This week’s Star Trek: Discovery was a doooooozy. There’s a lot happening on this show right now, much of it understandably evoking some pretty intense feelings. However, there’s one big reveal that was made this week that really got my attention. No, not that one. The other one.
*Blah-blah-SPOILERS-blah-blah. OK, you did it to yourselves…*
First, a summary of some of the major plot points of this week’s episode, “Vaulting Ambition:”
- Stamets Prime Meets Mirror Stamets: we saw them come together at the end of last week’s episode, but we had it confirmed this week that Mirror Stamets has been trying to communicate with Stamets Prime to draw him into the network and get his help to get back to the Mirror Universe. Stamets in any universe is snarky and pretentious. It’s nice to see Mirror Stamets revel in it so much. However, it’s also nice to know that, while they’re both snarky and pretentious, Mirror Stamets is selfish enough to manipulate the mycelial network for his own ends, while Stamets Prime wants to share knowledge with everyone and is capable of loving someone more than himself. Speaking of…
- Stamets and Culber: I know that this is something that people are either going to enjoy or hate. I happen to find what happened with Stamets and Culber in this episode beautiful. Yes, the Culber that we knew is physically dead for real. But as Stamets has told us over and over, “nothing ever really dies in here.” As long as there’s a network, there’s a chance, and now it’s up to Stamets to save the network, not just to get Discovery home, but to ensure that Culber survives. I love that their relationship has been made to feel so magical. I love that it’s been centered, and that Stamets gets to go on a quest. I love that, on this show that’s so deeply about science, that there’s room for things like hope, and love, and transcendence. The scenes between Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz were beautifully acted, and I’m convinced that Stamets and Culber will be together forever. Perhaps not in a way we’d immediately recognize, but that’s no less “real” because of that.
- Tyler, Voq, and L’Rell: When Saru goes to L’Rell in the brig to ask for her help in separating Tyler and Voq, or easing their suffering, she refuses at first. Voq made the choice to do this as a warrior, and she respects him enough to do him the honor letting him die with honor for his conviction. However, when Saru beams Tyler’s unconscious body into L’Rell’s cell to let her see the extent of his suffering, she agrees to help. By the episode’s end, Tyler returns to speaking English, then goes unconscious as L’Rell does the Klingon death howl. Are Tyler and Voq both dead? Is she mourning the death of Voq while Tyler remains? We’ll find out next week, I guess.
- Burnham and Emperor Georgiou: When Burnham delivers her “prisoner,” Lorca, to the Emperor, she discovers that Mirror Burnham and the Emperor were close. They had a mother-daughter relationship that mirrors (yeah, I said it) the Georgiou/Burnham mentor relationship of the Prime Universe. However, there’s something else layered on top of that, which brings us to…
- Lorca: Guess what? (And many of us did indeed guess, based on the foundation the show has been laying since the first episode) The Lorca we’ve been following since the beginning of the show has been Mirror Lorca all along! *gasp* OK, now that that’s out of the way, here’s the part that’s really interesting (and not just a little bit creep-tastic)…
Not only is this Lorca actually from the Mirror Universe, but he and Mirror Burnham were working together to overthrow Georgiou. But even that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is the squicky nature of their revealed “romantic” relationship. They were not, as this really very angry write-up over at io9 suggests, “rebels in love.”
Georgiou reveals some details that are very telling. She says that she allowed Lorca into Michael’s life as a “father-figure,” which he was, until he became “something else.” She says that Lorca “groomed” Michael.
And then there’s the scene in the agonizer chamber, where a man tortures Lorca for what he did to his sister. He demands that Lorca say her name as he tortures him, and when Lorca escapes and takes down this man, he says that her name is Ava, and that he “liked her,” but that he found “someone better.”
Lorca is a textbook sexual predator. We don’t know Ava’s age, but we can tell by the age of her brother that she might be around Michael’s age. It would make sense that before Michael, Lorca pulled something similar to lure Ava.
Lorca was basically biding his time until Michael got just old enough to be “legal,” then threw over the one woman for the other. He was emotionally manipulating Mirror Michael throughout their relationship and then pounced when she became adult enough. Using her not only as a lover, but in order to have help in overthrowing Georgiou and taking over.
Lorca is basically the Woody Allen of the Mirror Universe. And Mirror Michael is his Soon Yi Previn.
Now, despite her being the Emperor of the Mirror Universe with a million badass titles, Georgiou shares a common enemy with Michael Prime, now that Michael knows the truth—that this isn’t her universe’s Lorca, and this Lorca is the worst kind of misogynistic, abusive trash human.
When I first heard the fan theory that Lorca was Mirror Lorca, I was skeptical. Seeing it play out like this, however, breathes new life into it and makes this story really, really relevant. Suddenly, Star Trek: Discovery has become the Trek that the #MeToo/#TimesUp era needs; a show where we get to watch two powerful women take down a powerful predator.
If only we had access to Mirror Universe help for our predator problem.
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