No Lena this week. For much of the episode, not really much talking either. This one is very much on the artistic end, trying to convey an experience and bridge us to the next matter of action.
In essence, the episode is in three parts – a silent segment of the group’s survival experience in Legion territory before the opening, a middle that’s a more standard telling of a particular incident during their ‘scouting mission’, and finally, after the credits roll fairly early even for this show, a recap of Shin’s service and particularly the lives of Spearhead as seen by the supply robot, Fido.
The first two segments have a sense to them I can best describe as “Post-apocalyptic pastoral”. The territory of the Legion was wiped clean of human life nine years or so before the present, and has largely gone to seed since. Unlike other AI rebellions with which you might be familiar, the Legion hasn’t seen fit to sterilize the area of animal or plant life, turn things into an industrial hellscape, or otherwise make it awful. So, much like footage from Pripyat or any other place long abandoned, the lands have a deeply natural feel to them with some limited ruins, overgrown, and less hint of the Legion itself.
The first segment is largely focused on travel and life, and takes place in a mix of wilderness and post-civilization environments. Spirits seem high, with perhaps a thread of melancholy, and that carries over to the second section where we see the cast stalled out at a river that they don’t have a clear solution to get their Juggernauts across. They decide that they’re in no rush, what with their locators off and nowhere in particular to go, and so they take advantage to do some fishing, handle the wash, and even (when Fido locates a fueled boiler for hot water) take baths. Along the way, Shin in particular is kind of a new man, freed from the burden of his brother’s life and death and, by having passed their goodbyes to Lena, free from the curse of always having to be the last, with all remembrance on his shoulders. He smiles, he laughs, it would be uncanny if it weren’t so earnest.
While there, the group picks through a full-scale ruined town, including Shin seeming to sense something. They later find him attending to what he heard – in the ruins of the zoo (giving us the grim image of most of the animals now skeletons in their enclosures), he’s found a Legion juggernaut… disabled, essentially, and as a Black Sheep in pain and afraid. The last words echoing within it, calling him, are that the dead mind trapped inside wanted to go home. And, as best he can, Shin sends it there, putting the thing out of its misery.
In some ways, the grim task never ends. The credits play and then Fido (who had gotten more focus as an entity rather than simply a device) takes over. The recap of their lives is actually fascinating, and it’s different but effective to see it told from the perspective of the faithful observer, snippets of lives, most of them lost, before the final image we’re left with, promising a darker final episode, is Fido’s last stand, under fire and ablaze a few weeks after the encounter in the ruined city.
There’s a bit of a jinx, I feel, that every time I start “not much to say about this”, it turns into one of the longer seasonal entries. But, this time, that is basically it. This episode isn’t big on plot, and the characters are well-established so other than seeing Shin’s growth it’s more of a mood piece, here for you to admire the melancholy wonder of Legion territory, and the combined freedom and isolation of our leads as they thread their way through it. And for that role, it’s actually pretty amazing. I love that even here, after a really intense episode and probably before another, we’re able to take a legitimate breather. Because next week? We’re at the end of the cour and the possibilities of how to move this forward are still wide open.