Summary: Flashbacks show one of Adrian's servants impregnating herself with Adrian's sperm. Years later, Trieu comes to Antarctica to visit Adrian, revealing herself as his daughter. Adrian lets her in due to her intelligence and Trieu reveals her plan to take Dr. Manhattan's power and hopes Adrian will fund her. Adrian refuses. On Europa, Trieu's satellite has seen Adrian's message and she sends a probe to bring him back to Earth. Adrian leaves, frozen in gold to preserve himself until he gets back. In the present, Adrian is defrosted by Trieu. Meanwhile, Jon is transported into the 7K's base where Keene is prepared to take his powers. Angela finds the location and bursts in but is outnumbered. She tries to tell Keene about Trieu's plan but he doesn't listen and tries to take Jon's powers. However, Trieu and her people teleport to the 7K location and Keene is liquefied. Jon uses Keene's remains to teleport Adrian, Laurie and an undercover Wade to Antarctica. Honouring her deal with Will, Trieu murders the entirety of the 7K. Trieu takes away Jon's power and he dies. Meanwhile, Adrian decides to use his squidfall on Trieu's location, freezing the squids to make them lethal. They fall and Trieu is killed. Angela runs and makes it tot he theater where Will and her kids are waiting. She eventually makes peace with Will. Adrian is knocked out by Wade and Laurie prepares to apprehend him. Angela remembers Jon talking about all of his powers possibly being in an egg and she finds an egg in her kitchen. She eats it and checks to see if she can now walk on water.
The Good: I liked the reveals that kicked off the episode. I do like the twist that Trieu is Adrian's daughter and it nicely explains how she has been so knowledgeable and rich throughout the series. It also leads to a pretty good dynamic between her and Adrian which I enjoyed throughout the episode. Her motives finally become clear as evidently she was cloning her mother and bringing back her father so they could all witness her achievement. But bringing Adrian back ended up being her undoing. It's simple but effective storytelling. I also really like the detail that the gold statue we saw several episodes back was actually Adrian all along. The conclusion of Adrian's time on Europa was surprisingly solid. We finally got some answers on the game warden and why Adrian wasn't allowed to leave. He did it to himself in search of a worthy adversary since he was deathly bored on Europa since everything was so perfect. It's a sensible character development and it resulted in a surprisingly poignant send-off for the game warden who ended up being quite the interesting character. The rest of the episode had moments that I really loved. The highlight had to be Angela and Will's scene in the theater which neatly closed off their character arcs with the two of them finally coming together and giving each other the peace that they sorely needed. I also really liked the reveal of Keene's plan and how he learned that Cal was Dr. Manhattan. The details all added up, and just about every little question I had was neatly wrapped up. I also really liked Jon's death and I thought that it was a powerful send-off for the character. Lastly, I appreciate the irony of Adrian finally getting out of his decade-long imprisonment only to be arrested by Laurie. It was a sensible conclusion for the character. The part of the episode that really stood out was the ending. Coming back around to the idea of Jon leaving his powers behind was a really smart idea and it ended the show on a perfect note, wondering if Angela received his powers or not. I think she definitely did since it fits perfectly with everything Jon was doing in the last episode (Ex. he said that seeing Jon on the pool would be important for Angela later). I really like this ending and I think it serves as a lovely segue into the next chapter of Angela's life which may see her doing what Jon didn't by using her powers to help humanity. The Bad: The layers and layers of twists do get old eventually. This show reminds me a lot of "Westworld" which similarly relied on surprise twists and tight, satisfying writing to please the viewers. But just having that and not having a consistent emotional core to the story hurts the show and that is what happened here. Once all the mystery was gone, the only things I cared about were Angela's relationships with Will and Jon. Everything else was quite uninteresting to me and so I found it difficult to invest in the conclusion of this story because it all felt rather hollow. Even though there were fun twists and mysteries to solve throughout the seaosn, I can't help but feel that a simpler approach to this story and its characters could have made this finale feel more intense and emotional. The climax of the episode felt rather anticlimactic. For a show that was packed with unexpected twists and turns, the climax had none of those and was as predictable and generic as possible. There wasn't any drama to everything that happened in the climactic 30 minutes, so I felt an emotional disconnect when watching Trieu's plan unfold before being foiled by the main characters. The villains felt incredibly hollow. Trieu was only interesting because of the mystery surrounding her. Once that was gone, she became incredibly bland. Keene was never interesting since he was a boring white supremacist with absolutely no depth at all. This one-dimensional character never engaged me and I did not care at all when he died. How did he die anyways? I have no idea and I feel like the episode should have shown his death in a better way. Wade and Laurie had shockingly little to do in this episode. They were essentially just along for the ride and the writers couldn't come up with anything interesting for them to do in this final episode, which is a poor way of handling supporting characters. What's even more unforgivable is that Angela, the main lead of the show, is relegated to a passive role in this final episode. She does nothing for the story at all! That's a very poor use of the main character in the climactic moments of the show to have her do nothing of substance at all. It was very disappointing. The frozen squidfall was really strange. It completely destroyed Trieu's device and went straight through her hand, yet Angela can run through the rain with only a small bit of protection and be fine somehow. It was very inconsistent and took me out of the episode. The Unknown: Did Angela get Jon's powers? What will she do with them? Best Moment: Angela and Will in the theater. Character of the Episode: Angela. Conclusion: This was a mixed bag of a finale. On one hand, the show hit us with one last twist, satisfyingly answered questions and had a couple of great moments. But on the other, this episode was simple, predictable, unfulfilling and didn't utilize much of its cast in meaningful ways. In the end, this was a fine enough conclusion to the show. The show overall was alright. This show is the perfect example of why I don't like to use my season/series average scores to judge the overall quality of a show because it is quite off-base for this show. This show is not as good as the average score will make it out to be. It is plain to tell that this show was created based off of 3 brilliant story ideas: visiting the psyche of a survivor of the giant squid in 1985, examining if Hooded Justice was black, and showing us a love story for Dr. Manhattan. The episodes focused on these ideas were wonderful and easily the best parts of the show. But the sum of the parts does not hold up very well. These 3 episodes were awesome but everything else in the show did not live up to my expectations. It was too convoluted at first, and then it became too simple and unemotional in the end. I can comfortably say that I found the show to be simply decent overall, but that it did supply some of the greatest TV episodes in the last few years, and that is what I'm going to remember it for. Score: 60
1 Comment
Joe Y
1/10/2021 01:03:05 pm
Well done with the reviews. We're pretty much in complete agreement. As I said on one of the other reviews...this is basically Lost Part 2. Individually, there are brilliant aspects to it. As a whole...it crumbles a bit.
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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