‘Orphan Black’ 2.10 Recap: “This Is My Unconditional Surrender”

When we last left our clones, Sarah’s daughter Kira had once again been the victim of a kidnapping – this time by Rachel. This week, ‘Orphan Black’ ends its second season with a whole lot more questions and very little in the way of answers.

As the finale gets underway, Sarah has already turned herself over to the Dyad Institute, which bombards her with personal questions about her medical history. (I’ll need to watch the episode again, but I’m almost certain that Sarah says “Yes” when asked if she’s ever had an abortion.) A doctor comes in to have Sarah sign some paperwork, which she agrees to sign as long as she can see her daughter. They take Sarah to a room with some two-way glass in it where she witnesses Rachel taking to Kira.

Mrs. S and Felix are trying to figure out a way to help Sarah when Cal shows up at the door. Mrs. S immediately doesn’t trust him, but Cal tells her about someone in the Dyad Institute he’s initiated contact with over the computer. When Cal instant messages the mysterious person and tells him/her that he’s with Mrs. S, the person on the other end instructs Cal to ask Mrs. S about “Castor.” Mrs. S has an inside man of her own in the form of Paul, who’s dressed in a military uniform when they arrive at a location to meet Cal’s computer contact. The contact turns out to be none other than Marian Bowles, who seems to want to help Sarah.

Rachel finds her father, Ethan, watching some old home movies at the Institute. She offers him some tea, but he just asks for hot water and pulls his own tea bag out of a carrying case he’s holding. Rachel wants to know the needed DNA sequence for healing Cosima, but Ethan doesn’t trust that she’ll use it to heal her. It quickly becomes obvious that whatever was in Ethan’s tea was a suicide dose, and Rachel screams at her father, knowing that he’s dying. Ethan’s last words to Rachel are that she doesn’t deserve him. Ouch.

Sarah is taken from her holding room, strapped down to a gurney, and moved to an operating room where the doctor who made her sign the paperwork earlier tells her that he’s going to remove one of her ovaries. However, Cosima’s lab assistant Scott is also there. He tells Sarah that they’ve found a way to get her out of there and nods toward a fire extinguisher that has a sign on it reading, “Squeeze.” At this point, Rachel arrives in the room and orders everyone else out. She tells Sarah about Ethan’s death and demands that Sarah give her the DNA sequence, which Ethan must have shared with her. When Sarah says she doesn’t know it, Rachel breaks all the vials containing Kira’s bone marrow – the one thing that was helping keep Cosima alive. Sarah asks Rachel to come closer, and then squeezes on the extinguisher, which shoots a pencil that lands right in Rachel’s eye. Sarah then makes her escape. Is Rachel dead, or will she pop up next season with an eye patch? I’m putting money on the latter.

Sarah makes her way to Kira’s room, where Dr. Bowles is waiting for her. She tells Sarah that they need to talk, but for now to take Kira home to be with her other sisters. Back at Felix’s place, it’s a big reunion as Sarah, Cosima, Alison and Helena (who had been staying at Art’s place since burning down the Prolethians’ farm) have a little dance party with one another.

The remainder of the episode sets up storylines for Season 3 (which, as of this writing, hasn’t officially been announced – but it’s hard to believe that BBC America would cancel its most popular original series). Helena is kidnapped by a couple of mysterious men as she tries to exit Felix’s apartment. Kira asks Cosima to read her a story, then gives her the ‘Island of Dr. Moreau’ book with all the equations – which will probably lead to Cosima being healed next season. Finally, Sarah goes to visit Marian at her mansion, where she’s introduced to a young girl… who is the only surviving result of an attempt to clone Sarah and her sisters.

Marian tells Sarah about Project Castor, which was similar to Project Leda, but run by the military and where male clones were created instead of female clones. Marian then leads Sarah downstairs where she has one of the male clones locked up in a cell. I was hoping that ‘Orphan Black’ might take a really bold leap here and show us that Paul – or better yet, Felix – was cloned, but we don’t get anything that exciting. Instead it’s Mark, who we see marrying Gracie in one of the episode’s final scenes. He’s part of a group of clones, meaning that instead of one creepy guy on the show, we now have a bunch of them. Helena, by the way, has been kidnapped by the military group running Project Castor (of which Paul appears to be part), and we see one more Mark clone in uniform before she’s boarded onto a large cargo plane.

So ends the show’s sophomore season, which was entertaining to watch, but lacked much of the fun and humor that almost every episode in Season 1 had. This was a much more deeply serious and scientific season, which often made the episodes a little harder to follow, but it proved to be worthwhile nevertheless. I hope that the series will lighten up a bit next year. However, if this cliffhanger is any indication, the storyline looks like it will dive even further into the clone conspiracy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *