Helix – Episode 1.12 – ‘The Reaping’ Review

The Reaping was a set up episode, preparing for the show’s first season finale. The biggest development was Daniel’s shocking death – a death I wasn’t expecting and found disappointing, because the Daniel and Anana reunion was the human story that I most connected to this season on an emotional level.

Daniel, despite feeling betrayed by his father Hatake – having learned that everything he had orchestrated was for another child of Hatake’s that Daniel had previously not even known had existed – sacrifices himself to save this sister that he knows his father loves more. It was sad really, and a waste. Daniel was one of the few characters who should have emerged from this situation with a brighter future – a chance to get to know better his blood sister and brother who was stolen from him when he was a child because he was kidnapped by Hatake.

Aside from Daniel’s story, the episode was mostly filled with a cat and mouse game between Ilaria, specifically the centuries-old teenager who likes to give himself nicknames like The Scythe, on one side, and Hatake and Alan on the other. We saw a brief glimpse of Constance Sutton in a replay of the Hatake’s murder of her four days earlier on the outpost’s security video footage. Ahhh … memories of better villains of days gone by. While villains wearing children's bodies can often result in a chilling effect, the casting in this case didn’t work for me. The Scythe wasn’t menacing and seemed a poor follow up to Jeri Ryan’s engrossing performance earlier in the season as Sutton. We learned that The Scythe was Sutton’s son. The fact that this episode was about mommy and daddy issues didn’t help either.  The other major development was the revelation at the end that Julia's mother is still alive and has been held by Ilaria.  Looks like we're getting a family reunion next week.

The episode ends with the Scythe being captured in what appeared to be a very simple and uncomplicated takedown – Hatake got angry after Daniel’s death and he and Alan simply overpowered him. Let’s hope Hatake and Alan have enough sense to kill him before he has a chance to wake up, break free, and cause more damage. Of course that won’t happen though …

One of the brighter points of this episode was hearing more from Peter – a character I never would have guessed would still be alive this late in the season and returned to a human state. We never really got to know Peter very well, and it was amusing to hear him put Alan in his place, in the way only siblings can do. The awkward, inappropriate-boundaries moment of the episode was the scene when Alan discovers the stalker wall of Julia photos in the ducts that Peter had stolen from Hatake. Peter makes an unconvincing claim that he was feverish and didn’t remember much about that time.

What did you think of the episode? Thumbs up or thumbs down? What do you want to see in the finale?