Maggie to stop that Humvee. Maggie grabs the big gun and shoots the vehicle causing it to flip and crash. Hal and Tom emerge with a gun still trained on Tom. Hal starts shooting into the air as he drags him into an abandoned building.
Tom learns that this isn’t Hal that he is talking to. This Hal wants to know what the Volm are building, where and when its going to be used. Tom tries to take advantage of Hal when he is looking out the window but fails. Maggie reveals she knew something about Hal, that he may have a bug implanted inside him. Pope gets all pissed at Maggie about not revealing what she knew when she knew it. Pope has no intention of letting Hal out alive. As far as Pope is concerned Hal killed Manchester and got dozens of people killed. Ben argues that Hal is no more responsible than a harnessed kid. Pope replies that little Ben wouldn’t have his studs removed, after getting a little taste of alien DNA. Just as Pope is about to call Ben a trader he clocks him in the face bringing Pope to the ground. Weaver has to separate them both before they try to kill each other.
Weaver steps out into the line of fire to try to talk Hal down. That’s when Tom realizes that Karen implanted something in Hal when they were held captive by her. The more Tom tries to talk with Hal, the more the good Hal inside fights back. Evil Hal takes back control and asks for a car and safe passage out of the city. When Weaver refuses, he opens fire on Weaver and everyone else fires back. Tom dives in to save Hal from the fire and Weaver agrees to bring a car to them.
Ben has a plan to get into the building, he can crawl up the side of the building. Weaver refuses to let Ben put himself in that much danger. Maggie also tries to convince Weaver to let her go in, but again is denied. Pope questions why they are even trying to keep him alive, when if it had been anyone else acting alien they would have shot them in the head and used their skull as an ash tray. Weaver orders the Berserkers off the field to which Pope is happy to comply with. Marina talks with Tector and Weaver and issues an order that if it comes down to Tom or Hal, that Tector put a bullet into the back of Hals head.
Maggie, Ben and Matt decide to take matters into their own hands as Matt shows them a way to get into the building without being seen. Tom explains to Hal that Marina will give the order to kill Hal in order to save him. Pope is back at the nest taking bets on whether Tom and Hal both make it out alive or not. Hal threatens Ben and Matt as he continues to push Tom for information on the Volm plan.
Tom starts to get into Hals head talking about missed dinners and games at school. As Tom continues to talk and taunt Hal, something begins to happen within Hal as the two personalities fight for control. Maggie, Ben and Matt arrive just outside the room that Hal and Tom are in. Ben goes around back in order to surprise them. Maggie walks into the room to try to talk him down.
Tom and Maggie see the fight inside working so they continue to come at him, and Matt walks in to do the same. As they continue to taunt him, he points the gun at Matt. He is nearly ready to shoot himself, when Ben comes in and subdues him and all 4 fight to get the gun out of Hal’s hand. The gun goes off and hits Hal on the side of the head but he is still breathing. Weaver and his team move in on the sound of the gun shot.
Pope continues his wagers of who will live or not from the little hostage situation. Weaver walks in and everyone in the room goes completely silent. Weaver sits there drinking his whisky in silence. Pope comes down off his platform to talk with Weaver who grabs him hard by the shoulder. Weaver threatens him, that should anyone try to kill Tom or Hal, he will mount his head on the wall. Pope calls that a safe bet and asks Lisle to keep an eye on Hal and ensure nothing happens.
Lourdes lets Tom and them know that Hal will be fine, it just grazed him. Ben recommends talking with the rebel skitters about Espheni tech to see if they have a way to detect and remove the eye bug. The rebel skitters know of the bug and each is genetically modified to be controlled by 1 person, the person who implanted it. In Hal’s case that is Karen and she is not likely to willingly remove it. So the rebel skitters have a biological hunter killer that can be used to seek out the bug and destroy it. It is risky though, as Skitter biology is very different from humans and if there is no bug, it will kill Hal.
Hal is strapped to a gurney and under lockdown while they await the procedure. Hal claims the bug is gone and he is normal now and begs Maggie to let him free. He says they plan to kill him and that he wont survive. Maggie sees through the deception and knows that evil Hal is still in control of Hal. Lourdes starts the procedure using a drill to get into the chamber with the weapon. Hal continues to display unbalanced behavior.
The weapon is removed and opened up so it can be released into Hal. It enters in through his mouth, nose and eyes. Hal begins to convulse on the table and suddenly stops. Out of his mouth comes the leftover ooze from the hunter and the remains of the eye bug. Its put into a jar and burned. Lourdes notices his heart stopped but revives him.
When Hal awakes, he doesn’t remember a thing. The last thing he remembers was 1 week ago when he was asking Weaver where Tom had gone. He has no memory of the time evil Hal had taken over. The rebel skitters came through with intel on where Anne and the baby is. Marina tries to stop Tom from going but she can’t.
Tom gives her the full, un-redacted files on the Volm plan (Project Orange) and Tom also gives her his resignation as president. Marina will not take over as president and she doesn’t argue the point. She will start doing things her own way now but recommends she talk with Weaver. Hal, Matt, Ben and Tom set out to search for Anne and the baby but Hal refuses to let Maggie go with.
Review
Wow, what a roller coaster episode. The writers really gave this one for Hal to shine and Drew Roy certainly did that. Evil Hal ended its 3 episode arc with Be Silent and Come Out and ended it with a bang. Leading up to this episode, Hal had a fight with his evil self in a mirror and the evil Hal took over for a bit. There was clear signs that something was not right and the only person who noticed was Maggie and she was silent. Playing a split personality is no easy task. One has to be able to clearly delineate 2 separate and completely opposite personality traits at a whim. Roy brilliantly pulls off a menacing Hal who takes matters into his own hands when his brother Ben reports back information from his rebel spies. Hal fearing he will be revealed takes action to capture Tom and find out what the Volm are building.
Tom finds a way to un-hinge the bugs control over Hal with the recounting of deep-rooted family memories and the resulting struggle within Hal shows a faltering Hal fighting to take control from within. Each time Tom brings in a new memory, an emotionally unstable Hal fights back. Bring in Maggie and Matt each of them hitting Hal on the personal side and the bug starts to freak out. Once the gun was pointed at Matt, Ben jumps out and tries subdues his brother. The bug realizing its about to be captured, tries to commit succeed but fails. Roy again shines with a clinical back and forth internal fight that leaves the audience on edge during the entire ordeal.
Strapped down to a gurney, Hal is told that the rebel skitters have a device that they can use to take the bug out of Hal. At first Evil Hal uses his charm to try to convince Maggie to untie him and let him go but she refuses. Hal then begs Tom not to let them do the procedure, because he doesn’t want to die this way. Roy displays a genuine fear and panic as the prospect of dying at the hands of this rebel skitter biological hunter sets in.
Hal (Drew Roy) wasn’t the only great thing in this episode. Ben (Connor Jessup) got to finally do something he should have done in season 2. He finally got to punch Pope square in the face. Pope is the character we all love to hate but he has always had a thing against Ben and anything else even remotely alien. Even with Popes respect for Tom and endearing support of Matt, he always said he would put a bullet in Ben’s head the first chance he got. I think now Pope might think twice before going after him again.
Pope continues to be the character we all love to Hate. His continued dislike for how things are run when it involves the Masons is clear but at the same time Pope a lot of respect for Weaver and stops several people from making statements of taking Tom and Hal out themselves. He loves to create trouble, but controlled trouble and on his terms. His dislike of anything alien, including Ben is clear but his respect of Tom and Weaver is even louder. The scene in the nest with Weaver and Pope was powerful in its silence. I would like to see more scenes with Pope and Weaver as we move on in the season.
On an interesting side note, has anyone else noticed that when Ben (Jessup) is talking for a skitter that his eyes appear to be dilated? I went back and looked at several episodes and every time he is talking for a skitter his eyes are dilated. It’s a neat little touch and I would be interested to find out if its practical or CGI modification or if it was intentional at all for that matter.
Mole Tracker
It is finally revealed to everyone else that Hal had a bug inside him. Karen implanted this bug when she kissed him during their capture at the end of season 2. Most within Charleston, including Pope are ready to charge him with treason and shoot him on sight for the death of Manchester and over a dozen others lost from the leaked intel. However, there are a few things that do not add up.
For starters, Hal was in the room when the plans regarding the Nuclear Power Plant were discussed. There would have been no reason for Hal to go back into the room to scan the map and find out where they were going, as he would have already known. Hal also remembers all of the time he had the bug inside him except for the last week. That would mean the eye bug was not in full control up until this last week. So it seems unlikely Hal would have been the mole that killed Manchester or leaked the plans to the Espheni. The only way Karen was getting intel from Hal was forcing him, once he was sleeping to meet her in the woods. Something she couldn’t do during the day in full view of everyone. Also when looking at the person who came in and shot Manchester they were much smaller and shorter than Hal. Not to mention Hal was not able to walk, so how could he have walked into the room to shoot Manchester?
So that begs the question, if Hal was a mole, is there another mole in Charleston? How did the Espheni find keystone and Tom? Marina moves up on the list as Tom resigns in order to go look for Anne, leaving Marina to take the job as president. Everything she has done up until this point has furthered her efforts to gain control. She is not the only person who is still does not have an alibi. Jeanne and Lourdes are all still suspects. Hal mentioned to Maggie before using the skitter weapon to remove the bug that Lourdes told him that it would kill him. Tom spoke directly to the skitter leader himself, so how did Lourdes find out and why did she tell Hal? Lourdes was also the person who packed the med-pack that was brought with them when they flew to keystone. Lourdes also has claimed many times to not being able to find any bug in Hal from season 2 up through season 3. Why were they able to find Tom’s but not Hal’s? Jeanne has been disconnected and very depressive the past few episodes, making comments that she doesn’t want her father to let them take her away. In previous shots of the mole, the person appeared to be a female in stature. So if Hal was just 1 of several moles within Charleston, who is the other mole?
Vote now and leave comments on why you voted the way you did. This is your last week to guess, as the answer will be revealed in episode 7.
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Photos
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