Hello everyone! I am new here and will be writing reviews about Helix.
There are two significant events in Ep. 6 that will affect the direction of future events. Let’s talk about those first.
First, we see Olivia (Soren’s mom) who was manipulated by Amy to stab Sarah and whose punishment is to be kept in a dark basement room. Amy has convinced her that the CDC people are responsible for killing Soren and plants the idea that someone needs to make them go away since no one was sick before they came. She leaves the door ajar so Olivia can escape. Olivia collects a small army of supporters and weapons. They go to the the dining hall where the sick people are being treated and they take all of them into hiding.
Second, we see Julia in Paris arriving home to find a representative from Illaria in her kitchen. She tells Julia that her decision to inform the CDC of Illaria’s genocide plans (to reduce the world population by 75% within 3 months) will fail. She gives Julia a card with the name Mlle Durant on it, describing her as “our last chance” to avoid the genocide. Julia then goes to a park to meet Mlle Durant. A young girl approaches her and removes her sunglasses revealing that she has silver eyes, she is Mlle Durant.
She reminds Julia that “we come in all sizes”. It’s surprising to see such a young girl sounding so old and wise. She tells her that there is still hope and lets her know about another renegade immortal who has been working on a very promising project that could prevent Illaria from ending the human race. She gives her a necklace with a medallion that has the same tree on it that we see at the Abbey.
Let’s see what each person is doing during episode 7.
Illaria/Paris
Mlle Durant – She tells Julia about Michael’s story, starting in 1601. We see people working in a wheat field. Michael comes by and sees a beautiful peasant woman and falls in love with her. He marries her immediately. Unfortunately she appears to be in love with another peasant man. She gives birth to a son. Michael is mocked and is called a cuckold which makes him suspicious. He finds that his wife has been having an affair with the peasant man she has always loved. He vows to never feel such pain again and burns the place down with them inside.
Promising himself “jamais plus” – never again. Michael has kept this promise to himself for over 400 years. After the story, she describes Michael and his project as remarkable, even genius. He has developed a technology that can be grafted onto apples that makes mortal men infertile (M. Domestica? The apple that is spreading the virus?). There are no side effects, it is simple, even elegant with guaranteed results and it only affects mortal men, thus only immortal men can father children. A way for Ilaria to control the human population.
Julia – She decides that she must go to the island to find Michael.
The women at the abbey.
Olivia (angry and grieving, easily manipulated) – We see her in hiding with the sick people and she is quickly losing control of them as the tranquilizers wear off.
Anne – She is in the oubliette with Peter; she tells him how she was framed. They bond over their mutual sibling betrayals.
Even though she has been unfairly thrown in the oubliette, she cannot seem to veer from her blind devotion to Michael, to the point of refusing help to escape, saying she’ll wait for Michael to let her out.
Amy – She is very busy trying to bring upon an insurrection, she is working hard to pit everyone against each other.
Amy finds Michael in front of the portraits talking to them; this and his response to her leave her feeling afraid.
She goes to the oubliette to talk to Anne about what’s happening. Anne tells Amy to bow to Michael’s will and Amy refuses to bow to anyone. She later finds Michael in the botany lab. She tells him that she wants to make her own decisions and she doesn’t want to just be another portrait. She finds herself locked up in a case filled with dangerous plants and surrounded by tempered glass.
Our CDC “friends” are keeping busy too.
Peter – He is very frustrated by Anne’s inability to think for herself. He spends this episode waiting to be rescued from the oubliette and failing over and over to convince anyone to help him.
Alan – He wakes up disoriented and confused, he has blood on his hands and in his nails. He begins to have quick little flashes of the violence and a bloody procedure; he is beginning to suspect that he had something to do with Sarah’s disappearance. He finds Kyle and asks if he knows where Sarah is. Alan and Kyle find Sarah’s boot in their lab, he immediately has a flash and he realizes that he knows where Sarah is. He and Kyle head down to the dark and dank basement corridors to find the room where he thinks she is. When they find the room he realizes in horror that he was there during the procedure.
Kyle – When he and Alan find the room they find that Sarah is gone. The gurney is covered with blood and there are bloody instruments all around.
He sees Alan’s eyes moving back and forth the way they did when he was drugged, Kyle realizes this and recognizes the symptoms from when the kids attacked him. They split up to find Sarah. He goes into Michael’s botany lab to continue his search, while he is looking around Michael comes in, he quickly tiptoes up to a balcony to hide and watch what Michael does.
Sarah – Sarah wakes up weak and in pain and sees the blood between her legs and fears that something terrible has happened to her possibly immortal baby.
She dresses and tries to find her way out through the basement corridors. She is walking with only one boot and steps on a tooth with her bare foot. A tooth – what is the significance of the teeth? We keep seeing teeth! Sarah runs into the out of control infected people who escaped Olivia and must find a place to hide. She finds two small kids hiding from their homicidal infected father. I don’t really see much reason for the kids, other than them being a great way to manipulate our emotions; we feel more when we see kids suffer.
Sarah finds Alan and asks him to come to the infirmary with her to do an ultrasound to see if her fetus is okay, there is no fetus.
Alan tells her that he was drugged and was a part of the attack. She gets very upset and accuses him of hating her and hating immortals. I wonder if the baby would have ever been able to grow, or would she have stayed in a perpetual state of early pregnancy?
Lastly we see what is happening with the abbey’s cult leader/immortal/god.
Michael – He’s having trouble finding things in his lab and seems to be missing the help Agnes used to give him. Amy comes in and tells him that the search party has only found 4 of the sick and that people are getting scared and some are talking about leaving the island. He tells her to have everyone go and stay in the dining hall where they will be safe. He talks to the people who are beginning to actively rebel. He goes to the portrait room and we see him talking to the portraits of all his wives/daughters. He decides that it is time for a change. “Pruning a plant makes it grow, thinning a crop makes it strong”. He goes to his botany lab. He winds up an old gramophone and we hear some old time creepy jazz clarinet music. Funny how music that usually sounds happy and upbeat is sounding so disturbing on this show now! Amy approaches him again while Kyle hides in the balcony. She tells Michael that she wants to make her own decisions and doesn’t want to just be another portrait. He tells her she’s a chip off the old block and calls her a Machiavellian prodigy. She finds out that he has been aware of her manipulations and what she has done all along. He lets her know about his plans to cleanse the abbey, “the crop must be plowed under” and he will finish what she started. She objects and he locks her up in the tempered glass case filled with dangerous plants.
The episode ends with Kyle rescuing Peter and Anne. She tells them that what Michael is planning is a “thinning”, that he’s done it before to wipe the slate clean. Peter references Jonestown and other mass suicides at the hands of cult leaders. They rush to stop it but everyone has been given the poison and they are locked in the dining hall. Everyone dies, even the cute little kids that Sarah saved, while Michael calmly walks through the room.
Each week Helix ups the ante and there is more suspense and drama! Here’s a preview of this week’s episode:
There is much more on the Helix website.
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