Extant – Before the Blood – Review

Before the season (and, realistically, series) finale, “Extant” brings us “Before the Blood,” which really ramps up the sci-fi in the show’s DNA as it reaches its endgame.

Though Yasumoto has been exposed (weirdly, he isn’t seen or even mentioned this week) and the ISEA is back on her side, Molly’s mission is far from over. She still wants to find her child and is also concerned about what she did at the cabin when she was under its control. With some help from Sam (who amusingly snarks that a memory enhancer can’t really be injected into Molly’s ass), Molly figures out she was manipulated into changing the Seraphim’s course.

Seemingly surprised that Katie is alive aboard the Seraphim (so the rescue of the real Katie wasn’t what he was after all this time?), Sparks reveals that the entity wants the space station to fall out of orbit. But it’s only when Molly finally meets her offspring (who appears as a boy around Ethan’s age with glowing eyes and facial markings) that she realizes the why. The extraterrestrial beings behind everything – the ones without bodies, without blood – are coming to Earth, apparently as fungi attached to the Seraphim. And both her child and the ISEA are convinced that Molly is the only one who can stop them, but she has to go back into space to do it.

It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back for her husband. Goran Visnjic does some great work in these scenes as John opens up to Molly about how much it hurts him to watch her chasing after visions of Marcus and their baby while his family is falling apart. He’s the only character on the show who isn’t chasing a ghost, he just wants Molly. Which makes it all the more chilling when the entity conjures up an apologetic Molly to divert his attention.

Halle Berry gets a similar chance to shine when Molly’s child, trying to protect them, drops her into dream worlds too, first with her father (and with the promise of seeing her late mother) and then with Marcus. Faced with seeing these loved ones, but knowing it’s all a falsity meant to distract her, Berry plays Molly’s conflicted emotions beautifully.

Meanwhile, on the Seraphim, Sean is still stunned to see Katie. The story she tells seems to track with what we saw in the video from the Aruna – she claims some kind of sickness spread through the crew and that she’s been in statis aboard an escape pod ever since. It also turns out that Sean and Katie were sort of the Molly and Marcus of their time, having been close during training (though Katie apparently pushed to stay platonic due to her father’s position at the ISEA). Enver Gjokaj and Tessa Ferrer are both performers I like and they have an easy chemistry that helps sell a relationship we’re hearing about for the first time.

But this being “Extant,” as I watched them banter and flirt while Sean tried to fix the malfunctioning Seraphim, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Especially given the cryptic expressions that kept flitting across Katie’s face. Was she still pregnant and being controlled by the entity? Or, given their personal relationship, was Sean seeing what he wanted to see? The show seemingly goes through the second door when – in a creepy cliffhanger sequence – Sean finds Katie’s corpse floating in the escape pod, which he is then locked in.

Given it’s the penultimate episode, the wheels also finally, finally, finally start coming off of Odin’s cart this week. First, Charlie notices that Ethan’s power supply was offline for almost ninety minutes while he was alone with Odin, which startles Julie. A heart-to-heart with a scared Ethan (where she also unknowingly stops Ethan from activating a device Odin gave him, which I assume is a detonator) clues her in to the poison he’s been pouring in his ear. Tracking his old prosthetics, Julie discovers that Odin James is actually Gavin Hutchinson, a known anti-technology terrorist. Lastly (and Grace Gummer does some nice reaction work here), she finds a video in his apartment that spells out his plan – to blow up the Humanichs Project and pin the blame on Ethan.

I think I’ve put my finger on why this subplot has been annoying me. The complicated dynamic between John and Julie in the first few episodes over the very different tasks of programming and raising Ethan really intrigued me. And it was all completely pushed aside for the one-dimensional Odin. If Odin had wavered in his plans or even shown some remorse as he got to know Ethan, it might have made for a more satisfying story. Alas, no dice. Also? Odin’s a huge hypocrite. He hates technology, but still sports that advanced mechanical arm of his.

Any after thoughts on “Before the Blood?” Take them to the comments section!