First, Alan and Julia headed off to another outpost in search of recovering the Narvik virus samples, which were stolen by runaway cryogenics expert Dr. Adrian. While there, they found another hatch door leading to a lower level, which inspired the best line of the night, delivered by Alan: “Please tell me there’s no cabin down there.”
There wasn’t a cabin, but there was a Viking, turned preacher, turned scientist, turned silver-eyed crazy man chained up by Hatake 29 years ago. “Free me,” he kept asking Alan and Julia. Julia did, but apparently “free me” translated to “help me kill myself,” because the silver-eyed people are immortal, apparently unless their artery to their brain is severed. But otherwise they live a very, very long time – and the man really wanted to die. But before he did, he delivered some answers:
“Constance? … I had to pick a side. Constance made me choose so I did. That’s why Hiro, he locked me up down here. There are rules we must follow. There can be no more than 500 … You can survive 4 minutes without oxygen, 4 days without water, 40 days without food. There was so much pain. Rebirth feels like dying. We had no idea the enormity of it at the time. We thought we had found the ultimate gift. Eternal life. But to live forever, is to die 10,000 times.”So being silver-eyed is equated with being immortal. There’s limit on the number of people who can be immortal. And as were later learn from Hatake, these 500 immortals run Ilaria Corporation.
Interestingly enough, Hatake said the cure didn’t lie with him, only with Julia. I’m speculating that this has something to do with her mother. I want to describe Julia as being half-human, but the Viking/crazy man’s story seemed to indicate that he was once human too. For whatever reason, Julia may be the key to the illusive cure-all for all diseases known to mankind.
The final monologue by Sarah struck me as a clue to the meaning of all of this. She says, “Science has proven that nothing disappears without a trace. Nature doesn’t know extinction, only transformation. … We’re all made up of the same atoms that created the universe, right? In essence, we all live forever.” A few episodes back, Constance made a reference to the “Willis Hypothesis,” which appears to refer to a theory by a botanist that says an area a species takes up depends on its age, assuming no natural barriers, and that species rarely actually die out, but instead spread out and change. There seems to be a common theme about species surving through transformation here.
Other thoughts:
- The cheesy music of the night was slowed down version of “O Holy Night,” made even more creepy when sung by the crazy man in the basement.
- I had to shake my head a little at the morality shown by some of the characters, based on statements I was hearing. Among them was this line from Sarah to Hatake: “You may have done some terrible things, but I can’t help but think that none of that will matter if we get this antiviral to work.” Sadly, that may be true, but maybe it shouldn’t be. Another was Anana’s comment to Balleseros that after the way Miksa treated him, Balleseros didn’t have to come back to help them, and that everyone owes him. Wait? What? Maybe she doesn’t know the full history here, but Balleseros still has a lot to make up for before earns title of victim or hero. Way to sink my esteem for Anana, one of the few characters who seemed admirable.
- Julia apparently stole the Narvik samples while she made a show of helping Alan destroy them. What do you think she plans to do with them?
So let’s talk about the episode? What did you like? What did you not like? Is the popular theory still vampires?
