‘Defiance’ 2.08 Episode Recap and Review: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Let’s jump right in to this week’s Defiance review.

Irisa has told Nolan everything about the probably-not-Irzu hanging out in her brain. They’re mid-bonding moment when a call comes in on Nolan’s hailer. Not long after, he, Irisa, and a handful of E-rep troops make a late night raid on the Need/Want to arrest Mahsuvus Gorath. The E-reps know that he works with the Votanis Collective. Now there’s a bomb in New York City, and Mahsuvus is their best bet of finding out where it is before people die.

As Nolan is hauling Mahsuvus out of the Need/Want, Amanda gets her own call. It’s a creepy man using a voice disguiser, telling her to get Mahsuvus out of custody or her sister will die. Of course, we’ve been assuming Kenya was already dead. We would be wrong. She’s alive and being held by the Votanis Collective, as it would so happen.

The Earth Republic doesn’t seem to keep too much to the Geneva Convention when it comes to prisoner treatment, so Mercado has Nolan torture Mahsuvus with shrills in order to extract the information about the bomb in New York. Amanda, Nolan, and Mahsuvus all know that the shrills aren’t going to work on him, but they go through the motions anyway. The next step is the ego extraction, kind of like what they did to Amanda, only probably fatal. Amanda knows that if they go through with the extraction, she’ll never see Kenya again, so she takes her problem to Nolan. He and Irisa decide to use her hailer and theirs to triangulate the blackmailer’s location next time he calls.

It would have worked, too, if not for those darn kids. Any by darn kids, I mean the red-headed Casti woman that Irisa chi-sucked in back in the season premiere. On her way out to the ridge, Irisa gets hit with a vision that makes her stop and abandon the roller (and the plan to find Kenya). She’s trapped by the Casti, who also had visions calling her out to this one particular location. They trade stories about their experiences until they’re interrupted by Sukar, Birdie, and a whole lot of other people. Little Irzu tells Irisa that this is where “Arkrise” will begin. Because that’s not ominous at all.

Back in Defiance, Datak gets a surprise visit from his wife. She’s just been questioned by Berlin and Tommy (now in a bright, shiny E-rep uniform). Stahma warns her husband about Mahsuvus’s upcoming ego extraction, which would reveal not only the bomb, but also Datak and Rafe’s plans for overthrowing the E-rep government. She’s pretty confident that not only would that information get both of them executed, but that the E-reps would use the opportunity to take her down with them. They have a bit of angry sex, then Stahma leaves Datak with a subtle hint as to what she thinks should be done about the situation: a rather impressive looking gun hidden in a basket of flowers.

Meanwhile, Kenya’s attempts at escaping her mysterious captor work just long enough for her to get a message to Amanda. It’s not much, but since Amanda gets to hear her sister being recaptured, it’s enough to kick Amanda into high gear. She knocks out Nolan, steals meds from Doc Yewll’s office, then sneaks Mahsusvus out of captivity by faking a cardiac event. Nolan comes to in time to stop their escape, but their being out in the open gives Datak the chance he needs to kill Mahsuvus from a distance. Mahsuvus gives up the bomb location with his dying breath, which works out for the E-reps (and the population of New York), but not so well for Amanda.

She and Nolan attempt to bluff the blackmailers by disguising Nolan as Mahsuvus. The ruse falls apart pretty quickly, and the bad guys escape. Fortunately, they end up leaving Kenya behind. Cue the tearful reunion!

Oh, this is getting good, you guys. Irisa’s major storyline seems to be slowly coming to a head. However, (SPOILER ALERT) Stephanie told us at Comic Con that there’s a real tearjerker of a scene coming up in about 3 more episodes, so I’m guessing we won’t get a heck of a lot of resolution in episode 9.

Kenya’s reappearance is definitely going to throw a wrench into several different works, including and especially Amanda’s relationships with Nolan and Stahma. I can’t wait to see how this goes down in the next few weeks.

Things to Ponder:

  • Hey, game-playing readers! Is it a safe assumption that the bomb was an in-game event? It had all the hallmarks of one.
  • How is Stahma going to react when she sees Kenya alive?

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