“Vote for me, and I’ll give you hugs AND drugs!”
Well, this is it, Clone Club! The final recap of Season 3 of Orphan Black. And what a ride it’s been! This week’s finale tied up a lot of loose ends (more loose ends than I expected, actually, for a show like this), while also setting up some interesting plots for Season 4. There were things that were sad, there were things that were shocking, and there were things that were just plain weird. Let’s dive in!
It’s election day for Alison as her run for School Trustee reaches its conclusion. While she has one final showdown in a parking lot with Marcy Coates (where Alison blurts in her face with a megaphone like a boss), Donnie, on his way to meet her, gives Helena the surprise of her life by having found Jesse – the guy with whom she hit it off last season! Even better, Jesse seems super happy to have been found, and when Donnie leaves those two crazy kids together, they start making out in Jesse’s truck.
Donnie goes off to meet Alison, and they board Alison’s campaign bus. As they drive off, they realize they’re being followed by Rudy, who continues to glitch and to whom Coady promised they’d find the Castor Original by going after Alison, the “weakest link.” Helena and Jesse continue to make out, and Helena reveals “I have science baby inside me, but you are my first.” But before she can have her first, she gets a call from the Clone Club phone. She’s needed by her seestras, so nookie has to wait.
“Why am I waking up in the Remember the Time video?”
Meanwhile, Rachel wakes up in a weird, Egyptian-inspired room full of museum exhibits and general creepiness. She notices a note left for her on a table, and after reading it, she removes her eyepatch and looks in the mirror. She has a new eye, but it’s not nearly the “perfectly matched” eye she was promised. It looks more like a cyborg eye. After having been left alone awhile with no other indication of where she is or why, she starts calling out demanding answers. No one responds, but there are certainly plenty of people who have access to screens that can peep in on her.
Meanwhile, Sarah, Felix, and Mrs. S. have brought Kendall (aka Mrs. S’s mom; aka the Castor and Leda Original) to a secret location to keep her safe. They are willing to do anything to keep Castor away from her (including, in Mrs. S’s case, willing to kill her own mom).
Cosima tries to talk to Shay, but after Shay’s experience with Delphine last episode, she wants nothing to do with Cosima right now. Shay asks Cosima to tell her who she really is, and when Cosima can’t answer, she sends Cosima packing.
Delphine packs a gun to meet with Ferdinand, who arrives looking for the Castor Original to bring back to Topside. What he finds instead is Sarah looking to make a deal. She will provide genetic material from Kendall for Ferdinand to take back to Topside in exchange for allowing Castor to die out. He agrees.
Cosima goes to where the gang is hiding Kendall to take some of Kendall’s blood. Kendall is initially hostile, but who can hate Cosima, amirite? After Cosima thanks her for the “stuff of life,” Kendall calms down and allows her to draw blood.
Sarah and Co. form a plan to go after Mark and Gracie to get Mark to pretend to be Rudy to lure Dr. Coady to their location. With Art’s help, Sarah and Felix track down Mark and Gracie, Felix kicks down their door in a badass fashion, and Mark agrees to help them figure out Coady’s next move. Meanwhile, Mrs. S. and Kendall have a hostile mother/daughter moment, where Kendall is unapologetic about having killed S’s husband, and Mrs. S. threatens to boil her in acid.
Delphine discovers that the clone she has in custody isn’t Rachel, but Crystal! Dun-dun-DUUUUUUUN!
PRISON RULES!
As that’s happening, remember that phone call Helena received? They were calling her to help Alison at home. Alison lures Rudy to her house by swinging the campaign school bus by there and getting out. Rudy follows, but after hearing a noise in the garage, goes in there and finds Helena instead… with weapons duct taped to her hands. As they square off against each other, I couldn’t help but think of Mortal Kombat. Helena vs. Rudy – Round 1 – FIGHT!
Meanwhile, back where Kendall is being held, Sarah and Felix bring Mark back with them, Sarah punches him so he looks beat up and then, dressing like Rudy (in the first instance of one Castor clone impersonating another), he contacts Coady telling her he’s found the Castor Original. Coady bites, and shows up, but when she does, Ferdinand pops into her car to throw her off track, basically being all Nothing more to see here! and I’ve got your original back at my place. For once, Ferdinand is useful. They leave together.
Helena and Rudy are still going at it, but Rudy continues to glitch, and once Helena puts a screwdriver through his bicep, it’s clear he’s not long for this world, and as Helena says: “You are winding down like toy.” Â In a touching scene, Helena both comforts and challenges Rudy as he dies. As she lays down on the floor with him and strokes his hair, Rudy talks about how he and his brothers used to sleep together in a pile like puppies. Helena tells him that when she was nine, she was made to shoot a puppy. As Rudy explains the Castors:
Rudy: We had a purpose, just like you.
Helena: No. You are rapist.
Which is totally true, but still. Damn.
Sarah, Mrs. S., and Kendall have an interesting family moment, wherein Kendall reveals that when Dr. Duncan admitted cloning her and was running from an organization called Neolution, he hid Kendall. And when he told her about the clones, she steered Sarah through the foster system to Mrs. S., wanting her to have a bit of family to make up for having killed her husband and strained their relationship. Awww.
New besties?
Delphine confronts Dr. Nealon, who shows her where Rachel is being held and tells her Neolution was responsible for both the Castor and the Leda projects and that their science is much far along than she could imagine. He then tries to attack Delphine and let a weird worm thing from into her mouth from his own mouth. (Eeew!) She shoves him away, he dies choking on his own blood (saying “You won’t live til morning” before he dies all ominous-like), and she grabs the worm thing like WTF?!
Delphine then calls Sarah, telling her not to give Ferdinand the genetic material, because he’s a pawn for Neolution. Oh, and Rachel’s still alive. When Ferdinand hears this, he reveals his hatred for Neolution, kills the dude with him who turned out to be a devout Neolutionist who says “We’re everywhere,” and this puts Ferdinand and the Clone Club on the same side for the moment. Since Mrs. S. isn’t using the tub of acid, Ferdinand uses it to dispose of the dude. You know, how you do.
Family dinner at Bubbles as the election results come in. Alison beats Marcy Coates by 56 votes! The family celebrates, and everyone seems to have some good going for them (finally!). Except for Cosima, who gets a phone call from Delphine who asks her to meet outside Bubbles after Delphine has gone to Shay to tell her that she’s going to back off. She gives Shay a card with a number on it (324B21, her clone tag number) and suggests she ask Cosima to tell her everything if she wants, and to give Cosima that card, because she’ll know what it means. She then goes to Cosima to say goodbye in a really cryptic way, lets her go, and kisses her one last time, making Cosima really confused. Back at the dinner inside Bubbles, Sarah toasts to Beth, Helena toasts to her family, and Alison toasts to all of them – but especially Donnie, who’s turned out to be way more rad than expected. Then they all dig into some babka cake.
Delphine parks in a garage, but as she gets out of her car, she knows she’s being followed. She sighs, resigned, and turns toward the person following her. She asks, “What will happen to her?” But, without hearing an answer, she GETS SHOT AND DIES.
Back to Rachel on the set of the “Remember the Time” video: she’s visited by Charlotte, the younger version of the Leda clones we saw last season (where’d Michelle Forbes go??). Charlotte tells Rachel she’s supposed to be her mom now. Oh, and speaking of moms, RACHEL’S MOM (who was apparently “corrupted” by Neolution) SHOWS UP!
And in a much-needed happy ending, Sarah is reunited with Kira in Iceland, where the family will be hiding Kendall for the time being.
D’awwwww! *squee*
The Awesome:
EVERYTHING. This episode was an amazing ending to Season Three. It resolved all the major stories, and planted the Neolution storyline for Season 4. Thing is, it was too good an ending. It was so good, it kind of felt like a SERIES finale. Thankfully, we know the series has been greenlit for Season 4, but a part of me wonders if this script was written in this way because they weren’t sure about the future of the series, or if they just planned on tying up all these story lines so neatly anyway. Favorite moments:
- Helena and Jesse. I’m thrilled that Helena finally gets this little bit of happiness. Her growth over the course of this season has been amazing to watch, and it’s great to see her having found the family, and the love, she’s always craved. No one deserves it more.
- Felix kicking down a door. That was just awesome. I kinda love when he taps into his butch-ness.
- The relationship between Sarah, Mrs. S., and Kendall. They have such an interesting story, and I love that, while all these women are prickly and cynical and not terribly affectionate, it’s still clear that there’s love in this family unit.
- Delphine’s death. I know, I know – that’s harsh. Thing is, her character (and her stalkerish pursuit of Cosima) was wearing on me all season. I wanted her to just go away, and I got my wish. I was over her stick-up-her-butt, icy, French aloofness a long time ago. Shay’s a much better fit for Cosima personality-wise. I hope they figure it out next season.
- Ferdinand as an ally. This’ll be interesting.
- RACHEL’S MOM. Because Rachel wasn’t screwed up enough, now she’s gonna have to deal with a clone daughter and a mom who betrayed her father. Yeesh! Poor Rachel. While I feel bad about this (Rachel and Helena have a lot in common re: their lack of agency in their childhoods), it makes for a great story.
Mother-daughter bonding.
I just realized – this means that of all of Clone Club, only Cosima isn’t, in some way, a mother. I don’t know how I feel about that, but that didn’t occur to me until just now.
Anyway, there really wasn’t any Not-So-Awesome this week! I thought this episode was well-paced, the performances were on point, and all the plot threads came to organic conclusions that made sense. I guess the only thing that I’d consider Not-So-Awesome is the death (or impending death in Mark’s case) of the Castors. They were adversaries, but they weren’t villains, and a part of me really wanted them to be able to have a brother-sister relationship with the Leda clones. But, unless there’s some major surprises in Season 4Â (which isn’t entirely unlikely), it doesn’t look like the Castors are coming back, and that’s kinda sad to me.
Well, that’s the end of Orphan Black Season Three! I hope you’ve enjoyed my recap/reviews, as well as the conversations in the comments. Make sure you’re checking out our Orphan Black Science Recaps for a different, more science-y take on the episodes, and stay tuned at The Mary Sue for more Orphan Black news as it comes up!
See you next season!
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