‘Under the Dome’ 3.10 Recap: “What Happens Next Will Be Beautiful”

Do you want in or do you want out? That’s a question I ask my young kids all the time as they indecisively hang around in doorways with one foot on each side. Somebody should ask it of the characters on ‘Under the Dome’, because they’re getting to be just as annoying with all their coming and going. Isn’t the point of this dome supposed to be that nobody can get through it?

Here’s the rundown on episode ‘Legacy’ (a title which is never explained, by the way):

Barbie is cured! Julia’s magic kiss worked and he’s no longer a Pod Person. Remembering that he just spent the last couple episodes trying to murder her, Barbie extends Julia a heartfelt Sorry, babe. To which she shrugs, Yeah, no probs.

Meanwhile, the funeral home is under siege! This makes Big Jim positively giddy with excitement at being able to shoot people. That’s one of his favorite things to do. Unfortunately, there’s just too many of them. The Pod People are about to overrun the building when help arrives. It’s Aktaion president Hektor Martin (Eriq La Salle, who also directed the previous episode), along with Lily the hacker chick and a bunch of soldier goons. They gun down more Pod People left and right and rescue Jim, Norrie and Hunter.

At Town Hall, Junior and Sam tell Joe that they want him to build the science-y device that he believes will shatter the dome. They actually want the dome to come down now. After all, the alternative is that they all suffocate after it calcifies. Even though this is clearly an instance in which they have a mutual interest, Joe refuses to help, so Junior and Sam beat the snot out of him. Sadly, this happens off camera. We don’t actually get to see them knock him around (nor does he have so much as a black eye afterwards).

Barbie and Julia go to the funeral home and find it in ruins, dead bodies strewn all over the lawn. They discuss a plan for their next steps. Barbie will return to town and pretend that he’s still under Christine’s spell. He’ll tell Junior that he killed Julia. All Julia needs to do is stay out of sight. Good thing no living Pod People stuck around after the siege to see them standing on the front porch in bright daylight, talking and smooching.

Jim and company set up a new base of operations in another abandoned house. Hektor demands that Jim bring him to Dr. Marston. One of the Aktaion goons trains Norrie how to use a gun, but won’t let her fire it because he doesn’t want the sound to draw attention. (As if that’s really a concern. These characters walk around the center of town in plain sight all the time and none of the Pod People ever seem to notice.) The guy warns her that she should hope she never needs to use the gun, because the first time you kill a person is something you never get over. Hmm, I wonder if that will come up again later… ?

Hunter asks Lily about that business where she grabbed a gun and ran away from the camera the other day. She doesn’t elaborate. Instead, they talk about a mysterious encrypted file hidden in the data she sent him. Hunter says he’ll get to work trying to crack it.

Jim brings Hektor to the former Aktaion lab, which is now burned to the ground. Oh darn, Jim says. The last I saw him, Marston said he was coming back to the lab. I guess the Pod People got him. That’s a shame. Hektor is upset. He needs Marston’s research to complete the cure for the butterfly infection.

This leads to a flashback in which Hektor’s best friend, an Aktaion scientist named Patrick (Paul McCrane – this show is turning into quite the ‘ER’ reunion), tries to reconstruct a shattered egg, only to get infected and go crazy. We later learn that Patrick was Lily’s father and that he died soon after.

Hektor doesn’t buy Jim’s story, and threatens to shoot him. Jim negotiates a deal where he’ll help Hektor obtain a sample of Christine’s DNA for use in the cure.

Christine herself is never seen in this episode. After Barbie returns to Town Hall, Junior tells him that she’s at the farm with pregnant Eva. (We don’t see here there either, though.) When Barbie learns about the situation with Joe, he offers to play Good Cop to Junior’s Bad Cop in order to get a minute alone with the boy. This is terribly confusing for Joe, who thinks that Barbie is trying to trick him when Barbie is really trying to help him escape. Eventually, Joe decides not to escape anyway. He realizes that Junior is right (how often can anyone say that?) and that he needs to build the dome-shattering device.

The magic dog finds Julia and leads her to Big Jim, who in turn introduces her to Hektor. When Julia claims that she cured Barbie with the power of love, Hektor scoffs and claims that the infection is merely in a dormant state and can return at any time. Julia doesn’t believe him. She meets up with Barbie afterward to compare notes. He says that he needs to go to the farm to check on his baby, but promises that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Eva. Julia questions whether Hektor was right after all, and whether Barbie will turn evil again when he sees Eva.

At the farm, Eva is getting really antsy. Being surrounded by creepy brainwashed handmaidens might have that effect. One of the handmaidens, Charlotte (the one Junior lusted after), is ushered in and instructed to touch Eva’s belly. The entire barn glows pink.

Norrie goes to Town Hall without anyone noticing her (see what I was saying?) to talk to Joe. He explains why he needs to stay. They smooch through the bars on the window.

Barbie arrives at the farm just as Charlotte is being carried out. Eva has a huge baby bump now! She looks like she’s full-term already. She explains that the handmaidens have provided her with extra life force in order for the baby to grow. Barbie pretends not to be totally weirded out by this.

When Junior can’t find a grave where Barbie claimed he buried Julia, he knows that Barbie lied to him.

As Joe fiddles with his sound wave device, Sam does the creepy whistling thing that the Pod People enjoy so much, and it causes a small amethyst crystal to start glowing. Wait, so whistling is now a magic power source? Science!

Hunter hacks the encryption of the mystery file and watches a video which reveals that Lily’s father Patrick is still alive.

Hektor and Lily have a word in private. It seems that they entered the dome because they were fleeing from the military, and blew up the root cellar entrance behind them so no one else can get in. They want to stay in here, and don’t want the dome to come down.

Julia heads toward the farm to find Barbie. On the way, she comes across a mass grave of dead handmaiden corpses, including Charlotte. One of the still-living handmaidens confronts her and starts to call out for guards to grab Julia. Suddenly, the girl’s head explodes. It’s Norrie, firing a gun for the first time ever, and nailing a perfect headshot that murders the poor brainwashed girl. Norrie’s a stone-cold killer now.

Nobody hears the gunshot, because that would be inconvenient for the plot. Julia and Norrie hide in the woods and spy on Barbie giving a kiss to big pregnant Eva. Uh oh! Julia thinks that Barbie is brainwashed again, but is he really, or was he just faking? Can she ever trust him again???

Tune in this Thursday for the answers to these burning questions and more. Here are some questions I have: With the number of people Big Jim has murdered, can he be classified as a serial killer? If the dome calcifies, wouldn’t that mean that it gives up its forcefield properties and would be easier to simply smash through and exit? Did Marg Helgenberger need to skip this episode so she could have her top lip reinflated? How many more former ‘ER’ cast members will turn up in this town? I’m not holding my breath for Clooney, but what’s Anthony Edwards up to these days?

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